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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
WHERE SECRETS FIND SOLACE. Copyright © 2025 by KIMBERLY BROWN
Library of Congress Control Number: 2025916799
First Trade Paperback Printing: January 2026
ISBN: 978-1-957950-79-2
ISBN: 978-1-957950-80-8 (e-book)
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Prologue
Ten Years Ago
Alayah Chambers (Age Seventeen)
“Alayah! Get your ass down here right now!”
I sighed heavily at the sound of my mother shouting my name. She was always yelling at me about something. No matter what went wrong, I somehow ended up wearing the blame for it. Closing my calculus book, I stood from my desk and left my bedroom. Before going downstairs, I stopped to check on my little sisters, Adrienne who was seven and Amiyah who was five. They were fast asleep in their bunk beds.
My little sisters were my heart. If nobody else in this house loved me, they did. I’d practically been their second mom since the day they both came home from the hospital. For those girls, I’d give my life. They had no idea the shit I endured to protect them.
“Alayah!” my mother screamed.
I quickly closed their door and headed downstairs. I found her walking around in her work uniform and smoking a cigarette.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“You didn’t hear me calling you?”
“I was coming. I was just doing my homework.”
“Whatever. Why does this house look like this?” She waved her hands around for emphasis. “You forgot you have chores?”
“I didn’t forget. I had to help Adrienne and Miyah with their homework, then I had to cook dinner. After we ate, I got them ready for bed so I could do my homework. I—”
“All I’m hearing are excuses. I don’t work like a dog so you can lay around doing nothing.”
I relaxed my face so the frown I felt forming didn’t show. I’d hardly call my household contributions nothing. My mother worked as a CNA during the day and when she wasn’t working a double shift, she was a bartender at night. At home, I was the cook, the maid, the babysitter, and more often than not, a punching bag. But I didn’t say that. Instead, I nodded.
“I’m sorry. I’ll clean after I finish studying for my exam.”
“No, you’ll clean now. I have to go to work. Rodney will be here in a little bit, and I don’t want him coming home to a dirty house.”
I swallowed hard. I hated Rodney. He was the scum of the earth, yet she worshiped the grass that grew from the ground he walked on. I never understood why, though. He came from money, yet she was still working two jobs to support us. He threw her a few dollars here and there or paid a bill or two every so often. Maybe it was the material things he showered her with. Whatever it was, in her eyes, he could do no wrong.
I decided to appease her. The quicker I cleaned the house, the quicker I could get back to my room and avoid that bastard.
She snapped her fingers in my face. “Don’t just stand there. Get to cleaning.”
She grabbed her bag and headed out the front door. I sighed as I grabbed the basket designated for the girls’ toys and began picking everything up. An hour later, the living room was spotless, and so was the rest of the downstairs area. I looked at the clock to see that it was almost nine. I trekked back upstairs and decided to shower so it would be one less thing I had to do when I was done studying.
Grabbing my pajamas and underclothes, I headed into the hall bathroom. Thirty minutes later, I was out of the shower. After moisturizing my skin, I slipped into my clothes and left the bathroom. I placed my school clothes in the hamper in the laundry room, then headed back to my room. As I neared it, I noticed that the door was slightly ajar. I swallowed hard as I approached it. Gently pushing it open, I found Rodney sitting on my bed. He gave that same terrifying smile that always caused me to tremble in fear every time I was alone with him.
“Close the door, and bring your pretty self here,” he said.
I didn’t move.
I couldn’t do this again. I’d been dealing with him coming into my room for three years now. My mother had been with him for five years, and from the moment I met him, he gave me creep vibes. It started with the way he showed me affection. He always wanted to give me a kiss on the cheek or a hug. His hugs were accompanied with compliments of how pretty I was or how I looked just like my mama.
He graduated to making me sit on his lap when she wasn’t around. I tried to protest, but he’d always grab me and force me. I’d sit there with tears streaming down my face as he stroked my hair and smelled me.
“You’re filling out real nice.”
“You’re gonna be as thick as your mama.”
“You better not be out here giving these young boys a taste of you.”
At one point, he started whispering dirty things in my ear as he touched me and himself. I tried to tell my mother he made me uncomfortable. I tried to tell her what he was doing, but she always cut me off. I remembered the first time he came into my room.
My mother was working the night shift at a bar, and he was here with his friends watching a football game. My aunt always fussed at my mother about leaving us in the house with a man that wasn’t our father, but she never listened. Adrienne and Miyah were asleep when I went downstairs for a drink. I tried to sneak past them, but he caught me.
“Alayah!” he called, stopping me in my tracks.
“Yes?”
“Come here.”
I hesitated before walking over to him. His friends gave me the same creep vibes. They all watched as I entered the living room. Rodney grabbed my arm and pulled me down onto his lap.
“Whatchu doing up, pretty girl?”
I hated when he called me that.
“I was just getting a drink and going back to bed.”
He chuckled as he looked around at his friends. “Ain’t she beautiful?” he asked, stroking my hair.
“Yeah… She’s real pretty,” his friend said, eyeing me.
I tried to get up, but his grip around my waist tightened.
“Where you going? I thought you were thirsty.” He grabbed a red cup from the table and handed it to me. “Drink.”
I shook my head. “I can’t.”
“Come on. I won’t tell your mama. You ever had moonshine?”
“I’m fourteen.”
He laughed. “I had my first sip at twelve. It ain’t gon’ hurt you. Take a sip.”
“I just wanna go to bed, Rodney.”
“Then take a sip.”
I looked at his friends for help, thinking one of them would have the decency to speak up. Alas, they all seemed to be waiting. I grabbed the cup and took a small sip. The liquor was strong and burned my chest. I tried to hand the cup back, but he shook his head.
“All of it.”
“I don’t want to.”
He roughly grabbed my face. “Drink it.”
Terrified, I quickly drank the disgusting liquid in the cup. My chest was burning so bad that I had a coughing fit. Whatever was in the cup tasted like rubbing alcohol. He and his friends laughed as I ran upstairs when he finally released me. I wanted to make myself throw up, but I knew it would burn twice as bad coming back up. When my coughing finally got under control, I sat on the edge of my bed. All I wanted to do was lay down.
The effects of the liquor hit me quick. I fell back across my bed and stared up at the ceiling feeling like my head was spinning. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been laying there when my door opened. My vision was slightly blurry, and I couldn’t make out the figure, but I knew it was Rodney.
“Damn, baby girl,” he mumbled.
I felt his hands on my body, but I didn’t have the strength or mental capacity to stop him. The next thing I felt was his lips on my neck and face, then finally my lips.
“St-Stop…” I groaned, trying to turn my head.
“Shhh!”
I felt my clothes being removed and then the heaviest weight on me and a sharp pain between my legs. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. I could barely breathe. Before I knew it, I had passed out.
That night, my innocence was stolen, and it was the beginning of the hell I experienced at the hands of my mother’s boyfriend. Almost every time my mother went to work and my sisters were in bed, he came to me. When I threatened to tell, he threatened to go after my little sisters or have one of his boys have their way with them.
That shut me up.
I’d been silent. I’d suffered for so long, and I was tired.
“Come here, Alayah,” he said firmly.
“No.”
He stood from the bed and moved toward me. “What?”
“I said no. You can’t touch me anymore.”
“Who’s gonna stop me? Your mama? She’ll never believe you. She already thinks you be out here fucking these boys from the neighborhood. You really think she’d believe I did anything to you?”
“I don’t care! You will never touch me again!”
He grabbed me and pushed me up against the desk, bringing his face close to mine. I could smell the liquor on his breath. It was nothing new. He was always drinking.
“Don’t make me hurt you, pretty girl,” he said, stroking my cheek. “I just wanna make you feel good.”
He dropped his hand to the string on my pajama bottoms. No was never an answer. It wasn’t a luxury I had with him.
“Stop playing with me, and take these off.”
“No!”
I mustered up every bit of strength I had and pushed him off me. He stumbled backward, but quickly regained his footing. His eyes were dark as he glared at me, and I knew if I didn’t protect myself, he would seriously hurt me. I fumbled around on my desk for something to defend myself with. My fingers landed on a pair of scissors, and I quickly grabbed them as he charged at me.
As soon as he got close, I raised my hand and stabbed him in the neck. His eyes widened in surprise as he stumbled and stared at the bloody shears in my hand. Something came over me. All the anger and rage I felt for this disgusting man filled me, and all I saw was red. Fueled by anger, I charged at him, stabbing him repeatedly as I screamed like a madwoman.
“You bastard! You’ll never touch me again! Just…fucking…die!”
Over and over, I brought the scissors down on him. I wasn’t even sure where I was stabbing him at this point, I just knew I wanted him dead. His body had long since gone limp, but I kept going. It wasn’t until I heard the screams of my little sisters outside the door.
“Sissy!” Adrienne yelled. “Are you okay?”
“I’m scared!” Amiyah cried.
The knob turned, and I scrambled over to the door to keep them from seeing the horrid sight inside. My pajamas were soaked. When my eyes landed on Rodney’s bloody corpse, I dropped the scissors.
“I’m…I’m okay,” I choked out. “I just had a bad dream. Go back to bed.”
“But—”
“Please go back to bed, girls,” I pleaded. “Please…”
I could hear their little feet retreating down the hall. For the longest time, I sat on the floor, staring at the body with blood pooling around it. What had I done?
I was finally free of the ongoing abuse Rodney had subjected me to, but what was the price I was about to pay?
Chapter 1
Alayah
Present Day
“Inmates! Fall in line!”
I drug myself out of my bunk and slipped on my prison-regulated shoes as the door to my bunk opened. It was 6:00 a.m. and time for showers. Grabbing my toiletries, I stepped out the room and waited for the morning headcount before we headed to the community bathrooms. After showers would be breakfast, then work duty, lunch, yard time, then dinner. We’d have a few hours of downtime before it was lights out, only to wake up and do it all over again tomorrow.
This had been my routine for the last ten years.
Ten years.
That’s how much of my life had been taken for taking the life of my abuser. It didn’t hardly seem fair. I’d been molested and raped for years, and when I snapped, I was punished. Overkill, they said. I’d stabbed Rodney a total of twenty-six times. The prosecutor tried to paint it as a crime of passion. It was so far from that. If anything, what I did was a hate crime because I hated that bastard.
I didn’t regret taking his life. Doing so saved me and my little sisters from any further or potential abuse. It saved many other little girls like me. My only regret was not doing it sooner.
My thoughts were interrupted by the guard clicking her counter in my face. She walked past me and finished her count before telling us to follow her. In a single-file line, we headed for the showers. Because of the nature of my crime, I’d been placed in a block with violent offenders. When I first got here, I was terrified. While I wasn’t innocent of a crime, I wasn’t violent.
I didn’t deserve to be held with murderers and child abusers. For the first couple of weeks, I barely slept. I was terrified of someone doing something to me in my sleep, even though I was in a single cell and the door was locked. When I did sleep, I had nightmares about what I had done. All I could see was the blood. All I could hear were the screams of my sisters.
I hadn’t seen either of them since I’d been locked up. My mother forbid me to contact them. She refused to accept my calls so I could speak to them. She had every letter I wrote them returned to me. The only reason I knew what they looked like was because Aunt Penny and Uncle Clive brought pictures when they came to visit me. They were the only family I had who truly loved me outside of my sisters. Aunt Penny was my mother’s older sister. She and Uncle Clive never had any children, and they loved us like their own.
Kennedy Chambers, my mother, had painted me out to be a monster just like Rodney’s family. She told everyone I killed Rodney in cold blood. I was the reason for their trauma. I was the reason she’d lost the love of her life. The story she went around telling was that I’d been trying to seduce him for the longest, and he refused my advances. When I couldn’t get what I wanted, I killed him.
My aunt and uncle didn’t believe that for a second.
They had been actively fighting my conviction since I was sentenced. While I appreciated their efforts, I told them to just give it up. They’d spent too much time and money trying to bring me home already. I just had to accept that I was going to spend most of my life behind bars. There was too much evidence against me and none against Rodney.
At least none that could be found. Prior to his death, it had been at least two weeks since Rodney had penetrated me. The experts concluded that I wasn’t a virgin, and the vaginal trauma could be from regular intercourse. I had no defensive wounds. No cuts or bruises to suggest that I’d been attacked. The only evidence I had were the videos he’d taken of us on occasion over the years. The thing was, he’d hidden them, and to this day, they had yet to be found. Aunt Penny said they tore my mother’s house apart looking for the tapes and hadn’t found anything.
Without that key evidence, I was royally fucked.
Ten years I’d been down on voluntary manslaughter charge, and I had twenty to go.
“Chambers, stop lollygagging and bring your ass!” CO Judy yelled.
I hadn’t realized I was walking so slowly behind everyone else. Whenever I thought about my circumstances, I tended to dissociate, no matter where I was.
“I’m sorry,” I said, picking up my pace.
By the time I made it to the showers, the stalls were full. I waited patiently for my turn. Once inside, I quickly disrobed and slipped on my shower shoes before stepping inside. Most of the hot water was gone, so it was lukewarm at best. Still, at least it wasn’t cold. Quickly and diligently, I bathed myself, forgoing washing my hair.
Exactly fifteen minutes later, I was being escorted back to my bunk to put my things away and to wait to be taken to breakfast. I used that time to talk to Carissa, the inmate next door. I sat next to the vent that connected our rooms and spoke softly.
“Good morning, Riss.”
I could hear her shuffling about before I heard her voice. “Hey, Lay. How you doing this morning, baby?”
“Same shit, different day.”
Carissa had been next door since I got here. She’d looked out for me and made sure none of the other women tried anything with me. She was an older woman in her fifties and had a lot of influence around here. She was well respected by the other women, and what she said was law. I thought of her as the mother figure I needed, and having her on my side had made a world of difference in my time.
“I know that’s right. How did you sleep? I didn’t hear you screaming last night.”
“I slept okay. No recurring nightmares last night.”
“That’s good to hear. Guess what?”
“What?”
“My man is coming to visit me today.”
I smiled. She’d met her boyfriend Eric through the prison pen pal system. For months, they had been writing each other back and forth. It took a while for her to get him on her approved visitation list, but judging by their pending visit, it must have worked out.
“That’s wonderful. I’m sure you’re excited.”
“I am. It’s been a while. I need you to do my hair. I have to make sure I look decent for this visit. I can’t let the first time he sees me, I look dusty.”
I giggled. “You could never be dusty.”
She giggled as well. “Thank you, baby. I keep telling you to get you a pen pal. We have nothing but time on our hands. At least have a little fun. Once I get approved for these conjugal visits, I’m gonna have a whole lot of fun.”
I shook my head as though she could see me. “Dating is the last thing on my mind, Riss. I don’t trust these men as it is. What can we do for each other while I’m in here?”
She huffed. “Use your imagination. Make plans for the future. You won’t be in here forever, you know.”
“I still have twenty years, Riss. Ain’t no future for me when I get out of here. I’ll be lucky to find a job making minimum wage.”
I often thought about what I would do upon release. I’d gotten my GED a year into my sentence. I’d also gotten my cosmetology license through the vocational program. I did a lot of the girls’ hair around here. It kept them off my back and me on their good side. Maybe I could get a job at a hair salon. It had never been my aspiration in life, but it was a useful skill.
I had been on the fast track to a full scholarship to the Black Ivies where I’d planned to major in chemistry and minor in biology. With my conviction, I’d lost all of that. Even when I got out, I couldn’t afford to pursue that degree. What kind of job would I be able to get? If I took out a student loan, how would I pay it back? Was forty-seven too late to begin thinking about starting over anyway?
I just didn’t know what I would do. Whatever I did, I knew for certain I didn’t want to be behind these barbwire fences and concrete walls ever again.
“You gotta speak shit into existence, Alayah. Stop being so damn negative. I’ve told you about that.”
I sighed. “I know, I know.”
“You’re a beautiful young woman, baby. Any man would be lucky to have you.”
“I don’t trust men, Carissa. I want nothing to do with them.”
“Then get you a lady.”
That made me laugh. “In all the time you’ve known me, have you ever once hear. . .
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