At seventeen years old, Courtney Apuzzo is fed up. With a dead mom and an alcoholic father that beats her every chance he gets, Courtney decides that enough is enough. Packing up only what she needs, Courtney leaves home without telling a soul and heads off to find her new life.
Life on her own is not exactly as she thought it would be. With nowhere to stay, Courtney finds herself sleeping on an old stoop in an abandoned apartment alleyway. A chance meeting with a new group of friends seems like a great beginning to her second chance at a real life. But everything is not as it seems.
Tricked into a life she never wanted and fears, Courtney needs to run away, again. She needs to find a way out of this new and dangerous life. With the help from a man she barely knows, will Courtney find her way out? Or will she find herself on the run from a dangerous past, and a hopeless future? Faced with a choice that will change her life forever.
Courtney does her best to hide her face as she remembers seeing this guy once before. He got out of a car that followed her partially one day as she was looking for a job. Braxton! She pushes her face deeper into the blanket and quickly realizes this was the worst thing she could do, as the old musty smell pushes itself up her nostrils....“Who is this?”
“Oh, you know. Another one of those runaways.”
“I don’t understand why we have to do this.”
“It’s not your job to understand. It’s your job to understand what your job is, so we can make sure this job gets done.”
“Yea, but kidnapping young kids.” He stops, looking at the girl on her stomach, huddled in the corner of her cage. “Look at her. She didn’t ask for this.”
“We didn’t ask you to share your emotions. This is our job. I get paid when I get money from her family. Therefore, it’s gonna happen!”
Courtney’s blood is boiling with his remarks. She tries hard to bite her tongue, but she can’t. Spinning around her hair flowing with her head continuing around wrapping her face. “You won’t get anything out of my family! They are poor!” Her face is full of fury, and her teeth are showing as she growls with each breath in. “I have no other family.”
“Bella?”
Courtney looks at Braxton, their eyes meeting again. Dread fills her veins as he searches her eyes. A cosmos separates the two of them with passion building, but Courtney doesn’t understand any of it as tears fill her eyes.
Braxton turns, walking out of the room, snarling at the man who freed Courtney of her restraints earlier, “Let her go. That’s an order. I’ll answer to my father.”.........
About the Author
While growing up, S.M. would travel the roads around her house while imagining she was somewhere else. Her imagination would take her everywhere, making the long hot summer days seem shorter throughout her fantasies. At the age of twelve, she decided to write her first book. Filled mostly with dialog, she filled up one-hundred pages, front and back. After taking the book downstairs to show her mom, and persuading her to buy her more paper, she excitedly ran back to her room. As she barreled through the door, S.M. tripped over items left on her floor, and her papers came raining down in her room. Discouraged, she stood there in tears, picking up her papers and throwing them in the trash. Her work had no organization, no numbers on her pages, just a child fulfilling a joy that she would put down and not pick up again. When she became older, she joined the military for something different. In that time, she was able to explore many places and even met her husband in Iraq. After coming home, she started her family in Arizona and went back to school, earning a Master's degree in Adult Education and Training.
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