Page 9 of Stolen Kisses
Some women just attracted the wrong kind of man. At one time I had thought it was sexy to be with the guys you couldn’t take home to meet your mother.
I didn’t even know why I thought that since my own mother left me on the doorstep of my aunt’s brothel when I was two years old. She couldn’t even make it to the house. People said she was probably too high on crack, or too drunk to find the right doorstep. No one would ever know why, because weeks later she was found dead in a motel room near Millennium Park.
Not a great start to my miserable life. No wonder I was so messed up.
Maybe messed up people were automatically destined for bad luck too.
I’d picked Franco believing the lie he was.
The image he portrayed five years ago was the opposite to the men I’d been with in Chicago.
Franco was a rich, successful investment banker who’d set up shop on the coast of Florida with plans to expand into property development. He’d ticked every box for me. Most importantly, he wasn’t a gangster—not a mobster.
I didn’t realize he was something worse and when we first met, he treated me so good I had never thought to look a little deeper. Not thinking I should listen to those instincts of mine that told me he was just as bad, if not worse, than the men I left behind when I ran from Chicago.
Franco served two years of his life sentence and I knew he’d come for me. Not because I was his ex-wife and he’d want to get back together to fix things.
It would be to kill me.
He’d kill me, because he knew only I could have told the police it was him who had killed his two business partners.
I was the only person who saw him put the gun he used to shoot them multiple times in the safe back at our home.
I’d gone to his office to meet him, trying to look past the abuse he’d dealt me. I was doing my best for Flynn. I’d thought maybe the problem was me.
He didn’t know I was there. I heard arguing so I hung back just outside his door which was slightly ajar. The argument was about money. His partners wanted more shares in the business venture they were about to undertake. He’d refused so they were going to pull their investments.
He’d shot them before they could say their next words. Killing them both right there where they sat. A bullet to the head first followed by more shots over and over again showing his rage.
I didn’t know how I managed, but I left the office unseen and went straight home in a blind panic. It was all too much and I worried what would happen to me and Flynn.
Franco came home, strolled into the living room where we were and placed the gun in the safe.
I knew in that moment it was make or break for me. That night when he went to bed, I got Flynn ready and left. I got to the city and called the police telling them what I had seen and where to find the gun.
It was anonymous, but Franco would figure it out.
I had no doubt he’d know it was me.
The police knew exactly where to look for the gun. Only I could have told them the location and how to open the safe.
He’d kill me …
Kill me and take our son when he found us. My son, my boy, the only good thing I did in this world.
A knock sounded at the bathroom door, making me jump.
Everything was making me jumpy.
“Just a sec.” I called out.
“You okay in there Maria? Been in there awhile.” It was Sophia.
She was my cousin, and … well I guess I could call her my friend. She was a friend to me on the days she felt like being a friend. I’d grown up with her, here in this very house.
It was on the days she felt like being a bitch that I remembered I stuck with her, because we shared blood. I shared blood with two people in this house. It was clear to me more often than not that they hated me, but they were family.
What I could call family and who I’d run to when I was in trouble.
