Again, Beth took a step forward to leave.
“Beth, wait … I can explain.” Razer’s hand snapped out and caught her arm, keeping her from leaving.
“Razer, explanations are not necessary for the simple reason that they won’t make a difference to how I feel about you. You were wrong that night at your house. I wasn’t beginning to care for you; I had fallen in love with you. I knew you didn’t return my feelings, and I let it happen anyway. I’ve had a few bad weeks since then, but I am getting over you. If the explanations you want to give me end with you wanting to be friends, that won’t work for me. It would be too painful for me to see you with other women and not touch you myself.” Razer went to speak, but Beth raised a hand to stop him. “Let me finish. On the other hand, if you are hoping these explanations lead to us being back together again, that no longer is an option. You are incapable of giving me the relationship I need to be happy, which involves trust, fidelity, and love. Even if you swore to do all three, I would never, ever believe in you again.”
That time, when Beth took a step forward, Razer’s hand dropped to his side. Both Shade and Razer’s bikes sat immobile as Beth carefully maneuvered her SUV around them, pulling out onto the road without a look back.
* * *
“We fucked up bad.” Evie’s head fell forward onto Shade’s back.
“More like crashed and burned,” Lucky said, stepping out from behind a parked van.
“Back off, Dean. You had no business eavesdropping.”
“I had every right. I handed you that girl on a silver platter, and what did you do? You screwed her over so badly that now, not only don’t I have her, but you don’t have her, and it’s not looking like you ever will,” Lucky ruthlessly threw Beth’s words back in Razer’s face.
“She’ll come around; she’ll forgive me. The girl is incapable of holding a grudge.”
“Did you even make an attempt to get to know her?” Lucky asked in disbelief.
“What does that mean?”
“It means, she is not going to forgive you. You hurt her too badly. She won’t put herself back in that vulnerable position again, with either of you.”
“Come with me.” Lucky left the parking lot without another word, walking toward the church across the street.
“You two go on back to the club.”
Shade nodded as Razer rode across the street to the church.
Shade dropped Evie off at the clubhouse before going inside the factory to take care of the orders which had come in since they had been gone, finding Crash had done a good job keeping everything up to date.
Shade finished those which hadn’t been processed then went to the clubhouse. He grabbed himself a beer before going quietly into the kitchen, coming to an abrupt stop when he saw Razer already back and sitting on the couch watching the TV screen. He had hooked a VCR to it and had a box of tapes sitting on the coffee table in front of him.
Shade’s hand froze as he was about to lift the beer to his mouth, recognizing a much younger Beth on the screen. A tall, thin man with wire-framed glasses stood behind the pulpit.
The preacher gave a blistering sermon that would have put the fear of God into any grown man, much less the tiny girl sitting on the front pew. It was a thing to shrink a grown man’s balls with Hell and damnation used as threats. Beth was sitting quietly and still by a rigidly stern woman who amened constantly in agreement as the long-winded sermon droned on.
Razer fast-forwarded through much of the tape, stopping it when a movement from Beth’s father motioned Beth to stand up in front of the large congregation.
“Now, we come to the part of service where I give everyone a chance to repent their sins and take their punishment to be forgiven of them. My daughter will begin. Beth?”
Beth stared straight ahead as she stood before the congregation.
“I am pleading for forgiveness from my Lord to forgive my tardiness to dinner twice this week. My mother works hard to make the meal, and my father works hard to provide it. I should be more appreciative and show my respect by being on time.”
“Beth, do you repent your sins?”
“Yes, Pastor Saul.”
“Then kneel before your peers and take your punishment.”
Beth got to her knees as her father stood behind her, carrying a leather strap.
“Repent!” he screamed and the strap struck out, hitting the girl on her back.
The church members yelled back, “Repent!”
Three more times, the leather struck her on her back before her father allowed her to resume her seat.
Horrified, Shade set his beer down on the counter, moving closer to the couch Razer was sitting on. When Evie entered the room, Shade motioned for her to be quiet as she came to stand next to him.
Clumsily, Razer removed the tape and put in another one. He fast-forwarded through six more tapes, each with Beth getting strapped for little or no reason. Not a single member among the so-called Christians spoke against his treatment of a young child, nor did they volunteer to repent their own sins. Each merely sat like fucking sheep as Beth took beating after beating. The room began getting crowded as the brothers came to get dinner and ended up becoming engrossed in the tapes being played.
Cash was one of the last ones to come in, standing shakily beside him as one particular tape began. It was different from the rest; instead, it seemed as if they were in a smaller church, and the parishioners were standing around chanting.
Shade’s brows rose as the church members danced in place and chanted in an unrecognizable language.
As a large, bearded man went behind the podium and pulled out a snake, Beth, who had been stepping slowly back and forth between her parents, was pushed forward as the snake was held out. She didn’t speak; she simply continued moving, holding out her frail, little arms. The snake slid up her forearm as a no more than nine-year-old Beth whimpered, a look of pain across her face as the snake reared back and struck her in the upper arm.
“Praise God.” The man pried the snake’s teeth from her arm and then she fell to the floor, crying as the parishioners circled around the whimpering child. Suddenly, the tape ended, as if the machine taping it had fallen to the floor.
“I remember that day. I tried to get to her and knocked the camera over,” Cash explained.
Shade and Cash had shared several horrific missions together in the service, but Shade had not once seen the tortured expression in Cash’s eyes that he saw at that point.
“What the hell was that?” Jewell said in shock.
“Snake handling. Her bastard of a father would take us into the mountains once a year to a sister church. Every year, I watched the same scene. Didn’t Beth tell you when you saw the scars on her arms?” Cash asked Razer.
“No.”
“Did they take her to the hospital? Why didn’t someone call social services?” Bliss questioned.
“No, they never took her to the hospital. The proof of faith is when she doesn’t die. So no medical treatment, no one reported it to social services, and the sheriff back then was a member of the congregation who couldn’t have given a shit. The congregation prayed over her all night while her little body was wracked with pain till morning. It was the last time I ever prayed.” Cash’s hands clenched the back of the couch.
“The next year they went, they didn’t make her do it again, did they?” Viper asked.
“As far as I know, from what my grandmother told me, yes. A couple of times, it was a close call, but she survived. The members took it as a sign of their faith, but I would say it was more likely that she built up an immunity to the venom. I wouldn’t know; I left town the next day and enlisted in the Navy. I never went back to that church.”
Razer went to the next box and picked a tape from a couple years later. Beth was older in that tape, looking age eleven or so. It was more of the same, except the beatings became worse. She continuously begged for God’s forgiveness, never her crazy-assed father, no matter how many tim
es the leather struck her back.
The next tape had Lily in it. Shade sucked in a deep breath at the first appearance of the small, underweight girl with those haunted shadows already in her eyes. Shade wanted to kill someone for whatever had made Lily the way she was before she had been adopted.
In the video, she was brought forward as they explained the charity they’d had to give to a child in desperate need of a home. No mention was made of where she had come from, though.
Several tapes were gone through before the minister ordered Lily forward for a punishment. When she would have stepped forward, Beth pulled her back, explaining it was her fault Lily had committed what had been deemed as a sin. The pastor, thwarted in his desire for new prey, took it out on a blank-faced Beth. This continued on until a tape where the pastor once again ordered Lily forward and Beth was denied when she would have stepped forward.
“You will sit, Beth. Lily will take the punishment for letting you influence her, and then I will punish you for your part in it. It is time that Lily learned not to let you force her from the path of righteousness.”
Shade easily recognized the signs that Lily had been beaten on a regular basis. She didn’t look frightened. Instead, a look of peace came over her as she clasped her hands in front of her. Her silky, black hair fell forward as she repented in a strong voice. When the leather struck her, she didn’t flinch or move and her voice remained the same monotone as before.
“I am going to throw up,” Natasha warned.
Fury exploded inside of Shade. He walked forward and jerked the tape out of the VCR, throwing it at the television, which burst with sparks flying. However, not one member chastised him for doing so.
Shade had seen a lot of sick shit in his life, but seeing Lily in a submissive pose she had obviously done many times in her young life was possibly the sickest. It churned his gut that such a beautiful young girl hadn’t been protected by those who were supposed to keep her safe.