Page 19 of Stalked By the Mobster

I drop the document copies as if they’re too hot to hold. My heart races as my hackles rise. I feel like I’ve been struck by lightning, like I’ve been fooled into believing that this man meant me know harm.

My gut instinct takes hold, urging me to get out, to run away and never come back. If he didn’t want to hurt me, why the hell did he look up private information about me? Why did he get a hold of sealed court documents?

My heart aches as much as it pounds.

I’m falling in love with this man, or I thought I was. Has this all been a lie? Was any of what he said real?

Tears blur my vision. I don’t want to leave this, leave him. I don’t want to say this is over, but everything in me is saying that it’s time to cut my losses while I can. This man broke the law getting court documents. Will he break other things as well?

I take a deep breath and locate the last of my things, then walk to the door that connects to the private elevator calmly. The ride down to the ground floor is strange because the elevator feels so big and empty without Santino’s towering frame next to me.

Once I’m outside, I go to the nearest bus stop and start calculating my ride home. Once I’m on the first bus, my entire commute back to my motel passes by in a blur that feels like it takes hours. I’m not sure if actually took that long or not because I was on autopilot the whole time, but it was miserable either way.

I don’t get to linger on my feelings for long. When I get to my room, the door is hanging ajar.

As if this day couldn’t get any worse.

The room is in disarray, with my clothes scattered everywhere and furniture overturned. Panic sets in, my mind racing as I look around. And then the world comes to a standstill.

The bathroom door slams open and out walks the very last man I ever want to see.

“Roy,” I gasp. My breath leaves me in one big sweep. My stepdad.

I stare at the massive man who made my life a living hell. My instinct urges me to run, but I can’t. My body is paralyzed with fear.

“Back from whoring yourself out, I see,” Roy says with a sneer, running his eyes over my body. Bile rises in my throat. He sounds like the last time I saw him, the night I’d run away from home. It feels like it was an eternity ago. I’d gotten home late from a shift at my first job ever and he beat me, saying I was “no better than my whore mother.”

It was the first time he’d ever threatened worse than the beating, and that had been my final straw. As soon as he was asleep, I packed a bag and left. As if that did me any good.

Finally, I manage to suck in just enough air to say, “Please leave.”

“You stole my fucking car and now you expect me to leave?” he drawls. “Just like that? After all I’ve done for you?”

“P-please, just go,” I stammer. “I’ll call the police if you don’t.”

He shakes his head, stumbling drunkenly as approaches me. I move back a step instinctively, already gauging how quickly I can get out the door and to the most public place possible. Somehow, anticipates my movement, grabbing my arm before I can even think of running. “You little slut, do you know how hard I’ve been looking for you?”

“Roy, please—”

“I had to talk to people and pay them to tell me they’d seen you,” he barks, wheezing as he leans over me. The scent of cheap whiskey comes off him in nausea-inducing waves. “You’ve been walking that little ass up and down this city, whoring yourself out to anyone who’ll pay.”

I shake my head at him as tears start to stream down my face. He has it so wrong, and I know he won’t listen, but I have to try to make him see the truth. “That’s not what I was doing—”

“You’re out here, giving paying men what you wouldn’t let me have!”

“Please let me go,” I sob, but Roy can’t be reasoned with. He didn’t come here to get his car back or convince me to go back with him. He’s here because he misses his punching bag, because he thinks he has a right to touch me however he wants. “I’ll pay you back for the car, just—”

“I decide how you get to pay me.”

He throws me at the bed, but I manage to scramble away across the mattress. He might be bigger and stronger, but I’m faster and I’m not intoxicated like he is. Roy swings at me angrily as he growls something incoherent. Just as I’m about to roll out of his reach, he manages to wrap a hand around my ankle.

I scream. After everything, this man has put me through, it’s only then that I finally scream.

And then the motel room door flies off its hinges. Roy spins clumsily to look at the noise, only for him to freeze. The room falls silent for a deafening instant and all I can hear is my blood rushing past my ears.

It takes me a moment to register what I’m seeing.

Santino.

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