Captive Vow Read online

  Captive Vow

  Alta Hensley

  Copyright © 2017 by Alta Hensley

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Thank you to Pink Ink Designs for the photo, L. Woods PR for the cover design and PR & Mikey Lee for gracing the cover! Also a big thanks to Maggie Ryan for editing and helping my book turn to magic! I also can’t forget Judy, Sandra, and Zoe for being exceptional betas! I have the best team in the world.

  Dedication

  To my readers.

  The first ones, the current ones, and the future ones.

  ALTA HENSLEY’S HOT, DARK & DIRTY NEWS

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  Contents

  Intro

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  About the Author

  Also by Alta Hensley

  Delicate Scars

  I take you.

  To honor and obey.

  Till death do us part.

  This is my solemn vow.

  I am caught in the madness of a deep obsession. Stolen away to become his perfect and dutiful wife.

  Trapped in a twisted and dark courtship. Forced and trained in the wifely duties of an obedient bride.

  I am his.

  Captive ever after…

  ***Captive Vow is a dark romantic thriller. If you don’t like a sprinkle of shock, a dash of taboo, and a heavy dose of sex, then don’t take a sip of my cocktail.

  1

  Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water.

  Jack fell down and broke his crown,

  And Jill came tumbling after.

  My momma used to hum that nursery rhyme. She used to hum it a lot. And on days she was stressed, anxious, or short fused, she would even sing it with a high-pitched, haunting voice over and over again like a stuck record. It was the sound of my childhood. I hated that song.

  I still remember the day I asked her why she loved it so. I wanted to know why two people climbing a hill and then falling off it was so important to her. Who was Jack? Who was Jill? She had looked at me stunned, as if surprised I had noticed and had paid attention to her humming and singing it all these years. Or was she shocked I didn’t know the answer to my question? Whatever it was, she studied me for several minutes before answering me.

  “It was your father’s and my song. It reflects us. Our love we once shared.”

  My mother never spoke of my father. I had never met him nor ever saw a picture. Whenever I asked about him, for stories describing who he was, my momma was quick to shut it down. She said he was ‘gone’ and that was the best answer I would ever get.

  “A nursery rhyme?” I had asked. “That was your song?”

  “Yes. It’s about two lovers who beat all the odds holding them down. They climb above it all, but only to be crushed again.”

  “I don’t understand. Why do they have a pail of water?”

  “A pail of water is a euphemism for having sex. For finally being in love and able to be together. But then Jack dies… and Jill soon follows.”

  “They die?”

  She nodded, appearing so deep in thought. “Yes, they both eventually die.”

  The sound of the phone ringing in the middle of the night was never a good thing. It’s always the sound of bad news, an emergency, or even death. The shrill resonance cutting through the night’s air is like a town crier announcing impending doom.

  My heart thumped against my chest as I reached for my cell phone sitting on the nightstand beside my bed. The number on the screen showed unknown, which only intensified my panic.

  I cleared my throat, not wanting to sound as if I had been woken from a deep slumber and answered, “Hello?”

  There was an operator’s voice on the other end. “This is a collect call for Demi Wayne from The Eastland Women’s Correction Facility. Would you like to accept the charges?” I had heard this question many times before.

  “Yes, I will accept the charges.” I sat up in my bed and turned on the bedside lamp, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes.

  A clicking sound was followed by, “Demi?”

  “Hello.” I felt sick. I wanted to vomit. Her voice on the other end always made me feel ill, but tonight was worse. So much worse. I scanned my nightstand, wishing I still had the emergency pack of cigarettes I kept for an occasion such as this. Why the fuck did I decide to quit?

  “How are you?” she asked.

  What did she expect me to say? How was I supposed to be when I was getting a call from my mother in the middle of the night from a prison where she’d been incarcerated for the past six years? I needed a goddamn cigarette is how I was.

  “Fine,” I lied.

  “Have you been watching the news?”

  “No.” Ever since my mother was arrested for blowing up a building and killing the five guards on that night’s duty, I avoided the media completely. I couldn’t take it. The pictures of her. The pictures of me. The pictures of us together and how the media would say I was a spitting image of my mother. They would say we looked like angels with our blonde hair and blue eyes, but then in the same sentence, say my mother had nothing but the devil inside of her. I didn’t want to look like her. I didn’t want to be the devil. I hated the media. I hated them all. I couldn’t handle all the awful things being said about my mother.

  Demon.

  Murderer.

  Monster.

  And they were all true. Everything they said was true.

  There was a long pause of silence. “I’m calling to say goodbye,” she said with a wavering voice.

  Bile built up in the back of my throat. “Goodbye?” We had already said our goodbyes when she was handcuffed and escorted off to prison. So what could she possibly mean by saying it again?

  “I lost the final appeal.”

  I remained silent. I struggled to comprehend the information being fed through the phone line. It was as if my body was protecting me from processing the words threatening to shatter my soul. Lost. Final.

  “I’m being sentenced to death tomorrow. Lethal injection. The lawyer says today was my final attempt at overturning the guilty verdict. I lost again.”

  Guilty.

  The judge and jury had deemed her guilty.

  She was guilty. She had placed the bomb in the building. She had killed those men. When she was asked why, she had said it was for the cause. The company housed in the building was testing against animals. She had been the judge and jury in that case, deciding that the experiments they were conducting deemed them worthy of being destroyed. ‘A cause,’ she had stated over and over. She was proud of her cause. She was proud of what she did. Not once did she say she was sorry. Not once did she glance over at the wives and families of the men she killed and beg for their forgiveness. Not once did she look at me and tell me she had made a huge mistake and wished she could take it all back. Not once did she show even an ounce of decen
cy in her actions. When I had asked her why she would kill those innocent men, praying to God it was an accident, she simply shrugged and told me it was collateral damage. The price to pay for a bigger and better cause. So yes, what the media was saying about her was true.

  Demon.

  Murderer.

  Monster.

  My momma.

  Yes.

  So, I had no choice but to carry the shame for the both of us, and what a heavy weight it was. On my eighteenth birthday, I sat in the crowded courtroom and watched my mother stand with an aura of defiance and pride while the judge sentenced her to death for five counts of murder.

  Happy Birthday to me.

  “Demi?”

  “Yes?” My voice cracked. I glanced around my bedroom at the piles of dirty clothes strewn about as my heart threatened to beat out of my chest. My room reflected my life. Dirty, neglected, disarrayed, shambles. My life was in chaos, and all I wanted right now was a fucking cigarette. This couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be real… yet, it was.

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  “Yes.”

  There was a long pause as darkness suffocated me. As darkness stabbed at my heart over and over. As darkness bludgeoned me to a bloody pulp. Darkness destroyed me as I sat there with the phone to my ear.

  Dead man walking…

  Correction.

  Dead woman walking…

  “It’s okay, Demi. I’m at peace. I finally get to be with your father.”

  I said nothing as I struggled to breathe. The small room of my one-bedroom apartment shrank in size as the walls appeared to be closing in on me. I was trapped in this nightmare that I couldn’t elude. There was no escape from my life.

  “Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. Jack fell down and broke his crown. And Jill came tumbling after,” she sang softly as she had done so many times in my youth. She paused, as if she were waiting for me to say something. As if wanting me to ask for clarification.

  I wanted to scream for her to stop. I didn’t want to hear that awful nursery rhyme ever again. I wanted her to shut the fuck up! Yet, I didn’t want those to be my last words to her. No matter what, she didn’t deserve that. I didn’t want her to die hearing my cruel—but honest—words ringing in her ears. A daughter’s truth to a mother who had done her wrong… so very wrong. So, I remained silent. Silent like all the times I watched her and others meet in my living room planning to take down a government agency or corrupt company. These strangers plotting and planning in my childhood home all spoke as if they were the good guys, and everyone else were the villains. I had grown up to distrust our government due to all the conspiracy theories I heard growing up. I never questioned. I never disagreed. I never told a soul of their plans. I only remained silent as a good little girl would do.

  “I’m proud. Your father died for his cause, and now I get to tumble down after him.”

  I had finally learned all about my father after my mother was arrested. Not from my momma, but by the television. The media had informed me that my father—who I was simply told was ‘gone’—had died in a blaze of police gunfire when he refused to surrender after trying to blow up a nuclear power plant. He was a leader of a terrorist group. He had died that day, leaving behind a grieving widow and a three-month-old baby. I can still remember the news anchor who stared into the camera while video of my father played behind his profile. The anchorman’s gray hair, perfect suit and blue-striped tie, his firm, emotionless expression as he spoke into the camera were still so clear in my memory. Did he know that behind his head on the television screen was a gruesome image playing of a man losing his life as he was gunned down? A man who was my father? Did the news anchor have any idea there was a young woman watching her father—who she knew nothing about—for the first time while he died on old video footage? I often wonder if that news anchor had any idea a piece of me died that day. I had to meet my father, watch them describe my mother as the devil, and come to terms with the fact that I was nothing but an orphan with a dark and twisted family tree. I was a fool. Fooled by my past.

  “When?” I asked, swallowing the lump in the back of my throat. “When do you die?”

  “They said two o’clock tomorrow.”

  Two o’clock.

  Two o’clock and my mother would be dead.

  How odd it must be to know the exact time you are going to die.

  Was she afraid? I would be afraid.

  The first hot tear fell from my eyes. “So this is it? The last time I get to talk to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Momma…” The rest of the tears followed as I slipped into a deep hole. At that moment, I wanted to be a little girl with her mother’s soothing arms around her, comforting her, telling her it was all going to be okay. But nothing was going to be okay. Nothing at all.

  “Promise me one thing,” she said. “Promise me you’ll find your Jack, and you will climb that hill. You deserve happiness and love. You deserve so much more than I was able to give you.” She cleared her throat. “I have to go now.”

  Panic attacked. “Wait! Now?” Oh God! Was this the last time I would ever hear my mother’s voice? Would these be our last words? “Is there anything we can do? Can we hold it off a little bit longer? Maybe hire another lawyer? Get a new judge? Anything? There has to be something!” I felt as if I was hanging on a cliff by my fingertips and the weight of my body was just too much. I was about to fall into the abyss.

  “No. The time has finally come. Just know that though you may not have agreed with my cause or what I did, I at least stayed true to myself. True to what your father and I believed in. All I ask is you stay true to yourself, Demi.”

  “Momma…”

  “Goodbye.”

  With a short metallic click, the phone went dead, and Jill came tumbling after.

  2

  Day of death. How do you start a day like that? Do you get up, shower, dress and go to work like any other day? How do you face the hours? The minutes? The seconds? How do you breathe when your soul is dying, but your body is too cruel to allow the sweet release of death? How does a daughter live as her mother prepares to die?

  “Demi? Did you hear me?”

  I turned to see Maria standing in the small break room, looking at me with concern. Her long black hair was set in a low bun like she always wore it while on shift, but the wayward hairs that framed her face revealed she had already worked several hours. The breakfast shift at Blossoms Diner could be a real bitch, and no doubt she was anxious to be relieved by me so she could go home and get some rest.

  “What?” I hadn’t even heard her come in, let alone say anything to me. Ever since the phone call, I felt as if I was wading through a dream cloaked in a thick fog.

  “I asked if you were all right. You look a million miles away.”

  “Just a long night. I didn’t get much sleep.”

  Maria was my friend—the only person I would really consider a friend—but I’d never told her about my mother. I hadn’t told anyone about my mother. It wasn’t exactly something I was proud of or wanted to relive by retelling the nightmare I tried desperately to keep locked away in the far corners of my mind. I had murderess blood that ran through my veins, and that was a secret I didn’t want to reveal. Not to anyone.

  Appearing satisfied with my lie, she said, “Story of my life. I swear, if Luis doesn’t start sleeping through the night soon, I may die of sleep deprivation. He’s just so darn cute that I can’t help but pick him up from his crib. I know they say you are supposed to let them cry it out, but that just seems cruel to me.”

  I tried my best to give a smile and slight nod as I reached for my apron and tied it around my waist. Normally, I loved hearing stories of her sweet little baby, but the fog I was in nearly smothered me in despair. I was afraid Maria would know something was wrong by looking at me, as she always did. I just hoped today she’d write this one off as me being tired.

  When I
looked up at her after putting on my apron, I found her staring, appearing more concerned than before. “Hey, are you really okay? Are you sick or something? Do you want me to work your shift for you? I can call the sitter and have her stay longer. It’s really not that big of a deal.”

  Having Maria work my shift would have been wonderful so I could just go crawl in bed and hide from all the emotions flooding me, but I didn’t have the luxury. Missing even one shift meant me not being able to pay all my bills that month, and it was tight as it was.

  I shook my head and gave the best reassuring smile I could give. “I’m fine. Once I get some coffee in me, I’ll perk right up.”

  Maria seemed convinced with my answer, and she reached for the tie of her apron to remove it. “Table five is waiting for you.”

  “She’s here today?”

  “Every Tuesday and Thursday, and now Friday it seems. She’s making a habit of eating here. Quite the regular. I already placed her order for her.”

  I let out a big sigh. Not that I minded our usual customer, in fact, she had become someone I actually cared for, but today I wasn’t sure I had the patience or the ability to be kind to anyone. Viv Montgomery was a sweet old Asian lady with a heart of gold, but she did take a lot of my time and attention. “Any chance you can stay a bit longer? I know she’ll need my help.”

  “Girl, you can’t be expected to stop what you are doing and feed her every time she comes in.”

  Even though Maria said the words, I knew that if I didn’t help Mrs. Montgomery eat her meal, Maria would most definitely step in and fill my shoes. She liked to play the hard ass, but I knew the real her. Maria wouldn’t allow a little old lady to fend for herself, and I knew it.