The Georgia night of 1856 was torn apart by screams no one dared to name. People said it was just “discipline,” the kind that happened every day on a cotton plantation forty miles from Savannah. But for Abeni, every lash did more than split her skin — it carved a vow into her bones.She arrived at Thornfield on a suffocating summer morning, purchased like livestock. Silas Crowe, the overseer with eyes pale and cold as polished steel, looked at her the way a man looks at something he already owns. He was used to obedience. Used to breaking wills. And he believed Abeni would bend, like all the others.But Abeni was not like the others.She endured. She stayed silent. She watched.When the winter beating left her back raw and bleeding, when the cabin door slammed shut behind her that night, the only thing left untouched was not her body — it was her memory. And memory does not sleep.Two months later, she realized she was carrying the child of the man who had violated her.Everyone thought that was the end of her story.For Abeni, it was the beginning.She began to notice Silas’s habits. The nights he drank until the world blurred. The strongbox hidden beneath his bed. The pistol left carelessly within reach. The small bottle of laudanum in the mistress’s medicine cabinet — rarely counted, never questioned.By the spring of 1860, as the South trembled on the edge of war, Abeni understood her moment was coming.That night, Silas drank more than usual.And Abeni brought with her something he never saw coming…