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PROLOGUE

IfIdon’tescapetonight, he’s going to kill me.

Gritting my teeth, I choked back the groan of discomfort that threatened to escape my lips. I controlled my breathing, inhaling slowly and deeply and exhaling just the same. It was impossible to ignore the tightening band gripping my hips and thighs now.

The aching had started earlier in the evening, after Kiki had put his hands on me, squeezing my neck until I hovered on the edge of unconsciousness. After he made me do vile things to earn his mercy. After he repeatedly slammed his fist into my back and ribs until I was sure he would kill us both.

All because I smiled at the old man next door. Smiled which, according to Kiki, was a sure sign I wanted to fuck Juan. You know, the same way I apparently wanted to fuck every single man who crossed my path.

Funny how Kiki accused me of doing the thing he was actually doing every night. He thought I didn’t know, but I did. I knew everything now. All of it. Every single nasty, dirty detail of what he had done and who he truly was.

I have to get out.

It was now or never.

I could not bring my baby into this world still chained to this monster. I could not bring her back here to live with a man who would surely abuse her. More than anything, I feared he would kill her in one of his violent rages.

God, how did I get here? How had I gone from a straight-A student with my eyes on a full-ride basketball scholarship to Baylor to this? To a pregnant high school dropout, barely eighteen years old and married to a man who was nearly thirty and regularly beat the shit out of me?

Abandonment issues. Daddy issues. An abusive, junkie mother. A desperate need to be loved, to feel special.

No more.

I have to get out.

Right now.

I bit my lower lip as another wave of pain began, this one curling low and deep before spreading out toward my hips and thighs. I had expected labor pains to feel like period cramps on steroids, but this was something else entirely. The nausea-inducing ache in my thighs and hips shocked me. It was relentless, and I didn’t know how much longer I could keep quiet.

As I sat up, I closed my eyes, shutting out the dizzy spin of the dimly lit bedroom. I wasn’t sure if the headache and dizziness was a side effect of the near strangulation earlier or some kind of complication. The last six days had been hard on me. Headaches, swelling, a strange sense that something wasn’t right.

Kiki wouldn’t let me go back to the doctor, not after the nurse had asked him to step out of the room at my thirty-two week appointment. She had seen the marks on my upper arms while taking my blood pressure. I had lied, of course, and told her I had lost my balance and banged into a door. Looking back, it wasn’t a very good lie, and she hadn’t believed me. She had told me that I could get help, but I had asked her to let Kiki back into the room.

I would never forget the pitying, disappointed look on her face. She didn’t understand. She couldn’t understand. That one simple act of asking him to step outside the room had guaranteed my ass was getting beat as soon as we got home. The longer he was forced to wait outside the room, the worse it would be.

No matter how much I had assured him that I told her nothing, he wouldn’t believe me. He had decided then that it was better for me not to be influenced by nosy white ladies with savior complexes. He was convinced the nurses and doctors would lie to take our baby away from us, a Black teenager and a Latino. He had a lot of strange conspiracy ideas like that. Everyone was always against him, and nothing was ever his fault.

Like when he knocked me around after that prenatal visit.

He didn’t want to slap me or kick me in the legs and back. He hated having to discipline me, but I pushed him too far. I broke the rules. I let that woman embarrass him by sending him outside of the room like a child. I had undermined him, and I had to learn my lesson.

As the memory of that beating faded, I reached up to touch my right ear. It still rang, a soft and high-pitched whine that never left me. A constant reminder of his open-handed slap and the battery that followed.

Get up.

Stop thinking about the past.

Get up and get out.

I glanced at the open bedroom door. Kiki’s loud snores echoed through the small house. It was a creaky, rundown mess he had inherited from his grandmother. It was nothing like he had promised when he convinced me to marry him and run away from Houston together. There was no picket fence, no roses out front, no brick sidewalk, or tall shade trees.

No, he had brought me to a hellhole. This San Antoniobarriowas among the most dangerous areas. The house behind us ran a pit bull puppy mill that smelled horrendous in the scorching Texas heat, and the dogs barked all hours of the day and night. When they weren’t barking, they were rattling the chain link fences of their kennels and snarling viciously. The inhumane treatment made them mean and dangerous.

Kiki kept talking about getting one of Roberto’s dogs as a pet for our baby. Knowing how much Kiki enjoyed the dog fights on the outskirts of town, I didn’t trust him to bring home a docile animal. He would want one quick to anger, a bloodthirsty mongrel that would stalk my baby and hurt her.

Last week, a neighbor two houses down had been shot over a set of rims. Literally gunned down in the street over a few hundred dollars. The old lady on the corner had been beaten and robbed after her grandson messed up a drug deal. Cartel knee breakers had put the hurt on her to draw out her grandson and get their money or product back.

And, of course, there were the hookers.

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