Seven People {Completed ✔️}

Prologue

"Cara, please get over here. Immediately!"

As soon as I hear my name, I run into mum's sitting room.

"Cara, we have dinner with the Stevensons in a couple of hours. I expect you to be dressed and ready to go by 5 PM so that you can spend time with their young son. You remember Zachary don't you?" Mum tells me.

"But Mu-um, I don't like Zach! He's so annoying!" I reply.

"Cara, you are going to have to get over it. The Stevensons are our friends and they will be very helpful and beneficial to us in the future. Our family is very powerful and very old and so is theirs. We have to stick together! Please behave tonight Cara. Now, go change"

I huff and stomp out of the room. I can feel mum rolling her eyes at my behaviour. Why do I have to entertain Zachary Stevenson? I'm only six years old. I know he's also six, but he's so annoying and childish. I think mum and papa are trying to set us up. Yuck!

When I return to my room, I see that the maid has already set out what I'm supposed to wear tonight. I quickly debate in my head whether or not I should go back to mum and tell her that "I'm six and I can dress myself!" and that she "doesn't need to pick out outfits for me!" I am fashionable after all. Well, that's what I think at least.

Dinner that night was boring, to say the least. We ate food for about an hour and then Zachary, Zach, and I are sent off to go and play some games while mum, papa and Zach's parents discuss business or whatever adults discuss. I don't know, I'm six. I don't like listening to them!  All they talk about is money, politics and their kids. And I legitimately have none of those things: I'm kind of broke. Like, I don't have a job. Politics are useless to me and make absolutely no sense. And children! I'm six years old! It's way, way, waaayyy too early for me at the start thinking about that.

"Hey, Cara!" Zach tells me as soon as we are alone in my playroom. 

"Hi," I reply, with a bored look on my face. I totally don't want to be here. I want him gone.

"Oh come on Cara, smile! Play with me! All the other pretty girls like it when I lay with them." Zach says, trying to get my attention. I just turn away, what he said not really registering with me.

The room is quiet when suddenly I feel a sharp tug on one of my pigtails.

"Ow!" I yelp as I turn around and push Zach on the floor.

He looks kind of upset but I don't care because I don't like him. Not one bit.

Needless to say, I was so very happy when Zach and his parents finally left. Mum and papa tucked me into bed, wished me goodnight, and told me that I'd see them in the morning. 

Boy were they wrong.

The next morning I woke up to sirens. There was screaming and crying. A woman came up to me and introduced herself as Miss Leonard. She told me that she was a social worker that worked for the government. She told me that I would be safe. I tried to ask questions but no one would tell me what was going on. I was taken to a car. I was driven to a building in the middle of Manhatten. I was terrified. I had no idea who any of these people were and what they were doing to me. And where were mum and papa?

I don't remember falling asleep but when I woke up they told me I was at Witness Protection. They permanently straightened my beautiful, golden blond, wavy hair that made me look like mum. They dyed it brown and gave me brown contacts to cover up my blue eyes that were just like papa's. They told me that my name was Mikaya Lionoff and that Carolina York died alongside her parents.

I think I knew then and there that my life was never going to be the same again. 

For most people, their lives change forever when they graduate high school or college, when they get married, or when they have kids. Generally, when they are much older. But for me, my world ended and began anew when I was 6 years old.

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First Published July 11th, 2019.

Updated July 13th, 2019.

Updated July 13th, 2020.