I try not to think about it often.
I often fail.
The memories seep back, quiet at first, then louder, then louder still, drowning out everything else. Like a cracked faucet you can’t shut off: drip, drip, drip, until you’re soaked.
There was a time when I walked a straight, smooth path, carefully paved by my father. It led to a bright future. A picture-perfect dream I had faith would come true.
But those paving stones turned out to be landmines, leaving me with nothing but dead ends and nowhere to go.
Despite growing up in a household where privilege and wealth were paid for by the man who earned money through unspeakable things, I never cared. My father was a monster, but never toward me. Never toward my mother or stepmother.
Unlike others I came across in the world of the mafia, Dad was perfect. He loved me dearly. Spoiled me rotten. Never failed to remind me that I was and always would be the most important person in his life.
Sure, he went out at night to work alongside Rhett Willard to kill, maim, bribe, and blackmail, but he never let a single shadow touch my skin.
His sins were not my burden to carry.
The only connection I had to the darkness he was drenched in was my best friend, Aalyiah Willard. We were the same age, both born into the kind of wealth that made the world bow at our feet, and were bonded before we were out of diapers.
We attended the same private schools, wore the same designer uniforms, learned the same etiquette, and both knew our fathers were untouchable.
Our similarities kept us close until our happiness ended. Mine was brutally ripped away a few short weeks before my sixteenth birthday, and then Aalyiah’s when she died last year.
One mundane evening three years ago, my safety net vanished overnight. I was dragged into the darkness my father shielded me from, and I learned that nothing lasts forever, least of all: peace.
It was a Sunday, our weekly movie night. My stepmother, Melanie, sat beside me on the couch, a blanket tucked over our legs. Dad came in smiling, a bowl of popcorn in hand, the smell of melting butter filling the room. For a second, it was perfect...
Gunfire came first. Two sharp cracks outside the house.
Melanie yelped, a half-scream half-whimper caught in her throat as her fingers clamped around my wrist. I blinked,confused, my brain scrambling to match the sound against the image of my father standing there holding popcorn.
Before I could process it, the front door burst open.
Wood splintered and three men in black balaclavas, their guns raised, poured inside.
Nothing remotely dangerous had ever happened to me.
Dad had never been a target, never sent me and Melanie away when things got heated because they never did.
Until that night.
I watched Dad whirl around, his hand flying toward the hidden compartment in the coffee table where he kept his gun... not fast enough.
One of the masked men grabbed him by the back of his shirt and slammed him to the ground. His skull cracked against the floor so hard that it still echoes inside my mind sometimes, along with Melanie’s anguished scream. She bolted upright, the blanket sliding from our laps, words I couldn’t catch pouring from her mouth, her voice high, laced with panic as she stumbled round the coffee table, reaching for Dad.
A man turned, lifting his black gun. In the same heartbeat a single shot ripped the room. The glass Melanie held slipped from her grasp. I remember it so clearly... how it left her fingers almost in slow motion, how the stem glinted under the light, how it shattered across the hardwood.
The bullet struck her clean between the eyes. One second she was there, desperate.Alive. Then her body folded, hitting the floor with a sickening thud.
Red seeped toward red across the wood, wine and blood mixing together until it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began.
Her death was quick.
I like to hope it was painless...
My father inhaled sharply, staring at his dead wife, his entire body locking up. I remember how his mouth opened but no sound came out. I remember the terror clouding his eyes. And I remember the clock tickingsoloudly.
Until Dad screamed, lunging toward her.
