Their Bloody Rose

Prologue

Marissa's eyes burned with tears as she watched the life leave his eyes. Her father had done everything he could for her, tried to keep her safe from the wicked world he lived in, but it had finally all caught up to him. He was gone.

Quickly she wiped the blood from her hands and went to his secret safe that only the two of them knew about. She emptied its contents into her bag, like he had always told her to do when he could no longer escape the inevitable, and with one last look at her father's corpse she ran out the door.

She knew she wouldn't have long before Cain's goons would come back and find her. The years of them constantly kidnapping her at least had the small upside of her having learned how to best spot, avoid, and escape them.

He had always wanted her father's business, and he knew she was his only weakness. So he was always secretly trying to leverage holding her to make her father comply to his demands, but she always found another way out.

At first it was always her father and his men coming to her rescue. But then one day, when she was 15, she got tired of always being stuck trapped in some gross place just waiting. So she fought her way out.

She smiled to herself remembering that day.  She'd stolen a guard's gun and killed him and every other man in the building. Just as she was walking out, covered head to toe in the men's blood, her father's men had arrived to rescue her like they always did, only this time she didn't need rescuing.

The look on her father's face as she stood before him while his men relayed the carnage she'd left in her wake was nothing but absolute pride. She'd never forget that look, it was like that was when he knew she had it in her to survive this dangerous world that he called his.

She got kidnapped less and less after that because each time she left the place a bloody massacre and eventually word spread. They even started calling her La Rosa Insanguinata, a name that quickly came to strike fear in the lower rankings. It had felt good at the time. But now, 5 years later, she understood that it meant a change in tactics that eventually led to her father's death and her now being on the run.

She made it to the airport on the motorcycle she'd stolen during her escape and then rushed inside and bought a ticket on the first plane leaving the airport.

She barely made it onto the plane before they closed the doors and started to take off. Once in the air she looked down at beautiful Italy one last time through her window. She would miss this place, but it wasn't safe for her here anymore.

Her vile "uncle" Cain would be taking over like he'd always wanted, and the only way to completely solidify his place as the new head of the enterprise was to kill her just like he had killed her father, his supposed best friend.

He didn't know she knew it was almost always him orchestrating her kidnappings over the years, trying to force his way into holding more power over the business. But she'd figured it out when she'd spent a little extra time with one of her kidnappers and a knife, pulling information from his trembling body as his blood slowly pooled on the dirty floor. He'd told her everything, but at that point it was too late to stop it.

Shaking her head to clear it of her dark memories, she sat back in her chair and decided to finally look at her ticket to see where she was going. America, she thought to herself as she put her ticket away, seems as good a place as any to disappear. To start over.