Ashle

doors slid sh

issued clothes. I stood on the sidewalk for a long moment, w

r me. No black car. N

tover cash from my clutch, the only thing the Mann family hadn't bothered to confiscate

ted wa

st another anonymous body in the crowd, invisible in my cheap sneakers and borrowed jacket. A week ago, I'd

ed under the bandage. My body ached in ways I didn't want to think about. But I c

mewhere safe. Somewhere the

that. A hotel? I'd burn through the little money I had left in two nights. N

was only

ovan. My

t the company hit rough waters. The woman who, along with her precious daughter Falo

y. To the outside world, she was still my stepmother. And as long as I was

ine. Let h

he paper still warm from being pressed against

threw away. He must have known-even before the wedding-that the M

ings. Mine, no matter what, until I tur

Falon. That was the part they'd been counting on.

been dead for three years, but in this

in my bag. The one that claimed she was a mobster's d

s true. May

her people decide what my

ment carefully and slip

with the last of my loose chang

one place

idence on the U

and leaned my head against the col

That I'd crawl away, humiliat

were

t runni

house, sit at their table, and smile whi

expected it, I was going