Wicked

Chapter 1

There's no salvation for the wicked, and I am rotten to the core. I am not naive enough to believe that what I am about to do would allow me a chance to live life anew. I harbour no delusions about being reborn. About leaving this life behind like a fever dream. This life is the only one I have ever known. You can take a girl out of the dark but not the dark out of the girl. And I am pretty sure the darkness I was born into won't leave me unscathed even if I escape, not without its shadows licking my feet.

"Miss, are you sure you have everything you may need?" Avery whispers by my side, helping me zip up the duffel bag as I stuff the last of my belongings inside.

"Yeah, I think that's everything," I sigh, a big lump of sadness clogging my throat. " Avery, I am so scared. Like I don't know what's out there for me, but I can't stay here. I can't - " I cut off, choking on my tears as they quickly fill up my eyes.

Avery wraps her arms around me. "I know, miss, I know. I know what it means to be born into the Family Lamore, and I know that it brings the worst out of even the purest people. And you know what else I know? That you're a good person -"

I shake my head and try to cut her off at that, but she hushes me, "No, you are. You are." She grips my chin so I can look into her eyes, and the resolve in hers breaks me. "You did what you had to do to survive in the Family and you are no monster. Not like your father is. Or Niko. Or most of the other members of the Family. No monster can look at itself in the mirror and admit that it is one. If you can't live with yourself after all that you have done, that means you have a heart that cares. It means you know your sins and your guilt for them makes you human. So leave this place, and when you do, believe that you are worth redemption. That's the only way you can leave this world behind. Okay?"

I don't believe her. I don't believe one word of it, but what she said makes me sob harder into her arms, and I nod through the tears. Avery is a good person, not me. Avery may have been born into the family, but she has never had to hold a knife to a man's throat and watch the life drain from his eyes. She has never had to shoot a man in his skull. Or burn them alive. She knows how to ofcorse. You can't be in a Mafia family without knowing how to fight. But Avery is a maid, and maids are not expected to assassinate people unless they're in a position where they have to.

I let myself feel the comfort of Avery's arms for a bit longer. Avery was my mother's maid when she was still alive. She was more her confidante than her maid really and I have always treated her more like an aunt ever since I was a kid, so it hurts when I have to pull away from her.

"You should come with me too, Avery. If they find out you helped me escape, you know they won't be kind to you." Kind, now there's a word you forget exists when you're born into the world like ours.

Avery smiles grimly, "Now now, miss. For all they'll know I didn't help you escape, I just couldn't stop you when I caught you. Don't worry for me, You only worry about yourself and live a good, happy life."

I knew it was fruitless. She would have never come with me. Not everyone has the guts to leave the Family and especially not when you have someone you care about here. Avery has a daughter a couple of years younger than me, who is a personal maid to my brother Nico. I don't have anyone, not anymore. I am the daughter of the Don of one of the most dangerous crime families in New York.

My younger by two years brother, Nico, is the heir to the Family. And I don't care for either of them. I may have loved Nico at one point, a far-off reality where his innocence reached out to my own. But we are both different people now. We both have blood on our hands that we can't wash off; the only difference between us is that while I can no longer stomach the sight of stains on my skin, he hungers for it. As for my father, I have never loved him. I have never seen him as a father to be able to love him that way. All he's been in my life is a boss of the Family. A wretched man who cares for little else but what he runs.

I try to shake the running thoughts in my head and focus on perhaps the last moment I might have with Avery, "Would it kill you to call me Illiana just once?"

"Miss Illiana, you should really be leaving now," she says sadly, unshed tears in her eyes. "I will pray for you. The Don, your father, will be after you the moment he knows you're gone. Please be careful."

I nod and pick my bag up, sliding a knife in my pocket. I walk over to my window and close my eyes, steel in my breath. I can do this. I can leave this all behind. I don't look back at Avery because I have no time to stay and dissolve into tears again. So I climb over, and I leap.

I know very little of what comes next, but there is only one thing I know well enough to keep in my heart: there's no salvation for the wicked. No reprieve for the soul that has stolen many. And I have known that, I have always known that. But when you grow up amongst monsters, you eventually forget the lines between the right and the wrong. When you grow up amongst monsters, you grow your own teeth, and with it your own thirst to take and to take and to take.

But no one warns you that with everything you take, you lose. You lose parts of yourself to fit into what you are becoming. A beast can't breathe in a human body, so you leave it behind. It almost happens naturally. You crawl out of it little by little and then all at once. Like a snake shedding its skin. And one day when you wake up, you realise something is different. One day, you look in the mirror, and you no longer see yourself as you would recognize. You see your eyes devoid of emotion, your hands stained with blood, and your heart crushed to pulp under the weight of all that you have done - or been made to do. It doesn't matter in the end.

One day, you look in the mirror and catch a monster staring back. And when you scream, you see your own mouth opening wide. You see the teeth and the claws you have grown into. And when you try to turn back, you realise it's too late. You have seen who you are now. You no longer remember what you were before.

There's no choice but to move forward.

Or... to run.

You run and hope that you're fast enough to run out of your skin. Hope that when you look back, you see a ghost of yourself standing far behind. Waving goodbye.

And so I run, and I don't look back.
Or at least, not for a while.