WINGED ONE

Prologue.

PROLOGUE

Amsterdam was the beginning of my downfall.

It happened six years ago on a frigid January morning. There were no prior warnings no signs that my life will change but on the new year's eve I spent at my best friend's house, while music played and everyone laughed and enjoyed themselves I was upstairs in her room struggling with my father and being pushed out of a window and minutes later into a plane that will take me to the land of my childhood.

The change was drastic and it was quick, once I stepped foot on Amsterdam soil I was expected to forget the last ten years of my life and pick up where we left off, a dark and gloomy time when we were poor, lived off garbage, and a shack for a house.

I was expected to forget that my father was the richest man in our town and beyond and all I once owned were designer clothes and shoes and all I could eat were gourmet healthy foods, now I will wear the rags I could steal, food my father could manage to scrape and attend a public school where I was supposed to not exist under a name and identity that wasn't mine.

I was supposed to forget I was a person with emotions, with needs and wants, with opinions, with thoughts, with friends and a supposed loving father I was expected to kill all those and become the ultimate killing machine.

It wasn't anything like the usual morning trainings in Rosewood where my father taught me basic fighting skills so I'll never find myself helpless or at the mercy of others so I'll be able to take care of myself in any situation which surprisingly paid off in the forty days that I was kidnapped.

I wished that was what triggered this exercise in Amsterdam then I wouldn't have had to be here in the first place seeing as I was able to take care of myself then but apparently it was an evil that wasn't supposed to be disclosed to me I just had to prepare for it and until I became what they wanted I would remain in suffering.

The only time I was allowed freedom was in my walks to school, where I finally was able to find, even if it was tiny, an anchor to my humanity in the form of an old man who sat every day in front of his home and when I walked past he would smile and wave in acknowledgment. The brightness in his grin warmed my heart every time and I took comfort in it.

Every other time where I was treated like an animal or a machine and I felt I couldn't take it anymore I remembered his smile, I remembered my best friend and her family still waiting for me in Rosewood, I remembered my black and white van cat and I was determined to get back to my old life.

It took six months before the training started to kick in when finally I was no longer pretending I had lost my emotions and with the disappearance of the old man it was easy, I started to forget the shade of green Polly, my best friends eyes were, I stated to forget the uneven stretch in her lips when she smiled and then I also started to forget how to smile.

It took a year before I became what they wanted and it was finally time to return and again to start off where I left off and forget Amsterdam once again like a damned machine, I didn't but lies weren't a hard thing to tell and pretense came as second nature for me everything was finally going to be back to normal.

That, for my sake, came with Amsterdam never existing, there never being an old man, never a forbidden love affair with a boy I abandoned with no remorse, forgetting that I once swallowed a bandage, pushed aside stones to make my meal edible and almost got shot and killed when I was caught stealing.

Now my life will be filled with smiles, I'll be sweet Aleida Aaldenberg once again, I'll smile and play at orphanages but that one year had made a huge difference everything will stay but unpleasant memories had to go for my sanity.

I had always been warned that it wasn't going to be easy to escape my past and two years later I found out how true that was when the next time I saw the old man was in a photograph from an anonymous package that would change my life forever.