Page 80 of The CEO's Revenge

Max and I were at Mom’s for dinner when I felt what felt like a cramp, but by the time we got home, there was just enough time for Max to grab my hospital bag and rush me to the hospital. My labor was complicated. One of the twins was a breech baby and they had to perform a cesarean birth.

The nurse handed me the bundle with my son. I smiled down at him, my eyes filling with tears. His face was wrinkly and red, but I recognized him from my dream. He yawned widely as he blinked up at me. His eyes were bright blue. Just like Max’s.

“Dreams do come true,” I murmured.

Max sat in the chair beside my bed while the nurse handed him our daughter. She was fast asleep and Max appeared speechless. The nurses left, and Max and I looked at each other. We smiled through our tears as we held our children. After a few minutes, he took our son and gave me our daughter.

“Aren’t they beautiful?” I smiled at him. I watched as he leaned down to kiss our son.

“Exquisite. Just like their mother.”

I shook my head. “No. They get it from their father.”

He leaned over to kiss me softly. “Let’s call it even.”

The End

COMING SOON- SAMPLE CHAPTERS

MINE TO POSSESS

Chapter One

Amelia

I can’t help my heart from sinking when I see the sign loom up ahead of me.

WELCOME

to

Sunny Vale.

I’m sure when it was put up in the late eighties, the image of the sun was a bright, happy yellow. All of the letters were there. Now the sun is faded to a dirty off-white, the ‘L’ from ‘WELCOME’ is missing, and the whole board is filled with tiny holes where kids have played target practice with their BB guns on it.

Maybe, back then when the sign went up, Sunny Vale was the sort of place that felt welcoming. Now it’s the exact opposite of that. It’s dreary, depressing and wholly unwelcoming.

I sigh as I pass beneath the sign, and step into the trailer park. The trailers are all as old and dilapidated as the sign. The front windows of one of them is boarded up. Another has patches all over it; patches my mom likes to pretend aren’t there.

“Good afternoon, Amelia,” a voice calls from the step of one of the trailers.

“Hi, Mrs. Mason,” I call back, giving the woman a half-hearted wave.

She stands in the doorway to her trailer, a mostly smoked cigarette dangling precariously from her lips. She’s at least sixty, and from what I can gather she’s lived here since the park opened its doors. I kinda feel bad for her. What sort of mistakes does a person need to make to end up living here all of their live?

Maybe she’s like my mom…

You’d think by husband number four my mother would have understood alcoholics don’t make good husband material, wouldn’t you? But no. She chose Dan. Another mean spirited, aggressive, alcoholic tyrant and on the wrong side of two hundred pounds. His trailer is his pride and joy, which I really think says everything a person needs to know about him. He’s not trying to better himself and get out of this shit hole. To him, living in the Sunny Vale trailer park is living the dream life.

I still remember the day my mom announced we’d be moving here.

At the time we were living in a tiny, one-bedroom apartment and she was working two jobs just to keep us in that. By then I’d already met the cleaned-up, sober version of Dan once or twice. He seemed like an ok guy, so when she said we’d be moving into his place, which had three bedrooms, one of which, I was informed, would be mine, I was ecstatic.

My very own room!

God, the dreams I built up in my head. And then she brought me here and all my dreams faded away like the sun on that damned sign.

In that one day, I went from being Amelia from the ghetto (the charming name the kids in my school came up with to differentiate me from the other kid called Amelia) to Amelia the trailer trash girl. School was not fun for me, but I longed for a chance at college. No college for me, of course. When I hit sixteen Mom asked me to quit education and contribute towards the household expenses.

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