Page 38 of Jensen

“You know he’s protected by the Caudills?”

Everybody knows that. It’swhy nobody’s ever touched that fucker. I nod, more scared than I’ve been in my entire life. The world’s worst silence follows.

“Get inside, Jen,” he says. “Don’t leave my property.”

But I do—I turn around and go home for the first time since Cherry kicked me out of her trailer. And the minute I walk throughthe front door where I spent the last few years of my teenagehood, I know why he told me not to run.

Sunlight filters through the broken kitchen window. Flies buzz over bloody linoleum. The microwave beeps, and I open it. There’s a cold cup of coffee sitting inside that nobody will ever drink.

The Caudills were faster than a striking snake. They sank their teeth into my neck and injected their venom into everyone I ever loved.

NOW

My body startles so hard,I sit upright. Everything spins,andmy skin is cold. For the last nineteen years, I haven’t dreamed, at least not anything that wasn’t a wet dream or the one where I get punched in the mouth in the ring and lose all my teeth.

Why can’t I dream about that night I can’t remember?

Maybe it would release me from my resentment if I could just remember what Brothers did to me, or said to me, that made me leave.

I run my hand over my face, dropping my head. Decades later, I’m still haunted by unanswered questions. I ran west.I became someone else with a whole new life.

I should be at peace.

But here I am, still dreaming of the horror that was home.

CHAPTER NINE

DELLA

BEFORE

I’m sitting at Leland’s right, staring at the plate in front of me. There’s a charger plate under it. I had no idea what that was until I married Leland. Now I spend all my time trying to figure things like this out. I’m getting good at it too, the way he wants me to be.

Leland is talking. The room is smoky, filled to the brim with men who do business with the Caudills, the boys in tweed from Lexington, the rich pieces of shit from out of state who come around only for the races. None of the men do his dirty work—this kind of dinner isn’t for that. This is the room where deals get made.

I take a sip of wine and set it down. The man to my right, in a golf shirt that probably costs thousands, glances me over.

I’m perfect, a statue, acenterpiece for the new generation of Caudills. Skin tanned and lasered. Body lean from the mornings I get to escape to the gym and hide for a few hours. Flawless makeup. My body showcased in a rose gold dress that cups my breasts, cinches around my waist, and pools over my thighs to my ankles.

Elegant, beautiful, like the silver swans he has in the fountain out front.

Nobody would ever guess I grew up in a Harlan County trailer with sheets tacked over the windows.

Leland’s palm touches my thigh. I flick my eyes over to my husband, but he’s not looking at me. A conversation is happening, an important one, with a man from Chapel Hill. I paid attention enough up front to know his name is Richard St. Hilaire. His grandfather had money,andhis father had even more. Richard has enough to buy my soul.

He owns horses. My husband knows how to get those horses to the finish line. They’re a match made in heaven—or hell.

“She is,” says Leland.

I flick my eyes between them. Are they talking about me? Richard St. Hilaire leans back in his seat, bourbon in one hand. He’s looking at me,and I don’t like it.

“Now I got somebody for you,” Leland drawls.

“You’re showing off, bringing your wife out looking like that,” Richard says. “Letting us just look.”

Leland must want this deal bad, because he leans forward, threading his fingers. Gold watches glint. The sun is setting, casting a deep yellow beam of sunlight across the table. It makes the red velvet curtains glitter.

“You can’t fuck her, but if you put pen to paper, I’ll let you watch,” he says.