Abandoned Hearts: A Rags to Romance Book, page 1
ABANDONED HEARTS
A RAGS TO ROMANCE BOOK
BY
MALLORY MONROE
Copyright©2022 Mallory Monroe
All rights reserved. Any use of the materials contained in this book without the expressed written consent of the author and/or her affiliates, including scanning, uploading and downloading at file sharing and other sites, and distribution of this book by way of the Internet or any other means, is illegal and strictly prohibited.
AUSTIN BROOK PUBLISHING
IT IS ILLEGAL TO UPLOAD THIS BOOK TO ANY FILE SHARING SITE.
IT IS ILLEGAL TO DOWNLOAD THIS BOOK FROM ANY FILE SHARING SITE.
IT IS ILLEGAL TO SELL OR GIVE THIS eBOOK TO ANYBODY ELSE ONLINE
OR OTHERWISE, OR MAKE IT AVAILABLE ONLINE IN ANY FORM.
THE AUTHOR AND AUSTIN BROOK PUBLISHING DOES NOT GIVE THEIR
CONSENT.
This novel is a work of fiction. All characters are fictitious. Any similarities to anyone living or dead are completely accidental. The specific mention of known places or venues are not meant to be exact replicas of those places, but they are purposely embellished or imagined for the story’s sake. The cover art are models. They are not actual characters.
THE RAGS TO ROMANCE SERIES
STANDALONE BOOKS
IN ORDER:
1. BOBBY SINATRA: IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES
2. BOONE & CHARLY: SECOND CHANCE LOVE
3. PLAIN JANE EVANS AND THE BILLIONAIRE
4. GENTLEMAN JAMES AND GINA
5. MONTY & LaSHAY: RESCUE ME
6. TONY SINATRA: IF LOVING YOU IS WRONG
7. WHEN A MAN LOVES A WOMAN
8. THE DUKE AND THE MAID
9. BOONE AND CHARLY: UPSIDE DOWN LOVE
10. HOOD RILEY AND THE ICE MAN
11. RECRUITED BY THE BILLIONAIRE
12. ABANDONED HEARTS
MALLORY MONROE SERIES:
THE RENO GABRINI/MOB BOSS SERIES (22 BOOKS)
THE SAL GABRINI SERIES (12 BOOKS)
THE TOMMY GABRINI SERIES (11 BOOKS)
THE MICK SINATRA SERIES (14 BOOKS)
THE BIG DADDY SINATRA SERIES (7 BOOKS)
THE TEDDY SINATRA SERIES (5 BOOKS)
THE TREVOR REESE SERIES (3 BOOKS)
THE AMELIA SINATRA SERIES (2 BOOKS)
THE BRENT SINATRA SERIES (1 BOOK)
THE ALEX DRAKOS SERIES (9 BOOKS)
THE OZ DRAKOS SERIES (2 BOOKS)
THE MONK PALETTI SERIES (2 BOOKS)
THE PRESIDENT’S GIRLFRIEND SERIES (8 BOOKS)
THE PRESIDENT’S BOYFRIEND SERIES (1 BOOK)
ALSO
STANDALONE BOOKS:
ROMANCING MO RYAN
MAEBELLE MARIE
LOVING HER SOUL MATE
LOVING THE HEAD MAN
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
LaToya Brooks didn’t stop running until she was dashing across the street of the busy intersection, in the heart of the Gary, Indiana hood, and hurrying up to her roommate. Today was Toya’s birthday, but she didn’t feel like celebrating.
“What took you so long?” Shelby, her roommate, looked at her. “I been here for two hours all by myself and you just getting here?”
“Diana was late for her shift again.” Toya began taking off her Burger King t-shirt and cap. Beneath her work shirt she wore one of those color-block t-shirts she and Shelby were selling. “And you know how Craig is. He wouldn’t let me leave until her lazy butt showed up.” She stuffed her work shirt and cap in her backpack and sat it against the wall. “How many we sold so far?”
“We didn’t sell any so far,” Shelby said. “But I sold six.”
“Dang. In two hours? That’s not enough, Shell. If we don’t sell at least twenty-five of these shirts, how we gon’ eat? If we don’t pick up the pace, Punch will get his share and we get pennies. And you know I don’t get paid from Burger King until the end of the week. We’ll be screwed.”
“I thought I would have sold way more too,” Shelby admitted. “Especially with the sale.”
Toya looked at her. “What sale?”
Shelby pointed to the sign in front of their shopping cart filled with t-shirts. Toya walked to the edge of the sidewalk and looked at the sign. The Buy One, Get One Free sign. Her already large eyes enlarged even more. And she looked at her roommate. “Shell you didn’t!”
“I thought twice as many people would buy them.”
“Yeah, and we’ll be right back where we started if there was no sale at all. Only we’ll have half our merchandise. What were you thinking? Two for one is half off.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Yes, it is.”
“No, it is not, Toya, and stop claiming it is. I know what I’m doing!”
Toya knew the exact opposite, but didn’t have the energy to keep arguing with her. She just quickly removed the sign and placed it against the wall turned backwards, just like she felt Shelby was acting.
“We got to sell them four bucks a piece now just to break even,” Toya said as she grabbed a handful of shirts.
“Four dollars? For one measly t-shirt, Toya? I was selling them two dollars for two shirts.”
Toya shook her head. She couldn’t even comment on that. How were they going to make it? They were already cutting her hours at Burger King every time she turned around. And Craig cracked down for real on the workers eating up the food at work, and he wouldn’t let them take any home anymore. So that was out too. And although those guys Shelby fooled around with were more than willing to help Toya out just like they were helping Shell every now and then, that was a hell no for Toya. No man was taking care of her because she knew what it would cost her in the end. Especially the kind of guys Shelby fooled around with. But Shelby didn’t get it. And Toya gave up explaining it to her a long time ago.
“Shirts of many colors for sale right here, right now!” Toya yelled out to the people as they walked by their corner. “Only four bucks a pop! Get yours, Miss. Get yours, Sir. Just four bucks. You can’t get a Happy Meal for four bucks!”
“Actually you can,” Shelby said to Toya, but Toya ignored her and continued trying with all she had to make a sell.
And although Shelby didn’t like selling t-shirts for all that money, she knew Toya was right. They had to eat. That was why she grabbed another handful of t-shirts and started doing all she could to make a sell too. And then she looked at her friend. “Happy birthday. With your mean self.”
Toya looked at Shelby. When Shelby smiled that crooked smile of hers, Toya couldn’t help but smile too. Shelby was a handful, that was for damn sure, but she had a good heart. “Thanks, Shell.”
Then Shelby laughed. “You’re a grown-ass woman today. For real though. You’re the big twenty-one. You can’t make no more excuses like I still can.” Shelby was nineteen. “How it feel to suddenly wake up and realize you’re an old-ass woman now, Toy?”
Although Shelby was joking around, Toya did feel old. It wasn’t the years, but what she’d done with her life in those years. Homeless since she was twelve, she was still trying to go to school and make something of herself. She somehow made it all the way to the tenth grade on sheer will alone, but she knew she couldn’t be sitting in class most of the day when she needed to be out selling cans and hustling any legit way she could to secure herself a place to sleep for that night. She dropped out and managed to pass the GED, but those nicer jobs would only hire the nicer girls who didn’t drop out. So she went from fast food restaurant to fast food restaurant, hoping for more pay and more hours and rarely getting either, and ended up at Burger King the longest. And because all those other dropout girls like her already had all the other hard luck jobs in town, she had to sell those t-shirts just to make ends meet.
But she never gave up on herself. She applied for all kinds of office jobs, too, the kind of jobs that could make her dreams come true, but nobody would hire her. When you’d been out on the streets most all your life, you looked like street. It went with you everywhere you went, got inside your pores, and cloaked you like a garment. But even though she had street all over her, Toya still kept hoping and dreaming of a life with more stability, and kept applying for anything decent she could apply for. Kept getting her hopes and dreams dashed, though, but she kept applying anyway. Would have applied to the only factory in town still up and running, but they never had an opening. People like her got jobs like that and weren’t about to give them up.
And then her broke-ass car had the nerve to break on down three months ago but she could never put enough coins together to get it repaired. The single-wide trailer she and Shell were renting wasn’t worth a damn, either, but was the only consistent roof over her head she’d ever had. If it wasn’t for Punch allowing her to sell his shirts, she’d be in trouble. Wouldn’t even be able to come up with her share of the rent relying on just Burger King. It was tough.
But to make that tough life even less tolerable, one of the girls she grew up with decided at that very moment she was thinking about it to drive by in her fancy convertible car and wave and laugh with her girlfriends in the backseat. All of them were strippers at DuClay’s and always seemed to have good money to throw around. Kept telling Toya she should join them; that a girl that looked like her with all of her gorgeous thick hair could be in the money too, but Toya told them what they could do with that stripping and that kind of money. And she wouldn’t let them recruit Shelby either.
But because she was perched on the main street in town, and the town wasn’t all that big, some of the people she grew up with would pass by in their Toyotas and Chevys pointing at her and laughing at her because they made it out and she hadn’t bulged. Still working those menial-ass jobs. Still living paycheck to paycheck. Still struggling. She felt like a failure even at twenty-one.
Shelby was a failure, too, but you’d never know it by Shell. She never discussed anything negative for too long, she didn’t care what it was. But she was like that. Since they were kids, Shell had always been able to sweep shit under rugs and keep it moving as if she didn’t smell it too. Toya, unfortunately, smelled everything.
But as they sold a shirt here and there and kept on hustling trying to sell more, it didn’t take ten minutes for Shelby to come up with another bright idea. No two for one, but worse. “I know how we can celebrate your birthday today and have some real money left over too,” she said.
Toya didn’t want to even entertain what she was certain would be another harebrain scheme of Shelby’s, but she looked at her only friend. “How, Shell?” she asked her.
“We can tell Punch we were robbed, and then we can keep all the merchandise for ourselves and sell them somewhere else. That way we’ll keep all the profits.”
Toya looked at her friend sideways. Even by Shell standards that was crazy. “What?”
“We can keep all the money for ourselves, don’t be looking at me like that! Why Punch always got to get the lion’s share of our hard work? Ripping us off is what he’s doing.”
“What you mean ripping us off? These are his shirts, Shell. Not ours. His. He’s the one who put all these colors in these shirts. We’re just selling them for him.”
“But we can keep some back is what I’m saying. And keep the money for ourselves.”
Toya couldn’t. She just couldn’t. She went back to selling. “Get your shirts right here! The shirts of many colors. All sizes. Right here. Get your shirts right here!”
“Toya, you hear me? That’s the only way we’ll make any money.”
“No,” said Toya. “No way.”
“But why not?”
“How about because of that little thing called morals?” Toya said. “Or how about integrity? How about doing the right thing in this life? And how about this one: Not wanting to be a thief? Not wanting to go to prison?”
“He’s stealing from us!”
“How Shell? How is that man stealing from us?”
“By making us do all this work and paying us pennies on the dollar. That’s how!”
But a certain car had pulled up further down the street from where they were standing on the corner, and Toya was staring at that car.
“Toya, you hear me? Toy?”
But Toya was in her own world now. A world where that fine hunk of man in that car had her in his arms. A world where he actually saw her, and paid attention to her, and wanted her too.
“Toya!”
But when Toya didn’t respond, Shelby looked where Toya was looking. And then she shook her head. “I should have known. R-ass Meano again!”
“His name is not R-ass Meano,” said Toya. “It’s Arvi Marsden. You sound it out as Are-V Mars-Den for your information. Arvi Marsden. Not R-ass Meano.”
Shelby stared at her friend. Was she that far gone? “Who cares, Toya?”
“And if you wanna be technical about it,” Toya continued, “his full name is Are-V-Are-No. Arviarno Marden, to be precise.”
Shelby frowned. “Who cares what his name is girl? With his mean ass. And why you always all into him like you obsessed with his ass? That man don’t want you!”
“And I don’t want that man,” Toya fired back, realizing she was busted. “Who said I want him? Pa-lease!”
“But did you hear me?”
“Yes I heard you, Shell. I’m sure the entire sidewalk heard you. And the answer is still no. Are you crazy? I’m not stealing Punch shirts and neither are you.” Then she exhaled. “Let’s just sell these thangs so we can go on home.” She cut another glance at that certain car and the man behind the wheel. And then she forgot that man and was yelling get your shirts of many colors once again.
CHAPTER TWO
The Corvette was stopped at the curb and Arvi Marsden was already amped-up. With his dark shades covering his expressive green eyes, he kept darting those eyes back and forth, looking out of his rearview mirror. His side mirrors. Looking out of his windows. Searching for that non-descript car idling nearby. Or those hoes trying to wrangle themselves a john, but constantly taking peeps in his direction when their asses knew he wasn’t down like that. Or the crackhead on the corner in pristine Jordans when no crackhead that had to hang on the corner would still own a good pair of shoes. He kept looking. He kept looking for that one mistake, that one oddity, that made him certain 5-0 was on the prowl.
“It’s clear just like I told you.” His boy Blade was on his front passenger seat. He was Arvi’s advance man and partner and was always with him whenever he had business in the area. An area, everybody knew, that was over-policed big time. But the suppliers he dealt with wouldn’t go anywhere else. Arvi lived in Deerwood, a wealthy suburb on the outskirts of Gary, but his suppliers always preferred to meet in Gary. In their minds, they’d attract too much attention in the ‘burbs.
“I don’t know why you keep trippin’,” Blade said. “I sniffed this whole area out already just like I’m supposed to. They ain’t here. You know I got an eye for that shit.”
But Arvi was still looking. He was still sitting behind that steering wheel not trying to get out.
“What you waiting on, G? Let’s go.” Blade was impatient now. They had a major meeting with suppliers, and they needed to walk across the street to that poolhall and get to that meeting. “I’m telling you no cops are out here. They wouldn’t dream of bothering us anyway.”
“That’s what you think.”
Blade rolled his eyes. “Man you like an old lady being so cautious. How you get to be so big if you so terrified of the cops?”
“Because I am terrified of the cops. Because I am cautious. That’s how! Now just keep looking and stop running your mouth so much.”
Blade exhaled and started looking around too.
But within seconds of their scoping out the area, the driver’s side of Arvi’s car was approached by an old black lady everybody in the neighborhood called Preach. Arvi pressed down his window. “What up, Preach?”
“You need to give your life to Christ, Arviarno,” she said as she handed him one of those religious tracts about hell’s fire. “You need to give your life to Christ before it’s too late.” Then she looked over at Blade, sucked her teeth in disapproval, as if it was already too late for him, and then walked away to her next target.
“Damn that lady give me the creeps,” Blade said.
“A harmless Christian lady gives you the creeps?” said Arvi as he read over her tract. “I wouldn’t brag about that.”
“Man, I can’t even joke around with your ass any more. It’s all work and no play all the time with you. Which makes your ass a dull boy. Ever hear that?” Then Blade smiled. “But I bet you gonna show your dull boy ass out Friday night when you see what me and the boys pulling together. It’s gonna be the hoedown of the year. And when I say hoedown, I mean hoe down! Me and the boys getting it all set up. I might just find my wife at that joint. You know why I say that? Because hot bitches are the only ones we’re inviting.”
