When the Game Changed (Ryan Haywood x OC) (Fake AH Crew)

Chapter 1

AN: Hi guys! I've wanted to get into this story for a while, and it's actually the first one that I've ever planned out carefully! I have a whole trilogy lined up for y'all, so I hope it satisfies! Feedback is greatly appreciated, don't be afraid to share it! Let me know if this story is as worth it as I want it to be. Thanks and enjoy! P.S., this is a story I made on Archive of Our Own, but I'm gonna publish it here first before releasing it there!

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Preparation was never Dakota's strong suit. Ever since she was a little girl, no matter if it was her prepping a cake for baking or packing a suitcase to once again change towns and names to escape the vices of her dad, she had never liked it nor been good at it.

It wasn't like it was ever hard, but preparation was always that thing where a person would have to admit to themselves that they were setting themselves up to either fail or to achieve, and it never sat right inside of her mind. She hated the idea of never being able to know what lied ahead of her in life because she liked to be sure of herself and her actions in a sense, but life was a cruel mistress and didn't allow a person to know that information.

From the very first day that Dakota ever prepped for anything, she was very noncompliant to the idea. Maybe it was the way her mother had stormed into her small, shoddy bedroom, cigarette in hand, sporting her signature tall up-do hair and begged for her to begin packing her things because Dakota's father was on the way to find them, but either way, she wasn't fond. Preparing for ten new lives was hard on a small child, hard enough to want to repress the memories for her entire life, so now when the little images of her tiny black suit case all busted up on the end of her bed with her things packed away tightly inside, she ultimately remembered just how hard it was.

Those were difficult times, and it surely pushed back her growth into an independent woman of her own accord, but it almost worked out. As an adult, she was just now beginning to learn that preparations were the only way to actually get through life, and although Dakota was reluctant to admit it, she was thankful for all of those years of running away from her father, Tobias Dayley, and the many times she spent preparing for those instances. Because if she hadn't of learned how to be ready for anything at an early age, then she definitely wouldn't have been able to pull off a robbery on her own. And that's exactly what she was preparing to do at this time.

It had been long coming. From the moment that she learned how to shoot a gun, Dakota was on the path to becoming a great criminal. She had no way to know it at that time, but the signs were all there. She was more like her father in every way than her mother besides their uncanny looks, and it was surely fate. She didn't know if she was completely grateful for that fact, but she was thankful.

Somewhat.

Maybe.

Dakota shook her head, trying to forget all of her suffocating thoughts that were rattling around inside of her brain, and she looked down to her phone to relocate the objective at hand. On her smartphone was a picture of a woman, her living arrangements, the members of her family, practically all of the necessities she needed to know about one Marine Smith.

It wasn't Marine per say that Dakota was actually interested in, but it was her schedule and her line of work. Without Marine, Dakota was nothing more to this job than a speck of trouble that could be swept away under the rug like an insect. And with Mrs. Smith there, her plans of heisting were simple and smooth as long as Dakota got what she needed.

Dak sighed tiredly, rubbing her eyes to try to rid them of the sleep that was threatening her entire body. She had been up since six in the morning until the current time of eleven at night, carefully trailing Marine as if she were a federal agent staking out a criminal. But that was very much not the case as Dakota wasn't exactly a saint. None the less, she felt that this would make an appropriate scene in an action flick.