DJ shot her a warning glare. “No more of your lies, Rhoda. You’ve caused enough trouble for one day.”

Rhoda dropped her eyes to the terrified child in her arms. She’s a child. The community held that Mercy was a woman grown, but she was not. Rhoda’s daughter was an almost-thirteen-year-old girl, scared out of her mind, but too beaten down to fight back. Emotionally and physically. Mercy’s husband had beaten her, had taken her so roughly that she’d bled. Again and again.

My fault. All my fault. I should have stopped him.

But that was an impossibility. Rhoda had been unable to stop the man’s harsh treatment of her own body, much less Mercy’s.

They’d been possessions. Nothing more.

“You’ll keep your end of the bargain?” she asked.

DJ nodded once, his expression grim as he held out his arms.

Rhoda tightened her hold on Mercy. “I’ll carry her,” she insisted, then swallowed a yelp when DJ hit her again.

“Stop making trouble, Rhoda,” he growled, then grabbed Mercy from her arms.

Rhoda scrambled to the edge of the truck bed, managing to get one foot on the ground before DJ returned to shove her backward.

“Stay here,” he barked.

She crawled to one side of the truck so that she could look over the side. Mercy lay on the asphalt parking lot, curled into the fetal position, her body visibly trembling. What had he done to her?

“Mercy?” she called, hearing the fear in her own voice. “Mercy—”

But Rhoda’s cry was abruptly muted when DJ grabbed the chain around her neck and yanked it, cutting off her air supply. On reflex, she grabbed the locket at the base of the chain and pulled it away from her throat, trying to give herself room to breathe. But DJ yanked harder and she opened her mouth, gasping for breath.

She hated the chain. Hated the locket it held. Hated how the man who’d owned her had used it just as DJ did now. To control her. To show her who owned the very breaths she took. Not me. She hadn’t owned the breaths she took for twelve long years.

The chain wasn’t jewelry. It was a slave’s collar and she’d borne it for far too long.

Something sharp punctured her skin before sliding up the back of her neck, beneath the dreaded chain that dug deeper into her throat as black circles began to dance in front of her eyes.

She wondered if this was it. Is this how he’ll kill me?

But then a loud crunch filled her ears, and the chain went slack around her neck. She gasped in air that burned, one hand circling her throat protectively. The other still clutched the hated locket.

Until it was snatched from her hand.

“Stay here,” DJ growled. “I mean it, Rhoda.”

But Rhoda wasn’t listening anymore. She crawled to the truck’s open tailgate and slid to the ground. Grabbing the edge of the truck’s bed, she made her way to her daughter on unsteady legs.