Seven

Chapter 77

LILIANNA'S POV

In the twenty years I have spent on this earth I don't think I've ever felt fully content. In the small things for sure; I was content with my mediocre high school career. I wasn't popular, I was occasionally bullied but wasn't deemed a nerd or targeted for a low social ranking. I suppose that very averageness of my existence in high school gave me time to push myself academically so I could sit just above average with my peers in university. But still, even in my first year of studies I wasn't feeling that whole complete and centred feeling one is meant to when feeling content with life. For a period I wondered if I had needed more friends, wondered if my lack of fulfilment was because I needed to be prettier or skinnier. Maybe the insufficient gap could be filled by a boyfriend? I tried a lot of those things. I immersed myself in college parties to meet new friends, ate healthy, wore make up every. Single. Day. And began a meaningless sexual relationship with a fraternity boy who showed me that it most certainly wasn't an emotionally inept male that I needed to fill the void. It seemed like no matter what I did I was just never quite satisfied with my life.

When my grandmother Mera first got sick I self reflected a lot about what I was doing and how I was using my time. I looked at the things that made me happy - like learning and studying history, Tiffany - who was my only closest friend I had made in my life at the time - and my grandmother. I questioned why these were the only things that stood out to me that really made me happy in life and came to the conclusion that my lack of family, lack of parents and lack of knowledge of who I was and where I came from was the result of both my interests and that ever present inability of feeling content.

How can one be content with themselves if they don't know who they are?

It's been fourteen years since my parents were murdered. Fourteen years of unknowingly struggling with my identity, where I came from and who I was as a person.

But now I know.

I know who my parents are, what they did, what kind of people they were. Seven's reevaluations of my parents secrets were shocking and hard to comprehend at first. I didn't want to believe it, my father a gangster and mother a double agent detective helping bad people get away with the awful crimes they committed. I had cried, a lot, and was sick to my stomach with the truth. But then I began reading my fathers journal. A recollection of the truth first hand, in his own words. My father had expressed a deep guilt for every one of his wrong doings. His struggle between what needed to be done, what could be done and what he wanted to do was evident in the scribblings over the pages. He was a gangster, and I reminded myself not to forget this very fact while reading over his pleads for forgiveness and wagers of family safety that were at stake. But I couldn't help the sense of understanding I felt while reading his journal. And after a few hours of reading there was definitely a sense of forgiveness I felt toward him.

He did what he did to protect the people he loved. Whether that be Ivan, Seven's father, or my mother and myself. The most heartbreaking thing was reading what he would write about my mother and me. He loved us, so fiercely and entirely that reading it kept sending me off into more hysterical crying. As questionable and scary as the life my parents lived they at least had each other's love. And I hope to be lucky enough to find such a love myself.

My father wrote briefly about Seven and only ever referred to him by his real name, Harry. Though he was once referenced as the Seventh Son, in celebration of his birth. He mentioned how happy Harry's parents were when he was born. How his father had shed a tear and shared a drink with mine the hour after his birth. The entry about a four year old Harry touching my mother's swollen pregnant belly in wonder stood out to me. My father noting Harry's cheeky dimpled smile when I had apparently kicked at his hand while inside my mother's stomach and how much he looked like his father Ivan when he smiled.