She's a fifteen-year-old girl who killed her "father" in self-defense and lied about it to the police. She thinks she has no other family members and now she has nowhere to live but the police tell her she was kidnapped from her real family when sh...
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ATHENA RUSSO:
I pull the trigger.
Blood splatters onto my face and my face is void of emotion. I can't show I care or else I get tortured.
"That's the fiftieth one today, good job," Yavok says, patting my shoulder.
I stare at the dead man.
I only do it because the last I said wouldn't do it he did it and locked me in with the dead child.
"Now, come let's move on to the next one."
He pulled me out of the room, and into the next room. A man tied up to the chair is screaming, begging to let him go.
"I'm innocent! I swear!"
Closing my eyes, I know he's telling the truth. They all do. But he will die anyway, and because of the selfish person I am, I don't want to be locked up with his dead body as it rots away for the rest of the week.
Yavok stands behind me and whispers, "Kill him. He's given me a headache."
So I do.
Not for him.
For me.
And Yavok takes me to the next room and kills the person in there. And then does it again. And again. Till I kill a hundred people. That's when he stops forcing me to kill and then forces me to train.
Once I'm done Yavok doesn't guide me to the gym, he takes me somewhere else. I don't ask him why because I'm not allowed. I'm not allowed to do anything that I want.
I look down at the floor.
If I even try to suggest anything, I get tortured. I don't want to get tortured again. I don't want to get more scars.
Yavok takes me into a familiar white room.
I can't believe I forgot it was Monday. Monday I kill and then do a simulation. I frown, I hate Mondays.
Yavol turns around and glares at me, "Do you have a problem with this?"
I don't shake my head nor do I speak.
Because I'm not allowed to do anything.
He nods, "Good. Now let's get started."
✩ ✩ ✩
I stand and watch my brothers get killed.
It's not real, I know. I've been through this a thousand times.
A knife gets thrown into Dante's chest. Marcello gets shot five times. Elijah gets tortured until he dies. A building blows up with Lorenzo inside of it. Ares dies in a house fire. Domenico dies in a car crash.
They all die.
And I'm not allowed to try to help them, to scream, to say anything, or show that I care. I have to stand there and watch the scene unfold before me.
I know what they are trying to do.
They are trying to make me not care about them so they can stop threatening to kill them to make me listen.
And it's working.
I hate that it's working.
But watching them die every Monday morning in a simulation to the point where I'm used to it, is obviously going to work.
I hope one day I get out of here.
I've accepted the fact that no one is coming to save me. If they were they would've done it a long time ago. So I can keep onto the last hope I have left and use it on me.
