Chapter 1

“Naomi, where have you been?”

Pastor Thomas's voice cracked across the living room, the slam of his Bible against the table making the picture frames tremble.

Naomi froze at the door, her hand still on the doorknob, her heart dropped to her stomach. “I was just out with friends.”

“Friends?” His eyes sharp behind his glasses pinned her in place. “Do you think temptation cares that you are my daughter?”

Naomi swallowed lifting her chin despite the tremor in her voice. “I’m not a child, Father, I can breathe without your permission.”

His jaw clenched, He crossed the room in three heavy steps, his hand gripping her arm, not in a comfortable fatherly way but in command. “As long as you live under this roof, you will obey me, Do you hear me?”

Her fists curled at her sides. “And what if I don’t?”

The air thickened, His nostrils flared and his fingers twitched as though restraining the urge to strike her, His voice lowered to a growl.

“Then you will no longer be my daughter.”

Naomi’s heart pounded against her ribs, but defiance burned hotter than her fear. “Maybe that would be easier.”

The silence that followed was suffocating.

From the door, Layla her best friend who had come home with her shifted uneasily. “Uhmm..Pastor Thomas, I should probably..”

“Out!” His bark sliced through the air, “No ungodly company in this house at this hour!”

Layla shot Naomi a wide-eyed look, mouthing silently, You can’t keep living like this. She slipped out quickly, the front door closing with a slam behind her.

Before Naomi could breathe, another voice joined the already heated conversation.

“Naomi.”

Her mother, Lydia Thomas, stepped out from the dining room, her red robe trailing behind her, She looked at Naomi with the kind of disappointment that could cut deeper than anger.

“Do you understand what you’re doing to us?” Lydia’s tone was low but sharp, her eyes glittered with restrained fury. “You are the daughter of the most respected pastor in this city, The women I lead, the women who look up to me, they will laugh in my face if you continue like this. Do you want me to be ridiculed? Do you want your father’s name dragged in the dirt?”

Naomi’s lips trembled, but she forced the words out. “I just went out, I wasn’t even drinking.”

“That’s not the point!” Lydia snapped, her voice cracking for the first time. “Appearances are everything, If you fall, we all fall. Your father’s ministry, my reputation, our family’s standing, do you think the world will forgive you because you meant well?”

Naomi stared at her mother, the weight of both their stares pressing her into the ground. “So I’m not your daughter I’m just your reputation.”

Her father’s Bible slammed again, harder this time. “Enough! Go to your room before I lose what little patience I have left.”

Naomi’s throat burned, but she said nothing. She turned sharply, storming up the stairs, Each step echoed with her anger.

Behind her, she could still hear her parents’ voices, low and urgent, “She’s slipping, George,” Lydia whispered harshly. “If she rebels, the church will not forgive us, The women will never forgive me.”

“She won’t rebel,” her father said, though his voice trembled with doubt. “I’ll make sure of it.”

Naomi slammed her bedroom door, pressing her back against it, Her father’s God and her mother’s pride had built her a prison and she wasn’t sure how much longer she could survive inside it.

Her room was the only place that felt remotely hers, though even here the posters she once loved had been ripped down. The walls were bare except for Bible verses her father had insisted she memorize, scribbled neatly on cards pinned in lines. The piano in the corner, once her joy, felt more like a chained animal now.

She collapsed on her bed, covering her face with her hands.

Music. That was the only thing that made her feel alive, When she had begged to study music in college, her father had nearly forbidden it, but her grades were too perfect to deny. He had allowed it, but only on the condition that she dedicate her voice to “God’s work.”

At first, she had tried, She had stood on stage every Sunday, the congregation’s eyes on her, her voice filling the sanctuary with hymns. Her father beamed, her mother smiled broadly, and the church elite women whispered their admiration.

But inside, Naomi had been dying.

Because when she sang alone, when no one was watching, it wasn’t hymns that spilled out it was melodies she wrote herself, It was rap verses scribbled furiously in the margins of her notebooks. It was raw, unpolished, loud, and free.

She remembered the first time her mother had caught her humming a popular R&B song in the kitchen, Lydia’s face had hardened like stone.

“You are not to sing worldly trash in this house again,” her mother had snapped, yanking the dishcloth from her hands. “Do you want to invite demons into this family? Do you want tongues wagging that Pastor Thomas’s daughter is defiled by secular music?”

That night her father’s punishment had been harsher, He had forced her to kneel in the living room for two hours while he lectured her about purity, discipline, and obedience.

Naomi had nodded, she had said yes, she had sung louder in church the following Sunday. But the spark that made her love music? That was hers, could not be choked out.

Her circle of friends wasn’t hers either, Every girl she was “allowed” to see had been approved by Lydia, daughters of church women who dressed in stiff clothes and spoke with rehearsed piety. Naomi smiled when expected, laughed when appropriate, but never once felt like herself among them.

Only Layla had slipped through the cracks a neighbor girl who didn’t care about church politics, who loved loud music, who whispered about boys and dreams and freedom. Layla had been Naomi’s lifeline, but even she was always one raised voice away from being banished from the Thomas household.

Naomi rolled onto her back, staring at the ceiling.

Why was it so wrong to want more? Why was it a sin to want to sing the way her heart demanded, to live without suffocating rules, to laugh without rehearsing?

She thought of the crowd at the café she’d gone to that evening with Layla. Strangers had clapped when the live band played, laughing, cheering, swaying to the rhythm. And for one sweet, stolen moment, Naomi had imagined herself up there, mic in hand, singing her own words to people who didn’t care who her father was.

Her throat tightened.

She pressed her palms together, forcing her knees onto the tiled floor, She hadn’t stopped praying, not really. But her prayers had changed over the years.

“God,” she whispered, her voice raw, “I’m tired.”

Tears stung her eyes, sliding hot down her cheeks.

“I’ve done everything they wanted, I’ve obeyed, I’ve sung their songs, I’ve dressed the way they want, I’ve lived for the image, for their church, but I don’t know how much longer I can do this, I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

Her voice cracked as her hands shook.

“If you love me the way they say you do, then please… give me freedom, make them see me for who I am. Or…” She hesitated, the next words clawing out of her chest. “Or take them out of my life. Because I can’t keep living like this.”

The silence after her prayer was deafening.

She wiped her tears quickly, afraid someone might hear, but she knew no one would come, not her father, not her mother, not even God, maybe.

Still, she whispered the words again, this time barely audible, “Please… let me be free.”