Prologue
They don’t ever tell you when you are little just how much you would do, the lengths you would go to protect your child.
I don’t blame my mother for my life or that I was forced to marry a man fifteen years my senior and birth his children. I don’t blame her, but I also won’t be her.
Cassidy is tucked under my arm in the back of the car. It is pouring rain and cold here where I grew up. We have been on the move for months, never being able to rest, and I’m tired.
My baby girl needs to be somewhere safe. Somewhere away from me when they finally catch up to me. When my husband finds me and drags me back to the life I didn’t want for my daughter.
I couldn’t stop staring at the boys, the men brought into my home to meet my daughter.
The men with hard faces and broad shoulders. Men who towered over my husband. One of them was meant to marry my little girl.
She had wanted to play in the garden that day, so we were outside soaking in the summer sun. Her bare feet grazed through the green grass. My legs were outstretched, chilled with the cool grass against my skin, ankles crossed, and my terribly painted toes wiggling.
Cassidy loves to paint my nails. She even talked some guys into letting her paint theirs. But never her father, never the man, second in command to the mafia. He was above silly girls, which is why he barely gave Cassidy the time of day.
I was a silly girl, a mafia princess, so I understood all too well what my daughter was to her father.
A pawn. I knew it, but I thought I had more time for Cassidy to be mine before she belonged to someone else. I wanted more time. I wasn’t ready.
I didn’t know what was happening at first, or maybe I didn’t want to. When my husband told me that the man, out of the three of them, who commanded the room even at his mere eighteen years of age, would be my daughter’s husband. I couldn’t allow her to fall into the same fate. I won’t aloud her to be taken and forced into a marriage to bring families together, to make powerful men even more powerful.
To be taken on her wedding night with tears rolling down her face. To see the disappointed look on her husband’s face when they are told she is pregnant with a girl.
My five-year-old daughter was betrothed to a man. I wouldn’t stand by and watch her grow into the beautiful young woman she could become, with the knowledge that eventually he will have her to do with as he pleased.
I had to get her out. Bringing her here, to the only man I ever felt safe with, was my only choice. He would care for my little girl because we were once so in love. The man I was forced to marry tore me away from him.
He will take care of my little girl, and keep her safe from harm until I can come back for her. If I can ever come back.
