Free Witness by Rachael Orman

 
    Chapter One
     
    Sighing, I pushed a strand of greasy bleach-blonde hair behind my ear. I missed my natural brown hair. It looked better on me, not to mention it took a lot less upkeep. Although I had plenty of time to waste since I was a waitress at a little diner in the middle of nowhere with no friends.
     
    It wasn't my choice to be in the crappy little town. It wasn't how I envisioned my life being at thirty. However, stupid choices made at the ripe age of eighteen left me slinging crappy food I couldn’t even stomach.
     
    “Miss! Miss!” an obnoxious woman yelled from the other side of the room as she waved her arm in the air. Like I could've missed her when there were only two other tables with customers on my side of the diner.
     
    “How can I help you?” I asked, trying to force a smile.
     
    “I need a refill,” she said, gesturing to her still half-full glass of sweet tea.
     
    “I'll be right back.” I sighed and went to get the pitcher. Once I topped her glass off, I went back behind the counter to stare out the front door again. It was how I passed the time I wasn’t running around trying to keep impossible people happy. Dreaming about the life I should’ve been living or, on bad days, the life I used to have. 
     
    I used to work at a pharmacy helping doctors and patients. I enjoyed going to work every day. Enjoyed my life, but that all ended once I got involved with Michele Berto. No, it wasn’t all bad at first, but by the end, I wished I’d never met the man who ruined my life.
     
    He was tall, dark and handsome. Just what every woman wanted in a man, right? That's what I once thought. Not only was he sexy, but I thought he was the one for me. That we'd be together forever. Then I found out who he really was, and nothing was ever the same. One night and my life as I knew it had been forever and irrevocably altered.
     
    I'd loved Michele as much as an eighteen-year-old girl knew how to. I'd been blinded by lust and the attention and money he’d spent on me. Being raised by a single mother who worked two jobs to make ends meet left me alone and hungry more often than not. Then, in swept Michele with his thousand-dollar suits and million-dollar cars. He'd spoiled me from the start. Anything I wanted, I got. If I even looked at something for more than a second, it would magically appear at his house or mine the next day as a gift from him. It was so easy to get caught up in the whirlwind of money. So easy, in fact, that I didn't see what was right in front of my face. That he wasn't just a rich twenty-year-old, but a Mafioso who was as controlling and violent as he was charismatic.
     
    Stupid and naïve, I'd fallen for everything he told me. For seven years, I’d lived in a blissful state of blind love. Until I saw something I was never meant to see, only to disappear in the middle of the night with the help of the FBI, then reappear as a new woman in a new town, with a past to hide from. Along with a horrible name change. I’d liked being Alice, but they’d changed it to the much more exotic Allegra, which I didn’t think fit me at all, but no one asked me.
     
    That'd been five years ago. Five long years of no friends, no family, nothing but a crappy job to pay for a crappy apartment.
     
    I’d like to say that I’d relaxed, since it had been so long and that I possibly thought I’d gotten away from Michele unscathed. I didn’t. I was still constantly looking over my shoulder. Still afraid to connect with people who would make it hard to leave if I needed to. Not to mention, I still hated the town the FBI had planted me in. The job was absolutely nothing I would’ve ever done in my previous life, which I supposed was why it was such a good place to put me. However, I was miserable, almost hoping someone would find me and take me out just so I didn’t have to keep paying for the sins I didn’t commit and never wanted to be a part of.
     
    “Miss!” the obnoxious customer from