Rox (Nameless Order: Heart Chapter #1)

Prologue

“Go! Go! Go!” I tell myself as I push harder. I’ve gotten better at pushing myself, beating my own records when it comes to speed. I need to be able to move and get away. I have to become stronger. I push myself to my breaking points, attempting to get better and get bigger. Running home now after my workout, I think back to why I am this way.

I’ve been the smallest one in my home for as long as I can remember. It wasn’t a problem until my stepfather married my mother and brought his two sons with him. They immediately started to beat on me. I told their father, and he told me I deserved it. They wouldn’t dish it out if I hadn’t given them a reason to. When they did it again, I told my mother. She did what a parent is supposed to do. That night, her husband made it clear that she wasn’t to interfere again.

That night changed everything. He slowly showed who he really was. I was too small to do anything, and my mother became too afraid. When I was a little older, she’d let it slip how he had managed to convince her to put everything in his name. It was easy for him to do. He’s a bigshot lawyer and knows every single play to trick the system.

He controls everything, including her. In marrying him, she lost herself. Her fear was leaving and then losing me because she couldn’t take care of me. She couldn’t take the car, only the clothes we could wear and stuff in a backpack. I’d told her how I would do everything I could to help, but that wasn’t enough. She’d told me losing me wasn’t a risk she was willing to take. She may have lost herself, but as long as she had me, she would be okay.

That wasn’t true, though. She drifted more and more into herself. Becoming a husk of the beauty she once was. He continued to beat on her and demean her. His sons did the same to her and to me. So, I started to do what I could. I went to the football coach at school and asked him to train me. It wasn’t to play, only to lift. He’d given me the tools and the knowledge to make my body and my mind stronger.

When I finally turned eighteen, I was finally big enough to fight back. I had finally learned how to fight and guarantee I won. It wasn’t long after getting to that point that my chance came. Because the time is now.

I finally get home, and when I open the door, I hear my mother begging him to stop. He’s yelling about something. Who fucking knows with him. I rush in, and he’s beating the hell out of her. And his piece of shit sons? They’re sitting back, watching, laughing at her tears, and cheering their father on.

I lost it.

I make my way to the first disgrace of a human and hit him square on the temple as hard as I can. He immediately goes down. His brother doesn’t notice quickly enough to save himself. I’m on him, and he’s out for the count easily. I turn, and my poor mother is…

I don’t know what happened. One moment, I was beating the fuck out of his sons. The next, I was covered in blood. All three of them were dead. I don’t know what I did to kill his sons, but what felt like a minute later, I see his dead eyes looking up at me. When I drop him, I make my way over to my mother and gather her up in my arms. The most beautiful woman in the world lies lifeless in my arms. He killed her. I wasn’t here, and he killed her. His sons didn’t do a single thing to stop him. They encouraged it. They helped him by doing nothing.

She was the greatest thing this world had ever seen. Her heart was pure, and she loved so deeply. She treated those fuckwits like they were her children, and they turned around and watched her die.

“I’m so sorry, Mom,” I whisper to her and kiss her forehead. Knowing I can’t stay here, I grab what I can. Enough to make it look like I was never here and break into the safe he has. He didn’t see me in his office one day. I was hiding from his sons, and they never thought to look in there because after I went in once, I was given the hard lesson of why I should never go in again. So I was safe in there until he came home. But he didn’t see me. He opened his safe, took something out, closed it, and left.

He didn’t see me, but I saw the code.

Opening the safe with my fingertips inside my shirt, I take all the money he has. I leave everything else so it looks as if this is all that’s ever been in it.

I’ve planned getting my mother and I away for so long, and thought about every way it could happen. Death was absolutely on the table, just not hers. With everything I need to survive for now, I make my way back out to where my mother lay.

“I wish I could give you what you deserve, Mom, but I can’t let the cops find me, and I don’t think I can pull off lying like I just found them. I wanted him dead. I wanted them dead. Not you. Never you. I love you, Mom. With everything I am, I love you.”

With a parting kiss to my fingertips, raised out toward her but not touching, I leave the house that killed my mother.

* * *

Word got out about my mother, stepfather, and stepbrothers. I was waiting to be found and questioned, but it never came. I was ready to pretend. I’d been practicing what I would say and how to make it seem like I hadn’t been living at home. It turns out I didn’t need to do that. That slimy jackass had somehow already killed me. When the papers came out documenting their deaths, I learned that I was already dead. I’m a ghost. One who is now screwed over even in that asshole’s demise. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. I couldn’t stay out in the streets for the rest of my life. I needed to be able to do something with my life.

The answer came shortly after I learned about my own fate. A kid my age was out on the streets due to his drug addiction. He managed to have everything he needed to start his life over, but he didn’t want to do that. He’d told me there was nothing worth starting over for. The one thing he wanted in life, he couldn’t have. All he had was what he put in his veins, paid for by who he allowed in his body.

I did what I could to keep him safe. I tried to help get clean. I did it slowly and thought it was working, but I guess not. One day, he asked me to watch his bag. The same bag that had everything documenting who he was in it. It was ballsy to carry this information around, but on a somewhat sober night, he told me people only look in the bags for drugs or money. They don’t care about a random piece of paper.

Sadly for him, his last hit was his absolute last, and that random piece of paper became my lifeline.

While he became John Doe, I became him. I took everything I needed and got a new ID, and once I had that in hand, I made my way to the recruitment center. The dead version of me truly was dead now and I was someone new. Someone with a real chance of starting over.

At least for a little while.