Freedom's Horizon (WLW) (Full Trilogy - Editing)

Book One: Part One: Chapter One

!!!My novels are completely off-limits to any adaptations and if plagiarized, you will be reported!!!

This chapter contains adventure action/violence!

October 1674, Caribbean Sea, Aboard the Red Devil's Ship, Main Deck

Aimee Cruz tried to keep her eyes ahead on the horizon and ignore the ever growing pull to look just to her left where her younger brother's mangled corpse lay. She shivered from head to toe as bile rose in her throat at the sound of another crack from the quartermaster's whip echoing through the sweeping seabreeze. Aimee knew everything that was happening was her fault. Her brother's death was now on her hands for not waiting longer to make their escape like he suggested. He knew of the precise ship they must take. Timothy knew of its projected arrival time, though she had grown too single minded in her need to flee. Her life would be forfeit after she received the last of her punishment because she had been overeager upon seeing the coast at dawn the morning prior.

Why hadn't Aimee just waited...?

Brother, I will join you soon, She thought as another lash struck her backside and the cheers of the pirates around her reverberated the very deck upon which she stood. The pain was so immense Aimee had to bite her inner cheek raw so she would not cry out. She chomped on it so hard, so fierce that she feared she may gnaw straight through it with the next assault. Nevertheless, she would not give these charlatans the satisfaction of hearing her cries. She desperately fought to relax her jaw and muscles as best as she could just as she had done time and time again. Such was the life of a slave. The life of the owned and ordered to obey each and every command. She had plenty of experience in such cruel endeavors. Regardless, Aimee would not cry out. Nor would she give in while she still had breath in her lungs and especially not after what they did to sweet Timothy.

Last night hadn't gone as they prepared. In fact, it hadn't even been the night they planned on daringly escaping at all, but was a spur of the moment type of excursion after a day of dreaming that cataclysmically ended in utter disarray. Now, she was tied to the main mast of Captain Francisco's Red Devil with her entire back exposed, which was most definitely bloodied. When Aimee and her brother camped out in a dark alley in the budding morning hours the day prior in San Juan, Puerto Rico, they had planned to wait there for the vessel they knew would be arriving soon. Once it was there, they would board it and stow away until it docked in Haiti. However, that hadn't been what occurred. Not at all.

Upon seeing a merchant vessel guarded by a handful of drunken men and hearing the ship they wanted to board was running days behind schedule, Aimee made a split decision. She gathered their things and tugged her little brother along with her toward the ship that beckoned her like no other. As if there was a voice in her mind guiding her there, toward somewhere, anywhere other than with her slaveholders, she and Timothy ran for the enormous ship. They climbed aboard, evading the barely conscious men on deck, and hid in the cargo hold. There were dried goods they could have eaten and they could have survived. They should have survived. Woefully and with such a bitter taste, they were both of the same fate as they were discovered soon thereafter. Aimee knew in that moment both she and her younger brother were destined to never obtain what they truly desired.

Freedom.

It didn't come with the new horizon and it wouldn't now or ever in her future. She knew this the instant they were found.

Now, Aimee stood against the ship's largest wooden beam, trying to hide the chills running through her body. Despite the current weather growing quite heated within the blazing sun, she was beginning to lose feeling in her hands and she'd lost too much blood already. Her torture went far and beyond what her brother was made to endure. If there was one thing she could find thankful from the entire series of events, it was that Timothy never had to see all that was done to her, nor was he afflicted with being forced to view the ravaging that came before her lashing. It was bad enough that she witnessed his demise, but Aimee had always made sure he never saw the pains of man thrust upon her in the past. This time, someone else had made that possible, though she desperately wished it wasn't at the cost of the kindhearted boy's life. If Timothy had seen any of what transpired after his brutal demise, she knew he wouldn't have lasted as long as herself. Nor would he have been able to hold himself back from fighting to protect her, just as they always had each other. Not that she had been able to do so either, of course.