by Mandy Harbin
Copyright © 2020 by Mandy Harbin
BRODY
ISBN: 978-1-941467-12-1
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Edited by Brieanna Robertson
Cover Art by Najla Qamber
This book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any existing means without written permission from Mandy Harbin, M.W. Muse, Penning Princess Publishing, or Mandolin Park, LLC.
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. The characters are products of the author's imagination and used fictitiously.
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Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Excerpt - Hunter
Also by Mandy Harbin
About the Author
Just as the heroine in this story discovers—life never works out like we plan. Sometimes, this is a good thing, although it probably doesn’t feel like it at the time. I want to express my gratitude to my closest friends for giving me strength and being there for me when I went through a major change in my life. Your support, compassion, and love will forever be cherished.
Prologue
Alexandria Collins paced with her cell phone clutched tightly in her manicured hand. Why hadn’t Cole called? She was supposed to be at the rendezvous point fifteen minutes ago to get Devon from his nanny. Her four-year-old son was too young to understand what was happening, but Alexandria was doing this for him as much as she was doing it for herself.
And what she was doing was making a run for it. She had no other choice. She’d married Marco after he knocked her up at sixteen when she’d been too young and too stupid to see past his flashy car and charming smile. She hadn’t realized her mistake at first. After all, he’d showered her with expensive gifts, and considering she’d spent her youth being shuffled from one foster care home to the next, being pampered was nice. Hell, it’d rocked. When she’d found out she was pregnant, he’d been thrilled and insisted on getting married.
And he’d been the perfect husband.
Until she’d given birth to a girl.
If only he just spewed nonsense about needing a male heir to carry on the family business rather than beat her nightly until they’d conceived again. If only the family business he prided himself on was a legitimate one she’d be proud of her son taking over one day. If only her daughter hadn’t died of SIDS after her son was born.
If only, if only, if only.
For the past three years, she’d kept her eyes open for a way to get out of here, and three months ago, she’d found her ticket to freedom in the form of a flash drive containing account numbers and data on shell corporations Marco used to launder money. Being a ward of the state until she’d married Marco, Alexandria had no family to turn to for help, so she’d done the only thing she could think of, the only thing any other law-abiding citizen would do.
She went to the feds.
After spilling everything she knew, which didn’t feel like much to her, she was too important to be assigned one FBI agent to work her case. Oh no, Marco Collins was apparently second-in-command to her father-in-law’s crime family, so she’d been assigned a whole team of suits. They’d told her about the crimes her husband and his family were suspected of, and it went much deeper than the domestic abuse she’d endured. They were a part of a true crime family. One she’d obliviously married into and couldn’t get out of with an easy dissolution of marriage through the courts.
Her phone buzzed, startling her. She checked the screen and breathed a sigh of relief when she saw it was one of the contact numbers the FBI had given to her.
“Hello?” she whispered as she sat on the imported Italian leather sofa in Marco’s study.
“Mrs. Collins, this is Agent Dave Simmons. You have to get out now. You’ve been compromised. We have a team en route, but our informant notified us that we won’t reach you in time.”
“Where’s Cole?” She was supposed to await Cole’s contact with her instructions, but he’d ensured her he’d be in touch at least thirty minutes ago.
Not waiting on an answer, Alexandria jumped off the couch and grabbed her purse. If the feds said she had to leave now, they didn’t have to tell her twice. Cole was just one member of a slew of agents she worked with, so if they changed the game plan, there must be a good reason. She was already late picking up her son anyway. She trusted Devon’s nanny so much so that she’d told her to flee with him if Alexandria didn’t show. If anything happened to her, she wanted to make sure Devon still got away. If she could get to them in time, it’d save her the trouble of hunting them down afterward.
“Cole’s been shot. Meet up with Ms. Chambers to get your son. There’s an agent with them now, so they’re safe—”
An explosion rocked her, hurtling her across the floor, her phone sliding in the opposite direction, the agent’s frantic voice drifting as the phone slid out of reach. She crawled in her custom silk outfit, getting behind the couch, frantically looking for her purse, which housed her gun. She needed the protection, since it looked as if the feds wouldn’t be coming in to save her after all. She spotted her purse handle dangling off the other side of the couch. Easing her way in that direction, she stayed hidden behind the safety of the leather furniture. Before she could reach it, gunfire erupted as the door to the study crashed open, bouncing off the wall.
“I’m going to kill you, you fucking bitch!”
Marco. Alexandria trembled. She was screwed. There was no way she could get out of here now. That door was the only way in, and even though there were windows, they were on the second floor, a second floor of a big two-story mansion with high ceilings. She could play dumb and hope he believed she was innocent of whatever he suspected, maybe get a severe beating out of her insolence. Or she could continue to hide.
Yeah, she liked that idea better. No need to just give up.
“I know you’re in here, Dria. If you show your face now, I’ll make it quick.”
Marco stormed around the room, pushing antique bureaus and marble-top tables like stick furniture. Alexandria crawled around the couch as he neared. She had to stay away. If she averted him long enough, maybe he’d leave the room and she’d be able to sneak out.
“You think you can avoid me? I think you want to die slow. Right after I fuck you with the barrel of this gun for old times’ sake.”
Alexandria suppressed a sob. Marco was using the memories of his abuse to draw her out. She might’ve been an idiot to marry him, but she wasn’t one now. She would not let him bait her. She glanced around the room, what little she could see of it, for a weapon. Anything would work. The jackass loved art and had all kinds of marble statues. The key would be getting a hold of something without him noticing. She just had to wait for the right moment.
Whenever that was.
He started to walk away, so she maneuvered over to the lowest shelf to grab the miniature Venus de Milo. As she snatched it, thin, cold fingers wrapped around her wrist and yanked her from behind the couch.
“Dria, there you are, tesoro,
” Marco sneered.
“Let go!”
Alexandria instinctively pushed at his chest, but he didn’t move. She tried kicking him, but he deflected her knees. Remembering she still held the weapon, she swung at his head. He ducked, but she managed to clip the side before he got completely away from the blow.
“You crazy bitch!”
She recklessly swung her hands, kicked her feet, tried to get away, but as he fell, he brought her down with him. They scrambled on the floor and he gained the advantage, grabbing her hair in an angry fist and banging her head against the hand-scraped floor.
“I love all this long, beautiful hair, cara.” He smashed her head into the floor again. “Too bad your beautiful locks of gold are a treasure to me no more.” He hit her again and she saw stars.
Grunting, she struggled to free his hands from her hair. “I n-never was your treasure. You used me.”
“And you turned me in. For shame, tesoro. Too bad your little plan backfired. I have friends in all the right places. That so-called evidence you turned over is gone. They have nothing, and you’ll never leave this house alive.”
He raised the gun and she pushed, shoved, kicked…all to no avail, but she wasn’t giving up. She must’ve landed a blow in a good spot because he yelled and hit her in the head with the gun. Blinking back tears leaking from her eyes and blood flowing into them, she could barely see Marco, but she heard footsteps just outside the door. It sounded like a herd of elephants, which was music to her ears. Marco reared back, looking toward the door as he hovered over her.
“You?” he yelled incredulously. “I thought I’d killed you already.”
Did that mean all that noise was just one person? What was all that gunfire earlier? Surely there were more people here to help her. But she’d take what she could get. One was better than none.
Marco pointed his gun away from her and more gunfire sounded. Marco wailed in agony as fresh blood splattered on her face. Marco was hit. But the sound of something crashing to the floor, her savior, dashed any hope of survival. Marco was wounded, the other man severely, if not mortally.
Panting, Marco looked at her with his evil brown eyes filled with victorious resolve, turning the gun on her. Her world tilted as hopelessness filled her. The sound of a single bullet and the instantaneous feel of burning pain in her right temple were the last things Alexandria Collins felt before darkness surrounded her.
Chapter One
Twelve Years Later
“Mom, you just passed our exit.”
Xan Bradley braked in reflex as if she’d be able to do a U-ey right here on the interstate in her beat-up hatchback. Where was her head? Oh, right. She was moving to a new town with her son yet again. Her brain was focused on other things, like always staying one step ahead of the mafia they’d fled when Scott was a baby. Of course he wasn’t Scott then, and she didn’t go by Xan.
They’d moved every two years like clockwork, not that it was actually planned that way originally. After Agent Dave Simmons had set up Xan and Scott in a little Arkansas town north of Podunk and south of Nowhereville, he’d apparently retired a couple of years later. Her new agent, Jack Parsons, immediately moved them for security measures, and had done so every other year since.
The moves she could do. Hated it, but could do. She didn’t have control over her life now and hadn’t in over a decade. Her one demand when entering the Witness Protection Program, however, was that Scott’s name wouldn’t be changed once his new identity was established. It was hard enough to get a four-year-old to understand why his daddy wasn’t coming around anymore, much less why he had to have a new name. To get his cooperation, she’d given him the opportunity to pick out his very own name.
She should’ve thought about that before opening her big mouth.
Letting a preschooler decide his own name was like, well, letting a preschooler decide his own name. For two weeks, he was SpongeBob. Xan had tried to find ways of backpedaling out of that horrid deal, but her son was sharp even then. After ordering some official SpongeBob stuff online and writing a letter, posing as the most famous sponge on TV, informing her son he was honored that Scott wanted to be named after him and asking if he could pick out his new name instead, she’d finally succeeded in undoing that mess. “SpongeBob” wanted to pick out a name for him with the same initials, and so Scott Bradley was born.
Why would she want to go through the nightmare of changing his name again? Bathing cats with claws sounded better.
Though Xan was encouraged to change her name repeatedly, the fact that she’d went to nursing school after getting free from her deranged ex-husband caused her to put up a fight every time they were forced to move. Sure, the feds could get her new diplomas and licenses in whatever name she wanted. Even “SpongeBob”, Jack had told her several years before, thinking she’d seriously find that shit funny. But she’d worked hard at putting herself through school, and fake certificates and degrees were just that—fake. Her compromise was she’d go by a different version of her first name. Marco called her Dria, so she’d never willingly choose that one. But she’d gone by Lexa, Xandie, Alexa, Lexie and Andria over the years, and now Xan would do. To help appease the FBI gods, she also changed up her hair to help cover her identity, but getting to keep some derivative of her first name helped her keep a little bit of her soul.
The very soul Marco had tried to take from her. She might’ve married him with her blinders on, but she’d wised up and gotten out of there…with barely her life. Marco had shot her at pointblank range. The caliber of his handgun should’ve killed her instantly. It was nothing short of a miracle, and she’d been grateful—as soon as she’d gotten out of her coma and realized she was actually still alive. By the time she’d awoken, her divorce was already underway courtesy of prearranged paperwork with the attorney the feds had secured before the attempted raid and subsequent fuckup. Since the evidence against Marco had mysteriously disappeared, the only thing they had on him was an attempted murder charge. She and Scott had stayed on lockdown until Marco’s trial and sentencing since she was the victim and star witness. She shivered at that thought—she’d never forget seeing his evil eyes in court that day. It was that same look he’d had when he shot her.
She hoped she’d never have to see his face again, but she knew she and her son were living on borrowed time. Marco was sentenced to twenty years with a mandatory ten served.
And by her calculations, he should be up for parole at any time.
“Take the next exit a few miles up. Looks like there’s a highway that backtracks to Mayflower.”
Xan nodded as she shook off her thoughts. She didn’t like walking down memory lane, much less taking up a permanent residence there, which she felt she’d been doing lately. She knew it was because of Marco’s potential release, but she couldn’t let that get to her. She had a life and a sixteen-year-old boy to finish raising.
Okay, so that was only partly true. She didn’t have a life—not a social one anyway. She couldn’t afford to trust a man enough to get close to one. Oh, she’d love nothing more than to have sex with a penis made of skin rather than rubber, but that just wasn’t a risk she was willing to take. She hadn’t had real sex in over twelve years. Surely there was some statute of limitations somewhere that’d make her an honorary virgin again, not that she’d be able to convince anyone she was virtuous with a practically grown son. Or one who fancied himself grown.
Xan gasped. “Is this the exit you’re talking about?”
“Yeah, chill. Seriously, Mom, you should’ve let me drive.”
“Not on your life, buddy.”
Tires didn’t screech, really, as they dang near skidded off the road to make their exit. “Where do I go now?”
“You need GPS, Mom. Take Harkrider to 365.”
“In this beat-up piece o’ crap?” she asked, chuckling as she followed Scott’s directions.
They were only about seven miles from Mayflower, another Arkansas town. She hadn’t been b
ack in this state since right after going into hiding. It took her almost the entire two years to get used to southern life when she and Scott were yanked out and placed out west. She was a northerner at heart who liked the laid-back atmosphere down here, but she refused to say things like y’all and fixin’. She had her pride.
A loud pop jolted Xan out of her reverie. The sudden profuse smoke barreling out of the hood of her hatchback threw her into a panic. She gasped a curse, struggling to steer the car onto the shoulder, which was difficult since the power steering decided to evaporate into nothingness as soon as the car died.
“Mom, watch out!”
Yeah, Xan saw it. A pothole. “I’m trying,” she gritted.
The car hit the gnarly imperfection as her not-always-trusty hatchback came to a stop. At least they were completely off the highway. She slumped against her seat, feeling her heart race. It seemed to be pounding even harder now that they were stopped. She so didn’t need this. Agent Parsons decided on this move right at the end of summer. Scott’s school and her new job started in two days, so she only had the weekend to get settled. Granted, they lived light, never knowing when they’d have to move on a moment’s notice, but two days wasn’t long enough even for the minimalist of packers. And now their one means of transportation was toast. Ugh! She was sick of running.
She grabbed her cellphone, but she didn’t have a signal out here in the middle of nowhere. Surprise, surprise. She got out of the car and covered her eyes to block the blazing sun as she looked down the road. “That sign says it’s one mile to town.” She sighed, shaking her head. “C’mon.”
