Then, quietly, he stepped forward.
“Sir,” Isaiah said, voice deep and even, “if you’re giving her to me, you’re giving her under my roof. My rules.”
Whitcomb’s mouth twitched, almost amused. “Rules,” he echoed, as if it were the funniest thing he’d heard all week. “You don’t have rules, Carter. You have chores.”
Isaiah’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t argue. Not here. Not in this yard.
He turned to Lillian and held out his hand.
For a second, she stared at it like it was a foreign object, something from a different life. Then she placed her palm in his. His skin was callused and warm, the kind of hand that had been forced to build everything and allowed to own nothing.
Isaiah guided her down the steps and away from the bright white house that had always swallowed her like a secret.
As they walked, the overseer muttered something vulgar under his breath. A few men snickered. A woman near the wash line crossed herself as if watching a funeral procession.
And Whitcomb, satisfied, lit a cigar and leaned back in his chair, already forgetting that he had just thrown a human life into the dirt like a cracked horseshoe.
That was the moment the plantation began to split, not with fire or gunshot, but with something far more dangerous.
Truth.
The cabin they gave Isaiah sat at the edge of the quarters, close enough that the overseer could keep an eye on him, far enough that the big house didn’t have to hear his footsteps at night.
It was a two-room shack with a sagging roof and a door that didn’t latch right unless you shoved it with your shoulder. Somebody had tossed a straw mattress in the corner and called it “married accommodations” with a laugh sharp enough to draw blood.
Isaiah didn’t laugh.
He led Lillian inside and closed the door behind them, then pushed the latch into place with a careful firmness, like he was sealing a promise.
She stood in the center of the room, breathing fast. The air smelled of pine resin and old smoke and something damp under the floorboards. Her eyes darted to the bed, then to Isaiah’s hands, then back to the door as if she expected her father to burst in and announce she’d been traded again.
Isaiah took two steps backward and sat down on the floor, leaning his shoulders against the wall.
“I’m not touching you,” he said.
Lillian blinked.
He tilted his head, studying her expression as if he could read the words she’d swallowed for years. “I know what they think,” he continued. “They think you’re punishment. They think you’re bait. They think I’m supposed to break you so your father can sleep easy.”
