Mafia's Ex Wife

Chapter One

Elizabeth

I don't have many memories from my childhood, and most of what I do have aren't very good.

Completely absent mother. Struggling addict father. Twelve different foster homes before I finally aged out of the system. At eighteen, I was tossed out on the streets with a toothbrush and $30 to my name.

If you can believe it, I was actually relieved when it happened. No more bouncing around and living out of a shredded duffle bag that was older than I was. No more starving, sleepless nights trying to decide if sneaking a cracker from the pantry was worth the beating I'd get. No more threats from my case worker that if I didn't keep my mouth shut and do whatever my foster parents wanted, I'd end up in a juvenile detention center somewhere. No more answering to anyone else. No more fear. No more abuse.

In fact, living on the streets of New York City was the most secure I'd felt in years, and if you've ever walked through Central Park in the stillest, darkest hours of the night, you know what a stretch that is.

For the most part, my childhood was a living hell, but there were a few short months that it wasn't. After DCS finally took me from my father and before I landed in my first placement, there were three short months of absolute bliss.

My grandmother was already sick when I went to stay with her, but that didn't seem to matter. After years my father using me as a bargaining chip to get more drug money from her, all she cared about was making sure I knew how much she loved me.

I had my own special room that we decorated together, she took me on all kinds of adventures, and spent every single spare moment with me that she could. She was an absolute Angel, and I still have nightmares about the day they took me away. The state decided that her health was failing too much for her to take care of me, and I was sent to a foster home about three hours away. She passed away a few months later, and I never even got to say goodbye.

The one thing I got to take from her house, and carry with me to every placement I went to, was her box of old recipe cards. We spent hours and hours baking together, and those are the only pieces of her I have left. The only reminder of the only person who loved me so unconditionally and those few perfect months we got to spend together. To this day, her recipes sit up on a shelf in the bakery, and when I little inspiration of encouragement, I'll thumb through them.

I still think about her every time I step into the kitchen. Every batch of cookies I make with Harper. Every time I lick the brownie batter off of a mixing spoon. Every time I spread a layer of her famous buttercream across a cake. What I wouldn't give to see her and Harper together--the three of us laughing and baking together.

It's not often I let myself drift back to the past, and this is exactly why. It consumes me.  Disorients me in way that leaves my mind numb and overwhelmed. Most of the time, my past stays buried deep down inside of me where it belongs, hidden and silenced and ignored. But since reading about Emily's death a few months ago, it's been creeping up more often than I want to admit. It poking holes in the perfect life facade I've created, hitting me completely out of the blue--like right now, as I'm on my way to pick Harper up from school.

My chest tightens with dread and uncertainty, my hands trembling as I feel the build of a panic attack. I try to breath, but it feels like someone has their hand on my throat, and tears sting at my eyes. When I close them, it's Jax's face I see behind my eyelids and the pounding in my chest grows merciless. If he didn't hate me before, he surely does now that I didn't show up to her funeral. Somehow, I feel like Emily would understand, but Jax? Not so much.

The sound of a car horn blares behind me, drawing me out of my thoughts and I glance up to see I'm sitting at a green light right in the middle of the road. Cars whiz around me on either side, and I choke the emotions back, quickly getting myself together before pressing on the gas.