The Life: Sacrifice (The Life 3)

Not even at my worst were things this bad; there was always an out, always a way to get back on my feet. Now that it’s too late, I wish I’d done things a little different. I have no money, no friends, and no one I could count on. My mind went to Jimmy but only for the briefest of moments. That’s the worst thing that could happen now, for him to show up in our lives.

I sifted through the lies in my mind to see if there was a way to salvage things, but I’m afraid there isn’t. More than the cat’s out of the bag this time. Even if I could make Felix doubt that lying bitch of a maid’s words, Victoria had put the final nail in my coffin by repeating what she saw. What else has she been saying now that I was not there to defend myself?

No doubt she was covering her own ass while throwing me to the wolves, my own daughter. Still, as long as one of us hangs in there, there’s always a way back. Felix would never dig up his precious Adrienne, of that much, I’m sure, so whatever he thinks or believes will always just be conjecture. I can work with that.

As to the other charges, I can beat those as well. I’m sure that Russo brat had left a trail or something somewhere that could be found, and I could turn this thing around. Right now, though, I needed to get the hell out of here wherever here was. I could barely move because of the pain and the thought of spending the night in this dark, cold place was all I could focus on at the moment.

Something rustled the brush a few feet away from me, and I screamed in my throat as I tried to make myself smaller. I’d dragged myself up against a tree trunk for support, but if something was really out there, I have no way to protect myself. I needed the bathroom in the worst way, but fear held me hostage, as each sound seemed to get closer while the cold wind rushed through the thin fabric of the hospital gown, biting into my bruised flesh.

That bitch had got her piece of flesh, I guess, which I was still finding hard to believe. The Gia I knew would never have had the nerve to lift a hand to me. This was all the Russos doing, and that, more than anything, put fear in me—that and the fact that Felix had changed so much.

How had I not seen it in the last few weeks? I’d been so busy trying to keep myself out of one scrape or another that I didn’t pay close enough attention to what was going on with him until it was too late. I couldn’t have known that a decade’s worth of my hard work would go up in flames in less than a month; has it only been that long?

The small part of me that’s fighting to hold out hope is dwindling by the second to the point that even if I had a contingency plan, it would be of no use right now because my mind is too fractured and all over the place to think straight. Just thinking about the fix I’m in makes my head ache something awful, and that’s nothing to do with the physical pain I’m in.

Hunger gnawed at my insides, and I felt tears of desperation flood my eyes. I can’t even eat, could barely sip on water through a straw, but guess what I have in the bag next to me, food. A sudden thought hit me, and I flung the bag as far away from me as I could with what little strength I had left. If I could smell the food, then whatever was out there in these woods could too.

A new fear set in, and I dragged myself even closer to the tree as I held my breath and listened for any sound. Is that why he’d done it? Why he’d left me with a bagful of food that I couldn’t eat? What a diabolical fiend. I realized at that moment that I feared Gabe Russo more than anything that might be roaming these woods.

How had he brought me to this? He’d set me up in such a way that there was no turning back no matter what I told myself. I might have stood a chance if he were not in the picture, setting traps and snares to catch me at every turn. How had he learned all those things about me? Where had he found that Greta bitch when I couldn’t find hide nor hair of her in all these years?

Who else had helped him? The thought that all those snooty women had been waiting like vultures to pick over my carcass, that they were all now laughing at me, filled me with hate and rage. I thought of all the nice things I’d left behind, all that I’d lost in the blink of an eye. How had it come to this?