The Mafia Series: Escape Me (Book Two)

Prologue

After I left James with Elijah, we left New York and moved to a small town in Kentucky.

We bought a farmhouse with thirty-five acres of land, and when I asked how Elijah had the money to buy the place, he told me about his life and how he grew up. The man who raised Elijah was bad, worse than our father. He put Elijah through hell, so when he turned eighteen he joined the military just to get away from him, after that the CIA took notice of him and offered him a position with them. He's been with them ever since.

He thought I was dead because the CIA told him that I was. He worked in a secret organization that didn't want him to have any outside weaknesses, that included me. So when James told him I was alive he came looking for me, and when he found me, he never left. He secretly watched over me using every and all public devices like street cameras, people's cellphone cameras, laptops, and any electronics that picked up sound or used a camera he'd hacked in to make sure I was okay.

He later told the CIA to go fuck themselves when they started to call him. He was in New York on a mission to kill James, but he refused once he found out how much I loved him.

Shortly after arriving in Kentucky, I went to the hospital because my blood sugar was too low. I thought it was over my weight since I was a larger woman, but it turned out I was pregnant. During my miscarriage, I lost one baby, but I was carrying two.

Twins. I still cry over the one I lost, and now and then I think about James, wondering what he's doing, if he's okay, and if he's found someone else. I hope not, but it's been seven years now, and he still hasn't found me.

Sometimes I wonder if it was just a fling, something to do while he was protecting me from his enemies. But he was right when he said I couldn't escape him. He probably didn't mean it the way it turned out, but it's hard to forget about a man when your daughter is a spitting image of him.

Ragen Bailey, she's seven years old and acts more like her father every day. Her long black hair now touches her butt, she won't let me cut it but insist that it stays in a ponytail holder. She will not wear dresses because the boys around her tease her over it. Her temper screams the Bailey family, her Daddy would be proud of her. The other day she punched a boy for pulling on her hair.

After a time-out, she still wouldn't apologize. She said, "If I was a boy and I punched him I wouldn't be getting into trouble, I'd be getting a pat on the back and told to cool down. But when a girl loses her temper it's unladylike, what does that mean?"

She was too smart for a seven-year-old, too independent. But I imagine that's how the Baileys are.

I just wished he'd found me already, that way he could meet his little girl.