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Honestly, back then I was a miserable sixteen-year-old living with a miserable foster family. I was happy to have some kind of excuse to run away and get out of Philadelphia.

Sometimes I wondered if I’d subconsciously made the decision to fight with Valentina Rossi because I knew that would land me in hot water with her dad. After all, Angelo Rossi was a name that was well-known and well feared in Philly. I wasn’t sure if he would actually come after me—I wasn’t sure if she was even alive or dead after throwing her down the same stairs she’d pushed me down.

She’d looked dead. There had been a lot of blood.

I’d looked her up a few months after leaving Philly. I’d been racked with guilt over getting into a fight and potentially emerging a murderer. I didn’t want to kill her, I just wanted her to stop fucking bullying me. So the last and only time I’d checked on her well-being, she’d been in a coma.

I was too afraid to look for an obituary. Too afraid that I’d find one. If it existed and I never saw it, then it didn’t actually exist. I wasn’t a killer as long as I didn’t know.

At first, I’d liked going from place to place, never knowing where I’d end up next. I’d liked the freedom that came with having zero attachments to anyone or anything. I’d liked being out from under the judgmental eyes of a series of foster parents I was never good enough for.

But lately all I wanted to do was find a safe place to settle down.

Sometimes I’d see families or couples or friends and an immeasurable envy would worm its way up from deep inside me. I had to kill that envy, snuff it out before it could grow.

It was kind of difficult to put roots down anywhere when I didn’t even have a real identity anymore. No social security card, no birth certificate, no identification of any kind. Absolutely nothing to tie me to my old life.

That was why I could only work under the table.

When I first came to Marion, I went to five different places before I found the Army Surplus store. They happened to be willing to pay me with cash, no questions about my identity asked. Did I find that suspicious? Yeah, a little. Did I care? Nope. I was getting paid and I didn’t really give a damn about anything else.

It was hard not to notice that a lot of shady shit went down at that store, though. People would come in and go right up to Thorne, the owner, or his son Tom, who would then take them to the back.

Those people never left out the front door. They exited through the back by the loading bay, and though I’d figured that part out, what I didn’t know was what kind of things were happening back there.

Illegal things, most likely.

But it made me wonder who Thorne really was and just how much influence he had, especially after one of those visitors was a police officer. And he was definitely not there in the name of public service.

Thorne had connections, and connections to corrupt law enforcement were dangerous.

And the way he looked at me sometimes was more than unnerving. Whenever his gaze drifted my way and I made the mistake of looking back, it felt like I was a bug he was considering squishing. Other times, I was prey locked in the sights of a dangerous predator—one that was hungry but patient. Calculating. Waiting for the right moment to strike.

Either way, to Thorne, I was some kind of inferior species in those cold, empty eyes, and I never cared to look deeper. I was too afraid of what else I’d find.

I’d never been very smart or resourceful. There was no clever intelligence lurking behind my eyes. I was and always had been just a mean, angry person who relied on aggressive posturing. But I’d learned to read people from a young age since my own well-being depended on it. I paid attention to every expression or micro movement of someone I considered a threat, and it wasn’t hard to tell when I was in the presence of a bad person.

Thorne was a bad fucking person.

I thought about killing him sometimes. Shoving a knife right into his chest or his throat whenever he made misogynistic comments or let Tom off the hook for sexually harassing me for the umpteenth time. I thought about killing him a lot, especially in those moments where my adrenaline was pumping and an uncontrollable rage simmered in my veins. Something always cautioned me away from that path, though.

There was a different path I could take.

I’d been mulling it over for a few weeks now, waiting for the right time.

Thorne kept the store’s weekly earnings in a safe in his office. Every Friday, he’d take it all to the bank. I would only have one day to get into that safe when it held the most money, and tomorrow was Thursday.

Tom and Thorne both took Thursdays off. All I’d have to do was break into the office and then get into the safe.

The day I’d decided to steal from him was the day I’d watched him put in the safe’s digital code. I’d gone back there to complain about Tom’s behavior and, when I noticed what he was doing, I peeked through the little glass window to the office. I was able to see every number except for one, but I had a good idea of what the code might be. All I had to do was try a few different combinations.

I never had a hard time remembering things; one look at something and it would be stuck in my brain forever. It was kind of a curse, but a blessing at times like this because I’d be able to get in and out quickly.

Nothing alleviated the heaviness that draped itself around me like having a plan did. A very shoddy, yet irresistible, plan.

I had to find joy where I could. They were few and far between, these joys—and most times illicit—but they repelled the darkness that lived inside me better than anything.

The shadows that lingered in a distant pocket of my mind were hungry. If I were to ever enter that place, they would devour me down to the bone.