Konrad by LeAnn Ashers

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SMILEY’s

Adeline

I never expected my life to turn out this way. My daughter and I were trapped in the middle of nowhere, living with pimps and drug dealers. Her father was a piece of shit, a piece of shit I was forced into living with as a means of survival.

The moment I hit age eighteen, I’d been kicked out of the house. No money, no belongings, and stuck in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by people who wanted me to be their next whore. I couldn’t do that.

This was selfish of me, but this older guy had been after me for years, and I had nowhere else to go. I knocked on his door, and that’s the worst thing I’ve done in my entire life.

My life was never the same after that. I became the one thing I’d never wanted to be: a prostitute. My life was completely controlled by him. I lived in fear, and I wanted out so bad. I hated him so much—I hated my life. I also became pregnant. And when my daughter was older, around the time she should have started school, he began to scream at her and threaten her.

I would not let that stand; I loved my daughter more than life itself. She deserved more than the life she’d been dealt. She was way too sweet for the world she was living in.

We were two hours outside of civilization. For years I saved up what little I could find; it would be enough to get us into town.

He caught me sneaking out of the house with my daughter. Alisha ran away and hid, and I took the brunt of it. Then he did the unthinkable. He injected me with drugs, and I became someone I never thought I would be. My life was taken away. He would pump so many drugs into me that I couldn’t even tell you my name. Years of my life were gone in a split second.

I saw my daughter in glimpses of memory throughout the years. I wanted to reach out to her, but he would see the moment of clarity in my eyes and jab me with a needle—then I was gone again.

I overdosed so many times, and afterward I wished I had died. I was worthless, the worst mother in the whole world, because I had abandoned my daughter when I should have taken care of her. Eventually she grew up, but she was still trapped in this life.

Now I am staring at his body. He is dead, with a bullet right between his eyes. He has been dead a couple of days, and I am finally conscious enough to realize it. Pain is the first thing I feel, and the next thing is a fluttering in my chest. Hope. Pushing myself off the floor, I walk into the kitchen and check the place where I hid money oh so long ago.

Opening the cabinet, I see the money is still there. I press my hand to my mouth, crying. Crying for the first time in so long, because I am free. But Alisha is gone.

I am going to get help and get myself back to the person I used to be. Then I am going to find my daughter, if it’s the last thing I ever do.