Stella reaches over and clenches my hand with her own. “Ella, is her name Stella?”
“No, Constellation is her birth name,” I say and see my sister’s eyes widen. “It was my fuck you to him, I’d never shared your name with him before and he seemed detached when it came to naming her. He didn’t have any preferences, and like I said, he’d been acting strange since the day we found out she existed. I knew that things were going to drastically change, I just had no clue how much. When he started controlling me throughout the pregnancy, I knew that things would eventually crash down, I had just hoped I had more time to prepare to leave before things got out of hand. But, I waited too long, I really believed I had more time.”
“So, what happened next?” Shamus inquires.
“He let me breastfeed for about three months before he announced that it was time to start bottle feeding. My heart was broken that he’d take that away from me, but from the way he spoke to me, I knew there was no arguing back. By this time, he’d already started the physical cycle of abuse. A shove here, a thump there, nothing too alarming, but I should’ve woken up then instead of making excuses for him and hit the road. But I was desperate to not leave until I had all of my ducks in a row and know I could stand on my own two feet financially. After all, I had a baby that depended on me. I kept pushing back that dooming feeling, trying to force myself into thinking that everything was as it should be. About a week after he forced me to stop feeding my daughter from my body, I woke up in the middle of the night to men invading our room. Jeremiah was nowhere to be found and I thought I was going to be raped and murdered. There were too many to believe that it was a home invasion and these men wouldn’t be happy with taking our belongings—no, I knew in my gut that they were there with nefarious intentions. They were so much stronger than I was, am, and they quickly captured me. I had a bag thrown over my head and was dragged from the bed I’d been sleeping peacefully in just minutes before. I could hear Ella crying in the background and another woman crying.”
I look over at Jessia and know that she’s reliving that same night from her version of it. That was the night that she was forcefully moved into my home and became Ella’s caretaker. She sniffles a little and as I look over at her, it breaks my heart that she can’t meet my eyes. It wasn’t her fault, but I know she thinks if she’d fought harder, refused to take care of Ella then they wouldn’t have taken me. But if it hadn’t been her, they’d have found someone else, I wholeheartedly believe that. And who knows what kind of woman would’ve taken her place, my baby could’ve grown up being emotionally and mentally abused.
“I shouldn’t have given in so easily and let them take you. I was so damn scared because I was removed from my parent’s home the same way you were,” she cries.
“It was better in the long run that you didn’t,” I reassure her. “There’s no telling what could have happened to her if you weren’t there.”
“And that’s the only reason I gave in,” she eventually states. “I was always trying to come up with a way to get the two of you away from Jeremiah, but everything I tried backfired and I ended up with a black eye or bruised ribs.” I hear another growl permeate the room, but I have no clue where it came from. Jessia’s eyes pop behind where I’m sitting, but I don’t have the energy to turn around and see who she's having a stare off with.
“That next night, I found myself tossed onto the stage and forced to strip. I felt dirty, used and abused, and that’s the night that I decided that Jeremiah had to die in order for us to all be safe. But the opportunity never arrived for me to carry that wish out, instead, I became his puppet. And I hated every damn day of it. I would say I wished I’d never met him, but he gave me Ella. He was abusive to me, placed me in a cell where I lived each and every day. My only saving grace was my baby, he’d allow me to leave and spend time with her once a week, it’s how he kept me in line, outside of his belt.”
“His favorite form of punishment,” Jessia whimpers. I have had my suspicions that she’d seen that belt firsthand and what it implied, but I’d never known for sure until this very moment that she’d been on the receiving end of one of its blows.
“Wait a minute, aren’t you his sister? Why would he do that to you?” my sister quizzically asks.
“Because he’s a narcissistic, sadistic… all the istics that are out there, that’s him. He murdered our parents in front of me. Made it look like a home invasion and forced me to lie on his behalf. I was fucking petrified of him, I knew what he’d done to them, if he could do that, what would he do me?” Jessia frowns.
“If he was behind bars, nothing,” Gunner tells her. “I know you were scared then, but you have us with you now. If you wanna step up and talk to the law, we’ll be with you every step of
