Blackberries & Blood
Prologue
The sheets on the bed itched. That was the first thing she noticed when she woke up, after the pounding in her head stopped. She knew she'd had too much to drink the night before and that her head would ache for the next few hours. She twisted her head around to see the man lying next to her. She sighed quietly, knowing he'd had even more to drink than she had, and there'd be no chance she'd wake him up as she made her quick escape. He had no way of knowing her real name, and it didn't really matter. That was the way she operated. Carly Benson planned on leaving that very day, and she couldn't afford to be late.
She'd been a New York City girl since straight out of high school. She didn't feel guilty for sleeping with this man, when she was almost positive that her own boyfriend had never returned home the night before. Life wasn't easy being the girlfriend of a—well, we're not quite up to that part yet. She'd been born and raised by her adoptive parents in Florida, and ran away after she graduated high school with her boyfriend, Carlos. She said she loved him and kissed him on the cheek before he went to work every morning, but after five years she was with him more because it was the only life she had ever known.
She'd always been rather naïve. Carlos had an uncle here who had paid for them to live up here, but he only owned a simple car dealership in Queens. Yet, she and Carlos lived the lifestyle of a wealthy couple. They owned an apartment on the upper west side of Manhattan, with all the newest technology and appliances, and a state of the art security system. Carlos worked with his uncle in Queens, but he didn't ever come home till the late hours of the night. Every time he brought her home a new piece of jewelry, she'd ask him how he could ever afford it and he would just smile.
One night three years ago, it all became very real to her. Carlos had called her and asked her to bring by some paperwork in the early evening, around six o'clock. She drove her brand new Porsche to the dealership in Long Island City, but she was about a half hour early. It was a Sunday night, and she'd hit no traffic. When she arrived, she went back to the offices. Carlos's door was cracked open, and she double checked herself in the mirror. As she pushed a stray strand of her away from her face she heard someone moan quietly from inside her boyfriend's office. Her mind flashed to the worst images possible, or at least what she thought were the worst images possible. She imagined Carlos rolling around with some cheap whore on his desk, with her moaning beneath all his weight. When she peered into through the crack in the door, she saw something much worse. Her boyfriend was standing over a man with a busted lip and a black eye. She gasped, loud enough for Carlos to hear her. She dropped the papers and ran as fast as her legs would take her.
They had talked about it that night, and he brushed it all off but she knew the truth about her boyfriend's job from that night on. When his uncle died, the money only seemed to pour in faster. Carlos Lopez was one of the biggest mob bosses on the east coast, and she was his girlfriend. He went about his business but never once discussed it with his Carly. He had other girlfriends and Carly had caught him with them several times, but she never left him. They had been together for too long, and they would probably be married soon. Their relationship wasn't one of love as it had been when they were in high school, but of convenience.
And now, she would travel with him to their new life in upstate New York, away from all the city lights and stores she had grown so accustomed to so her boyfriend could try and steal someone else's territory and expand his own empire. In spite of the fact that she was dreading the move to this small town, she couldn't help but shake the feeling that her life was about to change forever.