Blurred Line

Prologue

I've always hated the color red. I've seen it too much in my twenty-nine years. I've witnessed it dripping from the soulless bodies that I've lost count of. My own parents made me hate it.

They say one can't escape from the things that terrify you by running, only by facing them. And I tried, but somehow finding your own mother in a pool of blood with her wrists slit was actually a big deal. Bigger than any bullshit saying. So I oriented myself in another direction - forgetting. In a crime family, confessing to a shrink is out of the discussion, so your only option is to self-educate. I initially created a small place in my messed-up mind where I could store those moments worth of oblivion. In time, that place grew bigger and bigger until it started to consume me, to monopolize my consciousness and my subconscious. So that option was no longer a solution for my peace.

I hated myself when I was twenty. I hated the fact that I was a woman and an only child to my underboss father. And not because he wanted to sell me to the highest bidder, to help him with connections, strongly needed in such a dark world. He never even tried to secure a husband for me, because his plans were bigger than that. He saw me as a true heir to his empire, a replacement for a son he never had. He raised me from the age of twelve to become immune to the ruthless underworld we lived in, only to be disappointed that my strength was no competition to his. So I became in his eyes more like my mother - a weak soul, enveloped in sadness. For two whole weeks that followed his test, I literally was exactly that - a ghost. I recognized barely any similarities in moments of clarity.

My true story started on that winter day. It was December 24th. I remember it like it was yesterday and not because it was Christmas Eve, but because it was my mother's sixth death anniversary and the day I hated my father the most. I knew deep down he chose that exact moment from a twisted and sick notion that ruled his thinking. I even remember the white velvety pajama I was wearing when he stormed into my room and ordered me to follow him downstairs. In our living space, two people I recognized as his men had another male tied down to a chair. His state was so far from that of a living person. His eyes were almost closed from the beating and blood covered his clothes. That image didn't even move me, because it was not the first. I understood his destiny, or so I thought. The situation became clearer when my father handed me a 9mm pistol. Without a single word, he motioned with his head in the direction of the one who I had to murder. My first feeling was fear, fear of what the outcome would transform me into - a cold-blooded killer and everything I loathed. Then I remembered the guilt - a feeling I experienced in the aftermath of my mother's suicide. If I couldn't control anything in my life, I simply looked in that man's direction. For the first time, I noticed his black hair, his muscular form, only to gasp when I realized he was not much older than me. I asked myself in those seconds if life was unfair to him or if he deserved to die so young. After all, nothing mattered, only the fact that I held his fate in my hand. Although I knew God had left me long ago, I asked him for a chance to live, because I knew if I went through with my task, I would simply kill myself just like my mother. My prayer was interrupted by my father's words: "Don't embarrass me in front of my men, Maia!". I wanted to cry, to scream, to run, but my body didn't listen to my brain so I lifted the gun in a motion I never understood. It was like it accepted the truth I was sunk in and wanted to get over with. Only that my victim did something for the first time. He smiled. In a way that reset all my senses and made me realize I couldn't do it. So I decided in a blink of an eye to fight for my life and maybe, just maybe -his.

I looked at my gun and saw three bullets. My action was mistakenly considered by my father as an assurance of a number of chances I had to kill that man. The following events I still consider, even to this day, as an answer to my prayers. Without thinking further, I shot the only source of light in the room and everything became dark in an instant. Chaos ensued thereafter because outside shooting started without any connection with my deed. The last thing I heard was the roaring of my father when he realized what I had done in addition to the mayhem. He barked orders to his men to secure his life, without even thinking that his only daughter was also in danger. Somehow that gave me a feeling of liberation, like I could breathe properly for the first time in my twenty years. So I ran like a madwoman and even though I should have been afraid, I organized myself to take my car keys and escape. Luck was never on my side, but when I saw my purse in the backseat of my Mercedes, I knew I had everything I needed to start a new life. Just when I started the engine, I heard an explosion from the front of our mansion, and I smiled. Maybe it was time for my father to pay for all his sins, and I couldn't be more delighted.

The back entrance of our domain was still clear of the war in motion, so I accelerated as fast as I could. Without shoes, in my white nightwear, and with a gun as my passenger.

***

My last name was, long ago, different. I was the daughter of Lorenzo and Isabella Bianchi, born into an Italian family that held a certain position in a mafia system, responsible for the city of New York and ruled by Capo Luca Lombardi.
So after my so-called escape everything led to this exact moment like a butterfly effect. After two weeks in a miserable motel, time I used to process the situation I was in, trying to fend off impending depression, I realized that God gave me a second chance. For some people, getting rid of my father and the destiny he chose for me, was a blessing. And I thought the same. But in the day after, I felt so alone that maybe it would have been better if I had killed that boy. I suffocated on the idea that even if I was educated, I had no idea how to be independent financially and socially. What could a woman like me do for a living, anyway? Where would I go? What if my father was still alive and he would hunt me, just to punish my betrayal? Or even worse, what if that man was important to Lombardi and I fucked up everything, even though I had nothing to do with the war in that night. That meant I had to die, probably painfully and slowly, tortured for an information I didn't knew.

Those scenarios were developed in my mind for two weeks, day and night. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat, I even abandoned my car in a secluded place. I was grateful for the decisions I made that night - to cash some money from an ATM before  I disappeared into obscurity. I imagined various ways of what I needed to do to survive longer. And not longer as in me being in my seventies, just me surviving at least a year.

So I chose to remain in the city I knew all my life, because it seemed the right thing to do. Running in another city, or even in another country would be easier to be tracked before I had a chance to change my name. When I left the paranoia aside and decided to go out for some decent food, I accepted my fate and did everything I could to become a new person. I dyed my hair red and bought some brown contact lens. I even changed my plain style. It was the perfect opportunity to become someone I dreamt of becoming.

The mafia connections in the city were big, so changing my documents legally or illegally, for that matter, it would raise an attention I did not want. So I talked with the manager of the cheap motel and he was more than happy to give me something to work, without paying taxes for me. I was responsible for cleaning the rooms and I saw some miseries I would gladly forget if I had the chance. But in the end if that meant my survival, it was worth it.

After a few months I gained courage and went to Washington to change my ID and maybe to raise attention there, after that only to return to New York. And everything went smoothly, without incidents or any trace of my former life. I started to believe I wasn't so important to my father or Luca after all. Or simply they had more important problems to deal with, than the run of a stupid girl.

I enrolled myself in CUNY Brooklyn College for a programming degree, under my new name - Maya White, working two jobs in my free time. At night I bartended to Freddy's Bar and in weekends I would help elders with chores they were incapable of doing alone.

My life was so beautiful and at peace, I started to see a future. I also had a boyfriend - Matt - with whom I had a relationship of three years. It all ended with him when I found he cheated on me with a family friend. I was grateful even for the hurt I felt. It was so small compared to what I had lived until then, that somehow I embraced it without much tragedy. It was so mundane, and even thought it may sound messed up, I was happy for the experience.

The time flew by like thoughts in a troubled mind, and now after nine years I understood the saying: what goes around, comes around.