Betrayal & New Beginnings (Ranger Shield Security #1)
Prologue
PROLOGUE
ELLIE
Deep breaths. If you’re feeling this much pain, it means you’re alive. Now you need to stay alive.
As the world spun around me, I reminded myself to just keep taking deep breaths.
Everything hurt. Every part of my body, from my head to my feet. Memories began to flood my mind as I tried to open my eyes.
Randall had slapped me, punched me, and threw me against a wall. He yelled obscene things about how awful I was and how I deserved this.
I thought of my brother, Jack , who would be so disappointed in me. He’d hated Randall from the very beginning and had told me to break up with him.
“Ellie-girl, that dude is bad news. Stay the hell away from him,” Jack , always blunt, had said to me.
But like the strong-willed, stubborn woman I was, I’d wanted to prove to Jack that I could make my own decisions, and he didn’t have to take care of me anymore.
All I could think about right now as I lay here in so much pain was that my brother was right about Randall , and I wish I had listened to him.
“What’s this?” Randall startled me as I put clothes in my suitcase. I didn’t hear him come home because I was so focused on getting packed as quickly as possible.
“Why are you packing a bag? Are you fucking leaving me?” he yelled and stepped closer to me.
I tried to scoot back, but there was no place to escape. The door to the bedroom was blocked and the window was on the other side. Not that I would be able to open it and jump out before he got me anyway.
He wasn’t supposed to come home from work for at least another two hours. I knew his schedule and he never came home early on Thursdays . Ever . Many times, he even went out with friends after work for a few drinks. I thought today was safe.
My friend Katie was on her way to help me pack and get out of there. I needed to find a way to calm him down and leave before she got here, or he would hurt her, too.
“I asked you a question, Elliana ! Why are you packing your bags?” he screamed and moved even closer.
“I wa-was going to go visit my brother. He’s , uh, getting his leave a few weeks early,” I tried to say with as much muster as I could, knowing it was a complete lie.
“Bullshit! You don’t need this much stuff to visit him for a couple of days,” he said as he came within inches of my face. “ You are mine, Elliana Hutchinson !” he yelled as he slapped me hard across the face. “ You will never leave me. Do you understand?”
His hands wrapped around my neck as he squeezed and yelled. I tried gasping for air but couldn’t get any. The next punch was all I remembered and then the world went black.
* * *
As I drove to my fresh start in Georgia , I let my mind wander to several days ago, when my life came crashing down around me.
Thankfully, Katie had pulled up to the house just as Randall was leaving in his car. Knowing he wasn’t supposed to be there, she’d waited, then came to the front door and knocked. When I repeatedly hadn’t answered she’d known something was wrong. I had given her a key in case of emergency, so she’d let herself in and found me bloodied on the floor. I’d awoken quickly after she got there and told her I didn’t want to go to the hospital because it would only make escaping more difficult.
To avoid the risk of Randall breaking into my car that had been left on his driveway, Katie had moved my car two blocks away from his house right after she picked me up. It was meant to be a temporary fix while I stayed with her.
Katie was staying with her parents in order to save money and help pay off her student loans, and thankfully they were away on a trip. She’d taken me back to their place to get cleaned up, and since she was almost done with nursing school, she’d watched me all night to check for signs of a concussion.
I’d stayed with her for five days until I’d felt healed enough to leave. I hadn’t been lying when I’d told Randall I was going to Georgia to visit Jack . It was just that Jack wasn’t going to be there, at least not right away.
Once I’d made the decision to leave Randall , I’d messaged Jack to let him know I had quit my job as a waitress and bartender and was moving to Georgia to be closer to him. His reply email had been short, but he’d seemed genuinely happy, especially about me leaving Randall . He’d said his last tour was almost done, but not for a few more weeks, so I should just stay at his place until he got home and then he would help me find my own apartment.
He’d also mentioned his buddy and former sergeant owned the pub below his apartment, so he would check with him about getting me a job there. I hated getting handouts, but I didn’t really have a choice since I was moving to a new city and didn’t know anybody there.
My parents had died in a car crash when I was thirteen and Jack was eighteen. We went to live with our grandma, but only four months later, Jack graduated and enlisted in the Army . I loved my brother, but it had felt like another family member had been ripped away from me. We’d written to each other all the time while he was deployed and spent most of his trips home together with Gran in Tennessee , where she raised us in the house our mom grew up in, but it always irked me when Jack tried to intervene in my life when he had no problem walking away to begin with. I now understand why he did, though, because Gran was retired and living off what little money our parents left behind, so Jack had felt he had to enlist so he could send money back to Gran to help raise me.
So here I was, on the road, and had finally crossed into Georgia . “ Road to freedom,” Katie had called it, but it certainly didn’t feel like it. Not yet, at least. My plan was to head straight to the pub and meet his buddy Wade to get the spare key to my brother’s apartment and hopefully interview for a job. Maybe this next phase of my life would go a little smoother.