Her Secret Santa - Miley Maine Page 0,31

the run it was difficult to eat healthy sometimes. I bought some pasta and some sauce, a frozen pizza, some cans of soup, bread, peanut butter, and some prepackaged cold cut meats. I put all of this away and poured myself a glass of water before I sat down on the couch to relax.

I had to start looking for a new job. That reality was now sinking in as I realized that I only had about three hundred dollars left of my savings, which I’d cleaned out a few days ago. I was lucky to get this apartment on such short notice with only a six-month lease. I would find something I could do for work until I got a job I really wanted.

I wanted to go back and work at Caplan. I wanted to be with Tony. I wanted my friends and family around me. I sighed. Tony…

I missed him so much. He was probably going crazy looking for me. I needed him so badly. Just thinking about him and his touch, the way he looked at me, the way he wanted me with just his gaze… I could not stop feeling those sensuous eyes on my body when I was with him.

That last night we were together, he told me he loved me. I wondered if he would bother looking for me. He probably thought I got freaked out when he said those words to me and that I’d left because of that. I hadn’t. That was so far from the truth.

I left because of what I’d been hiding from the past few years. I left from the thing that would never stop chasing me. The thing that Tony knew absolutely nothing about. I’d never even mentioned it. I wondered if he would still want me after that.

Somehow, Saul had found me. I didn’t know how, but I realized that he was there. He was after me. He’d gotten so close this time. How? He didn’t even know what state I was in. After he was locked up for trying to murder me, a charge his shyster lawyer talked down to assault with a deadly weapon, I’d fled. I’d fled away from my psychotic, abusive ex-husband. The gangster. The lowlife. He was evil as anyone could be.

And I’d missed all of this when I fell for him. He was so handsome and charming, so sweet when we were dating. I thought he was the one. He was the love of my life. He was everything to me, I thought. And then when we got married, it was like night and day. Suddenly, he changed. He became abusive. I tried to leave, but I quickly discovered how powerful he was and how much influence he actually had.

He would not let me go. He had a crazy hold on me. His minions tracked me down and then I was like a prisoner. I couldn’t go to the bathroom without a chaperone. I had to be there at his beck and call while he went out running this business of his and hurting so many people. He would often come home in a foul mood and he would take it out on me. I tried to get away so many times, but it never worked.

Finally, one night I decided to do something drastic after he attacked me with a kitchen knife for not cooking his meatloaf to perfection. He was drunk and I knew I could outmaneuver him. I waited until he lunged at me and I swung the cast iron skillet I was holding behind my back leaning against the stove. I swung it around my body and collided with the side of his face. He went down quickly.

His henchman was waiting outside the door and he came inside to see the ruckus after he heard Saul yell in pain. I slammed the skillet into the middle of his face. Then I grabbed his keys and stole his car. I was out of there within an hour.

I went to my parents’ house and I found a safe place to stay until the trial. I thought for sure he would get life behind bars, but he was smooth. He had friends everywhere and if they weren’t friends yet, they soon became so after he greased their pockets.

He was given a two-year sentence. And I knew he’d be out in a year on good behavior. I had to hide.

So, I fled across the country and set up a whole new identity. I