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But I hadn’t.
He was just my friend, who loved me for who I was. Now, I’d be the reason he perished. Why his parents would lose a son.
I couldn’t refer to him by his name, couldn’t voice the agony inside of my soul.
I couldn’t make any of this a reality because if I did, I would be admitting defeat. My father would see that tendril of weakness in me and tug it free until my entire being unraveled and I was destroyed.
I gritted my teeth and turned my head, preparing myself. I intended to watch. To burn this insidious moment into my memory for all of time because Father had been sure to teach me one thing: The greatest pain bears the sweetest revenge.
I never had the chance to turn back on my own though. His goon, Elliot, gripped me by the chin and forced my face back toward theirs.
My father was prideful and victorious.
My friend was ashen, yet he refused to cower, to show weakness.
My heart wretched all the more for his bravery.
He didn’t want to cry. To show me the fear I saw so starkly in his turbulent ocean blues. He wanted to show me that he’d be okay.
That this was all going to be okay.
But it wouldn’t.
Nothing would ever be okay again.
“Don’t touch her! Don’t you touch her!” my friend screamed, the sound so weak in comparison to Elliot’s deep throaty chuckle from behind me. It rattled my chest and the struggling in my gut worsened.
“Watch, Alessia. Watch while I teach you the greatest lesson of all.” He paused and turned those dark eyes onto me. I would have shivered at the menace there under normal circumstances. But this wasn’t normal and I no longer feared anything. “Love? It’s nothing but a burden.”
Everything faded from black to white. Emotions too much like a storm to see the clear skies ahead. I hadn’t known that at that moment, I’d never see a sunny day again.
There was no comprehension of how horrific this would be.
How this one moment, would set me on a path of destruction.
Then my father slit the little boy’s throat and my best friend fell to the ground in a broken slump. Blood pooled on the cold ground around him and, as the seconds passed, crawled to the tips of my frozen toes. We had been playing in the woods, barefoot and joyous.
Now, my entire world burned while my toes turned bloody.
I shook, the image of a seven-years-young, delicate throat, torn open, gushing with his very life essence. That just wasn’t enough to keep his young heart beating and it plagued my mind. My lips trembled, and the air that left my lungs was choppy and broken as I fought to control my rage. That red-eyed demon I found way too often calling my name.
He wouldn’t witness me falling apart, I refused to allow it.
One thing was for certain though.
The second my best friend, the love of my life’s heart stopped beating, so did mine.
I tore free from my father’s idiotic follower and stepped forward. Squaring my shoulders, that stilled with their tormented quivers, I stared at my father. Right into his cold, soulless eyes I’d seen so many grown men avoid out of fear and seethed, “I loathe you, and the only thing you can take for certain as a lesson learned today is my vow to end you.” I was surprised at the venom that bled into my once innocent-sounding tone. I knew too much hostility at seven years of age. No child should grow this frozen, this soon. My father smirked, the edge of it as condescending as the pity in his gaze. His eyes were brown, but not vibrant and coveted. Dull and murky instead. Lifeless. “Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but mark my words, Alessia Black, the daughter you never wanted, will end your reign, Luigi Michael Black. I will destroy all that you love. After all, what is love, other than a burden, Father? And be assured, I no longer love you.”
In The Beginning
Killian
-Fourteen Years Old-
My hand shook as I pointed the barrel of the gun at the store clerk’s head. Convenience stores were always an easy hit. Owners never pottered around the place, only mangers at best, who’d actually have the sense to value their life. No matter how many times I held one up, though, it never got easier. Fear consumed his irises, giving his gaze a darkened hue that made it hard to ignore. Thin lips trembled as he held his hands out before him in a calming gesture as if that alone would stop me from doing what I was about to do. A tendril of fear tugged at my chest as my palms became slick against the handle of my weapon.
I shoved it down and forced it to become nothing more than white noise because fear wouldn’t do either of us any good.
