Happy Saturday, lovelies! This is the last chapter I've prewritten, so if any future updates are late, it's because I have to write the chapter. Hopefully you lovelies enjoy! ~Shaymie

Darcy's POV

"Daddy yells at Mama a lot." I frowned down at my little sister, who was turning a doll over in her hand, her tiny little nose crinkling up. Lori was tiny, even for an eight year-old, and sometimes I thought she would break if I so much as sneezed on her. She was so small that whenever she stayed over for the weekend (which seemed to happen more often lately), she could squeeze right in next to me on my bed.

"What does he say?"

"He… says a lot of bad words." Lori put the doll down and looked up at me, her stormy eyes sparkling with tears. "A-And then he takes her to their bedroom. I always hear a lot of weird noises and something hitting the wall. I'm scared, Darcy. Mama keeps saying that it's fine because Daddy loves her, but she's always getting hurt!"

"Does he hit her?" Lori nodded, her bottom lip quivering. I pulled her into a hug and patted her back. Dad's new girlfriend used to date someone like that, until she finally decided to leave him. Why couldn't Mama do the same? "Does he hit you?"

"N-No… He… He makes me touch his thingy… He said it was my job to make him feel good when Mama can't." Her hands tangled painfully in my hair as she hugged me. I opened my mouth to say something, but for once in my life, I was speechless. Wasn't that illegal? Couldn't he go to jail for this? Lorin was only eight, she had no business doing something like that. I didn't even know if she knew what she was doing was wrong.

"It's alright, Lori. He won't hurt you ever again."

"Penny for your thoughts?" I looked up as someone sat in front of me and nearly choked on my coffee as I looked into the most beautiful pair of chocolate brown eyes I'd ever seen. Actually, everything about this girl was beautiful, from her perfectly tanned skin that was free from any blemishes (they were probably hidden by makeup, but I couldn't imagine her with any kind of blemish), to her lips, which were painted a majestic red. Even her voice was seductive, smooth and easy to listen to.

"Oh, uh… I was just thinking about my sister. I'm visiting her."

"What's her name?" I felt my face grow hot as this beautiful person smiled at me, her mouth curling up in a playful grin. New York really was different than Texas! I hadn't even been here two hours and I was already getting hit on! This would have never happened back at home.

"Lorin… Oh, I haven't even told you my name yet! My name's Darcy," I extended a hand out to her and felt a chill go down my spine when her hand touched mine. I had to pull myself together. She was just a girl. A pretty, flirtatious, New York girl, but a girl nonetheless.

"My name's Maria." She released my hand and leaned lazily on the table, twirling a perfectly curled bit of hair around her manicured finger. "Is your sister as cute as you? Because I love a girl with freckles. I think they're really cute."

"It was nice to meet you, Maria. Uh, I have to go. My sister's waiting for me." I downed the rest of my coffee and grabbed my bags, squeaking as she grabbed my hand. She took a pen from her purse and uncapped it with her mouth, and I watched as she wrote her number on my palm. Was everyone in New York so straightforward?

I stared at my hand as I left the coffee shop and walked towards Lori's house. Maria Lewis... I smiled as I saved the number in my phone. I could tell that I was going to like this city already. I spent the entire walk texting Maria and silently celebrated as she not-so-subtly hinted that she was single and very ready to mingle.

Before I knew it, I was at Lori's gigantic house, which I had always thought was too big for such a small family. It was just the Washingtons, Lori, Lafayette, and some new guy that Lori barely told me anything about. The last time she had mentioned him was a month ago when she called him the biggest, flirtatious asshole she had ever met. And I had the misfortune of meeting Thomas Jefferson the last time I visited.

"Here goes nothing," I sighed as I knocked on the door. I put my phone in my pocket and blinked as the door opened… and it wasn't Lori or Lafayette. This must be… What was his name again? Oh yeah, Alexander. He looked exhausted, and I noticed he was holding a cup of coffee in his hand. His hair was tied back in a sloppy bun, and there was a pen tucked behind his ear. Really selling the "tortured artist" look… Or just the hobo look.

"Um, is Lorin here right now?" I asked hesitantly. He nodded and opened the door a bit wider, pushing his glasses up his nose. I walked into the house and saw my sister curled up on the couch asleep, wrapped up tightly in a bundle of blankets. Well, that answered my question.

"She's taking a nap right now. You're Darcy, right? I was going to wake her up when you got here, but I think she needs the rest." I set my stuff down and sat next to Lorin on the couch. I put her head on my lap and brushed some hair away from her face. My eyes filled with tears as I looked down at her. It had been over a year since I'd seen her, and I didn't realize how much I had missed her until now.

"That's me. And I'm assuming you're Alexander. Where's Lafayette?"

"You can just call me Alex," he sighed, flopping down onto an armchair. He grabbed a notebook from the table and starting flipping through it, grabbing the pen from his ear. "Laf's still at school, I think. He stays after school a lot. Lo had to stay home today because she wasn't feeling well."

"What's wrong with her?" I put a hand on her forehead and frowned. She didn't feel warm, and she looked perfectly fine.

"...Has she told you anything about James?" I shook my head. Lori didn't really tell me much about what was going on in her life. I couldn't help but worry about her. She seemed to hate telling people if something was wrong. I blame the family she had stayed with before the Washingtons. She hadn't had a problem before then.

"It's kind of a long story, and I don't even know most of it, so maybe it's not so long after all. Some time last year, she started dating an asshole named James Reynolds. All of our friends said that they knew he was bad news, but Lo's impossibly stubborn. He… He started to hit her and make her do stuff she didn't really want to do. And she just took it. She thought-"

"She thought he loved her, didn't he? He sounds just like her father." Alex nodded and started twirling the pen around nervously. There was more, wasn't it? What kind of trouble could my sweet little sister have gotten herself into? I would have thought she would have learned something from Mama's relationship with her father.

"She started thinking that she deserved to be punished… to be disciplined. Somewhere along the line, he had met another girl and she entered their relationship. I think Lo's scared of her even more than she is of James. But… Those fuckers, they… God, they raped her! They used her like a fucking sex toy! They hurt her… She still has marks from it."

I saw her arm peeking out through her blanket cocoon and felt sick to my stomach as I saw the scars. There were dozens of them, some more prominent than others. What the hell had they done to her? How could she have let it get so bad? Even Mama knew when to leave her shitty boyfriend when he took things too far. Why couldn't Lori have had the same kind of self-preservation?

"Is she still with him… Them? I'll fucking kill them." I tucked Lori back into her cocoon and kissed her forehead. I should have known something was up with her when she suddenly refused to do video calls anymore. The thought of her being treated just like Mama had-way worse, even-sickened me. I wish I could have been here for her. Some big sister I was.

"No. I'm not sure when it happened, but she broke up with him. He had been texting her up until a month ago, when she asked me to block him for her. The texts he and Maria sent her were sickening."

"How so?" There was no way it was the same Maria I'd met earlier, was it? New York was a big city, and that was a pretty common name. But that would explain why she had been so interested in knowing what Lori's name was. We looked so similar, she probably recognized us as sisters. No way. It had to just be a coincidence.

"I didn't want you to find out about them..." I looked down at Lori as she spoke and helped her sit up. How long had she been awake? How much had she heard? I knew how much she hated being talked about.

"You should have told me the second he laid his hands on you! What exactly did they do to you?"

"They didn't do anything that I didn't deserve." Lori wiggled in her fluffy straitjacket, her eyebrows furrowing. I reached out a hand to help her out, but stopped when Alex shook his head. Was this his way of getting her to not hurt herself? "I talked back to them. I shouldn't have done that. James loved me. And I loved him… Love him? I don't know anymore. I love Alex more than I did James, and he doesn't hit me."

"You two are dating?" I asked, snickering as Alex's face had gotten red when Lori said she loved him. Ah, young love… Wait, she was changing the subject! We weren't here to talk about her new boyfriend!

"Lori, what they did to you was fucked up. He treated you like your father treated Mama. Didn't you know how wrong that was? Didn't you know that he was hurting you? He didn't love you, sweetie. And you didn't deserve any of what they did to you! Have you told the police? Have you told anybody?"

"Why does everyone keep asking that? It's too late, now. It won't do any good. It's in the past and if I said anything about it now, I'd look like the desperate ex-girlfriend looking for attention. Can we please just leave it alone?" Lori huffed and glared at the wall. Alex sighed and ran a hand through his hair. I had a feeling he had been hearing this argument a lot. When Lori had her mind set on something, it was impossible to get her to change it.

"Fine. We won't go to the police. Hell, we won't even make you go to a therapist," I glared at Alex. Where the hell was he going with this? We had to do something! "But Lo, you have to talk to us. We're here for you. We won't hate you or judge you or anything."

"That's what John said. He was the only person I told about Dad, aside from Darcy. Nobody else knew about him and… and now John hates me!" John Laurens, the turtle loving freak? He was Lori's best friend. He couldn't possibly hate her. I wasn't even sure he was capable of getting angry.

"Laurens is an idiot. He was mad and he just took it out on you. I'm sure he'll be back here apologizing in no time."

"Like James? He always yelled at me and then he'd apologize and… and then after that, the hitting started. And the same thing happened with Dad. I don't… I don't want to be hurt again. I don't want to be used again." Lori sniffled as tears started forming in her eyes. She reached a hand up to wipe them away, and my blood boiled as I caught a glimpse of an angry red mark on it. What had they done to her?

"Lori, I know John," I said gently, brushing some frizzy hair back from her face. "I don't know what kind of argument you two had before I got here, but I can guarantee that he doesn't hate you. He's absolutely nothing like your father. He's probably beating himself up, thinking of some way to apologize."

Lori's phone started vibrating with a barrage of texts. She grabbed it from the table, and I saw that all of the texts were from John's sister Martha (or as we all called her, Mattie, to differentiate between her and Mrs. Washington). Lori's face paled as she read the texts, and she struggled to free the rest of her body from the blankets. How tight were they, anyway?

"Lo, what's wrong?" Alex got up and helped her get out. I frowned as pillows fell out. That explained why she couldn't get out by herself. She trembled as she showed him her phone.

"John's in the hospital. His dad beat him up."