Romance Novel Excerpts | Long Island Slayer (Book #3)
Chapter One
Melanie Stevens
Melanie’s last day of freedom before she falls into the clutches of a dangerous and violent mobster twenty-two years her senior. Part One.
The worst day of my life begins like every other day. It’s funny how horror always collides with the banal. I love that word. Banal. My best friend thinks it looks too much like the word “anal”, but I think it sounds fancy. She’s the first person I text when I wake up.
Me: Hey hoe.
Shawnte: We gon beat her ass today fr
Me: Who, lol?
Shawnte: Damzel. Duh.
Me: What she do?
Shawnte always wants to beat someone’s ass. It can get exhausting being her best friend, but as my mom likes to point out, getting into fights seems to be the only thing I’m doing to stay in shape. Shawnte is my ride or die so if she says we’re beating up Damzel, I guess that’s what we’re doing.
Speaking of my mom…
“MELANIE!” she shrieks. “GET YOUR BIG FAT ASS DOWNSTAIRS.”
The floor to my bedroom rumbles when my mom yells her usual morning wake up call. She’s the main reason I’ve been spending as much time as possible at Enrico’s place but… we broke up. I couldn’t take all the secrets and the lies about strange men showing up in the middle of the night, or his odd disappearances for weeks at a time. He’s either on drugs or he’s selling drugs. I might throw hands, but I want nothing to do with drugs.
“I’M UP!” I yell back at my mother, who stomps around downstairs, loudly yelling ‘to herself’ about what a lazy piece of shit I am.
I pull on a pair of black leggings, my tan Ugg boots and throw on a giant hoodie over a black t-shirt. There is seriously no point in overdressing to go to my lame ass high school. My ex was grown and I am so over this high school mess.
“What’s taking you so long?” my mom calls up the stairs. “I know you’re not trying to look nice for school, you never have so why start now?”
I try not to let her get under my skin. I have enough problems, especially if Shawnte means what she says about beating Damzel’s ass. Damzel could probably kick us across the freaking street.
I wish I could wear headphones downstairs the rest of the morning but if I show up downstairs wearing them, she’ll smack the shit out of me again. I would move out, but the last time I saved up enough for a security deposit and a down payment, she broke her foot and I spent all the money I had taking her to the ER.
I don’t even have Enrico to rely on anymore…
I shove my books and homework into my green backpack and hurry downstairs before my mom can come up with another somewhat hurtful zinger. By now, I don’t really let her jabs get to me, but it’s impossible not to be hurt when your mother’s hobby seems to be coming up with insults to take you down a peg.
I get downstairs to see her holding a broom and half-dressed for work.
“You’re wearing that to school?” she says. There she goes. I just need to get my breakfast and get the fuck out of here. It would be a dream come true if I never had to come back to this stupid house.
“Yes, mom. It’s the same outfit I wear every day.”
“At least your hair doesn’t look like shit.”
“Thank you.”
“What are you eating today?”
“I don’t know. Cereal.”
She scoffs, which she would do regardless of what I answered. She has over seventy pounds on me, but she won’t stop pestering me about my weight.
“You still seeing that Italian boy?”
“I told you, we broke up,” I grumble. There’s no point talking to my mom about Enrico, how much he hurt me, or how much I miss him. I haven’t been the same since we broke up and it’s not just my emotions that are all over the place.
“I bet he found a nice white girl,” she says. “A skinny white girl.”
I tune her critiques out while I pour myself a bowl of cereal and finish off my breakfast with half a cinnamon raisin bagel coated in cream cheese. She’s still going when I have my yogurt and granola.
“Are you done?” I grumble when I’m ready to head out the door.
“Did you just talk back to me?”
“Good bye, mom.”
“Get your ass back here by six!” she says. I walk out the door and feel the tightness around my chest unraveling slowly. The longer I spend at home, the harder it becomes to cope with her. I don’t miss when my step-dad was around for other reasons, but I miss having a buffer between the two of us. Sometimes.
I look at my phone for Shawnte’s response as I walk down the street towards my school. It’s only a ten minute walk, but it’s only recently I started walking instead of taking the bus. My mom keeps getting on me for my weight. She won’t help me get any healthy food, and she hates the idea of me going to the gym where she claims thuggish men on steroids with small dicks and huge egos hang out. When I point out I’ve never seen her go to the gym, so how would she know… well, let’s just say that never ends well.
Shawnte: She made out with Brandon, first of all.
Me: Who dat?
Shawnte: From last Friday…
Keeping track of Shawnte’s conquests is harder than keeping track of all the characters on Game of Thrones. I text her back that I’ll talk to her at school and that I’m almost there.
As I walk to school, I slip my headphones on and try to drown out the shitty, awful and completely boring world around me. I shuffle through my playlist until I hear a song that will help me dissociate with the world for the next few minutes of my walk before I have to deal with the god-awful students at my school. As I walk, I try to envision I’m in a music video and not on my way to living hell.
I avoid a group of pigeons picking apart pieces of smushed white bread against the pavement as I close in on our school compound. Not quite a music video moment. I step around a few splatters of pigeon shit and see a few people I recognize walking into the school gates.
This place is hell. Thinking about meeting up with Enrico was the only thing keeping me going in this shithole and I don’t even have that anymore. Shawnte hangs out in the student lounge every morning, so if I make it past the pack of student athletes, I can get to safety.
I walk through the school gates and, despite having my hoodie up, I can’t make it in undetected.
“The whale has landed. The beached whale has landed,” he repeats, curling his hands around his mouth to make a fake megaphone. Alex sits at a lunch table with his buddies. They’re all douchebags, but Alex is the biggest douche out of all of them.
His buddy Mike follows up with whale noises and the table hoots with laughter. I just need to keep walking past them and pretend they aren’t saying anything. Their opinions don’t matter… Don’t let them get to you.
“Hey, Melanie,” Alex calls. “Are you seriously ignoring me?”
Yes. Obviously. I keep walking past them, but Alex won’t let it go. He jumps away from the picnic table and runs up to me, yanking on my hair… hard. I scream as searing pain shoots through my scalp. I only got this sew-in done last week and the woman who braids my hair doesn’t believe human beings are capable of feeling pain. I’ve been on a regular dose of Advil since my hair appointment, but my scalp is still tender as fuck.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I yell at him.
“Get out of our fucking way,” he says as he pushes me. “Fat bitch. Keep it fucking moving.”
I’m not in the mood to fight a gang of obnoxious school bullies so I settle for smoothing my clothes and telling Alex and the rest of his idiot buddies that they can fuck off with their tiny dicks. They seem to find my comment hilarious.
“Every dick must look tiny to a fat bitch like you,” Alex calls after me. It’s not even an intelligent or funny comment, but his collection of bandits clearly doesn’t give a fuck.
I walk into the school hallways and immediately see Shawnte leaning against her locker. She doesn’t notice me at first, but when she does, she screams my name and runs towards me to give me a hug. You would swear we don’t see each other every day the way Shawnte acts.
The world around us disappears, and our distraction becomes an opportunity for Damzel to strike. I feel Shawnte ripped out of my arms and she screams as Damzel yanks her by her hair and drags her to the ground. Apparently, Shawnte’s hair wasn’t sewn in, so her wig goes flying as Damzel knocks her own.
“I know you weren’t texting my man, you trifling ass hoe!” Damzel yells, slamming her Fila Disruptor into Shawnte’s side. I can’t stand by and watch my friend get into some mess like this. I push Damzel against the locker and slam my fists into the side of her face as hard as possible. She is much bigger than me and it only occurs to me how fucking stupid a choice this was when she pushes back and sends me flying across the room.
No one at this school gives a crap when a fight breaks out, but we probably only have a few minutes before one of those guards that’s supposed to stop us from stabbing the fuck out of each other shows up. Damzel grabs my hair and that searing pain shoots through my skull again.
She slams my head against the locker and the room threatens to go black. Oh hell no. I can’t let this hoe win in a fight. I push back against Damzel and try to kick her as hard as I can. She hits me in the head again and I hear a loud crack somewhere in my face. I hit her in the stomach and I hear Shawnte yelling, “Beat her ass, Melanie!”
Beat her fucking ass!
Damzel grabs me by the strings of my hoodie and then shoves me against the locker again, hitting me in the face with another well-formed fist. I cry out as I lose consciousness completely…
When I wake up, I’m in the nurse’s office lying on one of the beds for students who have the flu. Yuck. I hope this place doesn’t make me sick. I sit up and groan. My head hurts and my face… There’s something on my face. I walk to the sink and mirror in the room and fuck, I look bad. My mom will kill me when she sees my face. My nose hurts so much. I stupidly try touching it and wince as I do.
I open the door and the nurse notices me right away. She was just leaving one of the other rooms and she turns to me with a smile.
“You’re awake. Thank goodness. We had a team come look at you. The principal wants you in the office once you feel ready to head over there on your own.”
“My face still hurts.”
“Yes,” the school nurse says. “That would be the broken nose.”
She dispenses some more painkillers and then sends me to the principal’s office with an envelope. Once I get to the principal’s office, I knock on the door, hoping I lucked out and that there’s no one inside.
“Come in Melanie.”
I open the door and take a seat next to Shawnte, who’s looking pretty bad. My best friend holds her wig in her hands and gazes down at her knees in shame. Her wig cap holds securely to her head, but she doesn’t exactly look glamorous in this position.
“Don’t even think about speaking to each other.”
I know from the nurse’s office that I look like absolute shit, so the two of us together probably look like a couple of mafia members.
“We have a zero tolerance policy for violence at this high school. Zero. This isn’t the first time both of you have been in my office but this time, you have both gone too far.”
“Melanie was just trying to defend me,” Shawnte says. “Whatever consequences there are should be mine and mine alone.”
The principal steams ahead, ignoring Shawnte’s pleas for my freedom.
“I saw the footage of the fight. There were no efforts made to de-escalate the situation and when I spoke to Damzel, she provided significant evidence that her move was defensive.”
“She defensively pulled my friend’s wig off?” I blurt out. It’s not a good idea to push back against the principal considering our predicament, but it doesn’t make any sense. We didn’t start the fight. How can starting a fight be considered a defensive move?
The principal glares at me. Shawnte glares at her right back. This isn’t fair and everyone in this room knows it.
“Listen, we will help you enroll in new high schools so you can graduate but both of you are expelled effective immediately.”
“What?” The principal’s tone sends panic shooting straight through me. There’s no way they can expel us without a hearing, right? Don’t we get a chance to defend ourselves?
As if reading my mind, the principal continues. “This is a final decision and is in complete alignment with school policy. Clear out your lockers and leave campus immediately. Thank you.”
She purses her lips and stares down at her desk as if we were somehow forcing her to go through this difficult experience, and as if her awkwardness about the situation could match the horror faced by both me and Shawnte. I’m eighteen. I don’t have a job and I was counting on graduating high school so I could enroll in a nearby college to get an even better paying job.
There’s nothing I can do as my world spirals. Nobody speaks to me or Shawnte as we clear out our lockers. They feel sorry for us and it absolutely fucking sucks to be the object of someone’s pity. Not even Alex and his idiot goons say anything as we walk past the pool of our peers with a free period gathered in the hallway to soak up as much of the gossip as possible to spill to their group chats.
When Shawnte and I get to the sidewalk, she offers to walk me home since I live closer. Shawnte spins her wig around on her fingers and cracks jokes, avoiding the subject of our expulsion. When we get about a block away from my house, she sighs and turns to me.
“So. Wasn’t fair what happened to you today.”
“I know,” I tell her. “It’s fine. I’ll handle it.”
“You need help dealing with your mom?”
“The type of help I need could land us both in prison.”
Shawnte laughs. “If you need anything, call me.”
“What about your parents?”
Shawnte chuckles. “Are you crazy? My mom will kick my ass when she finds out. I’m packing my bag and getting the hell out of there before she’s done with work. I’m going to live with my brother in New Jersey.”
I’m tempted to run away with Shawnte. We could either get jobs or go to public school in New Jersey, which would most likely be a far more favorable outcome than facing my mother’s wrath. She might freak out even more if she heard I was in New Jersey, though and who knows what crazy shit she would do then.
“Call me when you get there.”
“I’ll be back once she calms down,” Shawnte says, wrapping me in a big hug.
As we stand there, I can’t see how the next few months of my life are going to go without her. To help me through this break up, the expulsion, and dealing with my psychotic mother. We finally reluctantly let go, and Shawnte gives me a sly grin.
“At least we got her ass,” Shawnte says as we pull away from each other. “Taught that hoe a lesson.”
“We sure did, girl.”
Although, I’m pretty sure Damzel did more damage to my face since I ended up unconscious with a broken nose and a completely effed up face. Shawnte walks away towards her house and I knock on the door to my mom’s place. She doesn’t answer, so I use my key to get in, hoping desperately that she’s not home.
The second my foot steps on the welcome mat, my mother screams, “Hello, dropout! Welcome home.”
Fuck. I hope I can slip around her, but she rounds the corner before I can get away and puts her hands on her hips, blocking my way around her. My chest tightens once I see the look in her eye. She has the ass-whooping look about her, and I know from the last incident I had with her that she hasn’t ascended above a good ass whooping.
“Hey.”
There’s a part of me secretly hoping that she’ll notice the bruises on my face and scoop me into her arms, telling me it will all be okay. I desperately want to cry and I want this shitty day to end because no matter what I do, it keeps getting worse. My lower lip trembles and my mother scoffs.
“Wipe that look off your face. I just got off the phone with the nurse at your school.”
“Great,” I say to her, trying not to break down in front of her. That would only make her mood even worse than it already is. “Then you know I broke my nose.”
“Yeah, I also know you’re pregnant.”
Her eyes turn to hard black beads as she stares at me. It’s not quite a glare, but it’s penetrating, cruel and filled with absolute disgust.
“What?” I whisper.
“They tested your blood as part of their standard procedure. You’re pregnant.”
Now I want to collapse and die on the spot. I wish there was a way I could just will myself to spontaneously combust, but not even the redness rushing to my cheeks and pressure building in my skull seems to force me to explode.
“I’m not…”
“Yes you are, you dirty little hoe. Do you at least know who the father is?”
“I–
Of course I do. It’s Enrico. He’s the only guy I’ve ever been with and he… Oh God… I bend over, hyperventilating as the reality of my situation hits me. I’m pregnant from my ex. This is the worst-case scenario and I can’t get any oxygen into my lungs. No sooner do I take in that first full breath of air than my mother hits me in the stomach with a curled fist. I double over and cry immediately despite myself.
It’s all the pressure building up in me. It’s the news that I’m pregnant. It’s the expulsion from school and the bullying that made school miserable in the first place. Losing my best friend to New Jersey doesn’t help either. She hits me again and I scream at her to stop which only gets her angrier.
“You’re hitting my stomach!” I yell at her.
“You don’t have a baby daddy,” she says calmly, swinging at my head and missing as I start to realize I’ll have to fight back again and get the hell out of here. “It’s for the best that someone knocks that baby out of your hoe ass.” She manages to get out in between swings.
I push her back as she tries swinging at my head again. She screams as she stumbles over in a manner far more dramatic than the force I used to push her.
“You tried to kill me!” she shrieks. “You tried to kill me!”
I push her again and sprint up to my room. She falls over and even if I feel guilty, my heart races so fast that I can’t stop and think about it. I just have to get out of here. I barricade myself in my bedroom, knowing I’ll have to leave eventually and that it’ll be hell once I do. I drag an Adidas duffel bag out from underneath my bed and stuff it with clothes, my cell phone, my laptop, a few chargers and a couple days worth of clothes. Lots of underwear. And all the money I have left. My hands shake as I pack as quickly as possible. My mom keeps yelling downstairs and threatening to call the cops on me for being a “violent little bitch”.
She’s still yelling when I’m done packing, but I have to get past her and this is my only shot. I grab the chair from beneath the door and walk down the stairs as calmly as I can.
“Oh, your bitch ass finally decided to face me, huh?” she says once she sees me appearing at the foot of the stairs. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”
Enrico. He’s the only person I have and even if I dumped him… it’s different now. I’m pregnant with his baby and I don’t want much from him, I don’t need him to look after the baby. I just need a place to rest my head for a few days until I figure out how to get on my feet.
“I’m staying at a friends.”
“Not that slut, Shawnte, I hope.”
My mom hates Shawnte, but she also hates most people, so I don’t take her shady little statements seriously.
“No. Not with Shawnte.”
“I’m not letting you leave this house.”
She argues with me more as I try to leave, but she ultimately doesn’t try to stop me. As I try to make my way towards the door, my mom barricades herself in front of it.
“Get out of the way,” I tell her, trying to sound forceful, but ultimately fearing that she’ll throw her hands at me and make the injuries from my previous fight worse.
“Or what?”
“Or nothing,” I snap at her. “I just need to leave. I need to get out of here.”
My desire to escape this hell, of always being under her control, always having to listen to her rants and always feeling so damn small trump everything, including my fear. I have to leave and I don’t care what she says or does to me.
“If you leave this house you’re never allowed back.”
If I do this, there’s no going back.
“I don’t care.”
“Nobody will ever love you the way I do,” she hisses at me.
I hope not.
“Good bye, mom.”
I take the subway to the Upper West Side and head over to Enrico’s place. I know I should have called first but I didn’t exactly have time and this is the type of news I should give in person. I’ll build up to it slowly. Enrico will understand…
I get to the front door of his brownstone and knock. And knock. Nobody answers. I call Enrico, but he doesn’t answer. I ring the doorbell, knock some more and then call him three more times. I know we broke up, but this isn’t like him. I keep knocking and calling his name until his neighbor pops out of her house. I’ve met her a couple times before, but this time she has a black hoodie pulled up to hide her face and she glances around furtively before pressing her fingers to her lips.
“Melanie, quiet,” she hisses.
“Zariyah? What’s wrong.”
“Everything,” she says. “You looking for Enrico?”
“Yes.”
“Enrico’s dead. He’s been missing since last week. I asked around and…” Zariyah’s eyes water. “It’s mob related. Trust me, girl. He’s gone.”
She squeezes my forearm. I appreciate her effort to comfort me, but it’s like offering a band-aid to someone you just smacked with a wrecking ball. I don’t want this to be real, but Zariyah keeps talking, describing a suspicious detective who stopped by, a couple tattooed guys dressed in black and then even more tattooed muscular Italian men moving furniture and tarps out of the place.
“I left Boston to get away from people like this but it’s safer for me to move back. Don’t stick around. Go back to wherever you came from and forget you ever heard the name Enrico Zagarella.”
I have a million questions to ask Zariyah, but the door to Enrico’s apartment thrusts open and I see a man who looks exactly like my ex-boyfriend, only two decades older. He can only be one person…
He scowls at me. “What do you want? Who are you?”
Zariyah disappears back into her place and slams the door shut, sliding the bolt through the door. Damn, girl. Cold. Once she disappears, the man in Enrico’s apartment reaches out and grabs my forearm. The first thing I notice about him is how big his hands are. He squeezes and drags me towards the door.
“Come inside.”
He doesn’t give me a choice and frankly, I don’t have one.
***
Thank you for reading the entire chapter. In this story, I named a couple characters after two of my long-time subsribers on Patreon. There are no similarities between the characters and my readers, but I wanted to use their beautiful names in my story. Thank you Shawnte and Damzel for your support.
OK… now I know you’re ready to read this book, right? Melanie + Sammy will be ❤️🔥
