Chasing Alyssa

Prelude

I haven't cried in three years.

He didn't like it when I cried. He said it made me look ugly, like my mother. I looked nothing like my mother. I wasn't a beautiful brunette with luscious curls and skin tanned to perfection. No, I looked like him when he was young.

Cunning blue eyes, hair so pale it like corn-silk and skin like it was leached of blood.

I only realized later what he meant. When I cried, I looked helpless. When I cried, I looked like the willingness to live had abandoned me. When I cried, I looked like the only thing that could save me was his blood on my hands.

That's how I looked like my mother.

He killed her because she didn't stop crying. I stayed alive because I learned to swallow fire.

My father's men have been hunting me for two weeks now. Slipping out of Italy is the easy part, it's the laws of other countries that can get you.

Thankfully, Giovanni helped me with all of it. He taught me gunfight, hand-to-hand combat, and everything he could squeeze in the one hour we got every day. At the time my father wasn't actively trying to whore me out, he gave me video games to improve my problem-solving skills and my neuroplasticity to increase reception to learning languages.

Because of him, I'm not the stupid blonde I present to my father, his men and the entire famiglia that sees me as a mark of disgrace.

I never belonged there. I didn't want their money, their power or their corruption. I wanted peace. I wanted the average every day without having men and women ripping at my clothes and my father's breath lingering on my nape.

They called me many names, butchering years of my innocence. Spoiled, because I was a cartel lord's only daughter and an heiress to an empire of the dark. Stupid, because I never spoke. Weak, because I never fought.

I call myself Alyssa—the girl I will get to be if I played smart one last time. My real name will burn with my past.

Being the only woman killed the girl inside me a long time ago. Every time I escaped, I just wanted her to live.

So here I am, in America. This is my final escape