Free The Sweetest Love (Love Conquers All Book 5) by Victoria Wells Page A

wouldn’t let her leave. She’d made several unsuccessful attempts to get up. “Harold, I have to go home,” she nervously pleaded. If she didn’t get home soon, there was going to be hell to pay.
    Wrapping her thick hair around his fist he pulled until she was flat on her back. Climbing on top of her, he nudged her legs apart with his knee. Roughly entering her he yanked on her hair. “You leave when I say you can leave.”
    Donna’s hand flew up over her mouth. She closed her eyes to keep the tears from coming. The bastard had repeatedly done the same to her throughout their marriage. “He raped you.”
    Nodding her head, Reba took the napkin from her lap to dab at her eyes. Taking a shaky breath, she told Donna, “That’s not the worst of that night.”
    By the time Harold decided to let her go it was after two in the morning. Reba tried to think of every believable lie she could tell her father. When she couldn’t think of anything, she decided to just tell him the truth.
    Thinking she could talk to her father was a joke. He didn’t even give her a chance to make it across the threshold before he pounced on her. The first blow across the face sent her flying into the coffee table.
    Each time she tried to stand he’d kick her back to the floor. This went on for five or six more times. When she didn’t move, her father towered over her, his face contorted in pure evil. “Get up you little bitch! You stinking whore!”
    The pain was so intense she couldn’t move. This only infuriated him. Grabbing her by the front of her blouse he picked her up and threw her across the room. This time she landed against a wall.
    “Daddy! Pleeese! I-I’m sorry! I won’t do it again!” she cried out all to no avail.
    The last thing Reba remembered was the room going completely black. When she woke up she was in the hospital with an IV in her arm and her head feeling like someone was trying to squeeze her brains out.
    After being released from the hospital she couldn’t go home, so she went to the only place she could think to go… Harold’s.
    At first she thought everything was going to be okay. He genuinely seemed concerned and had even gone over to her father’s place and called him out for brutally beating her.
    Reba didn’t question all the nights he never came home. She believed him when he said he was working another job. She was doing a pretty good job of keeping his apartment clean, clothes washed, meals cooked and sex whenever he wanted it. All of her efforts at playing the good little pseudo-housewife kept him happy.
    The monster came out again the morning he’d come home to find her hanging over the toilet throwing up.
    “Damn girl! Don’t tell me your ass is pregnant!”
    Tears fell from her large brown eyes as she stared up at an angry Harold.
    A look of disgust was etched across his face as he let out a string of expletives before walking out of her life and that of their unborn child.
    “The next day is when you showed up,” Reba whispered, still wiping at her tears.
    Donna sat there, taking it all in. For years she hated this woman for trampling on what belonged to her. The bastard had lied to her and told her Reba had been some fast tail girl chasing after him. And in a moment of weakness after they’d been arguing, he sought out what Reba was offering and gave in to temptation. “She didn’t mean nothing to me baby. It was only sex,” he smoothly lied. So desperate to keep her family together, Donna believed the lie.
    A sense of empathy flowed through Donna. Would she and this woman ever be friends? That she didn’t know. But right here, right now, her heart went out to her. Reaching across the table, she took hold of Reba’s trembling hands.
    “So you have a child?”
    For the first time that day Reba’s face was lit up by her megawatt smile. “Yes. I have a daughter. Her name is Roxanna Harris and she’s twenty-six.”
    Donna’s smile was just as bright. “Wait until my daughters