Claimed by the Mafia King

I WAS TWELVE WHEN I HAD MY FIRST BITTER TASTE OF LIFE.I was from a middle-class family. My mother struggled to make ends meet. My father, on the other hand, worked to make our lives more unbearable each day. If his family weren’t the problem, his women were. He was my father, but I hated him.

The situation at home made me grow up faster in my mind. Still, it was not until the sixteenth of April that I knew what it meant to live as a poor and struggling child in a world where people experiencing poverty had so little say and could only afford to have a little dignity.Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive © material.

As a Catholic, I attended the stations of the cross all twelve years of my life, and apart from the usual responses the crowd was meant to give, some other words stuck in my head.

The one I loved the most and could never forget was that of Christ when the priest would, in his bass voice, say, ‘Your will is yours, and no force on earth and none in hell can take away your will.’I loved to hear that part a lot while I was younger, but it soon got to a time where it hurt me to listen to it because I no longer wanted my will to be mine; I wanted someone to take it from me. I wanted someone to lead me while I followed because my thoughts always seemed wrong, and my will, though mine, felt like it wasn’t.

Maybe I didn’t grow up as fast as I wanted to believe; I think what happened was that the situation at home broke me. It made me feel hollow, tiny, and helpless_ feelings, which were attributed more to grown-ups.

I had to continue living. I lived by dreaming and imagining fairy tales and beautiful princes who were selfless and handsome.

I watched my mom daily while she left the house to do all kinds of business. She would leave before we went to school, and by the time we were back, she would be there waiting for us. She worked rard. Too hard. So I tried to do all she asked of me even though they were not pleasing.I did them because I appreciated the effort she continued to make so that we could live a comfortable life even though my dad did little to nothing.

My mum soon became close friends with someone from the upper class; Lisa was her name. She was about 5’5 ft tall, plump, and fair. She was also pregnant with her second child when they met.

She soon became a friend my mom trusted and wanted us to please, so she would like my family enough to help us. ‘We don’t have money; we need all the help from people like her.’ My mum would tell me. I didn’t blame her; I never did. She was just a mother who wanted her children to live a good life.

If only she knew what the friendship would cost her shortly maybe she would never have been friends with Lisa in the first place.But none of us can see the future, and that remains one of man’s various inadequacies A few months into their relationship, Aunt Lisa let me and my two brothers stay in her house for a week.

It was on the third day of that week that my life changed when I was asked to sleep in the same room as my brothers and Aunt Lisa’s husband’s nephew, Ken.

At first, I was pretty unsure of the idea, but I trusted him and my brothers. However, the reason for my scepticism wasn’t entirely based on trust but because, ab initio, I was not too fond of change.

The earlier two days in her house saw me sleeping in her daughter’s room, Bella, who was about six years younger than me. We were best of friends, and she was adorable. She had this beautiful brown skin and big eyes that went well with her oval face. I loved her more than I loved the fact that her parents were wealthy.

Bella’s room was the type of room a young girl like me would love to sleep in. It was small but beautiful.

There was a small bed just opposite the door and a huge wardrobe at the side of the room where all her clothes, books, and teddy bears were hidden. I was a bit jealous of her as I never got to have so many teddy bears and books_ fairy tales to be precise while growing up.

The window was by the side of her bed, covered with pink flowery cotton; the room was also painted pink, my favourite colour at that time. The rug was pink, and her bedsheets and pillowcases were also pink. It was the kind of room I saw myself having in my dreams.

When no one was looking, I would look at my reflection in the vanity mirror, which was placed by the side of the door, and wish I had the life she had.

You often hear the word broken, Don’t you? But have you ever felt it so explicitly that you could be used in defining it, in describing it? When it happens that every time you try to get fixed, you are broken, over and over and over again until it becomes a part of you, the feeling of brokenness.

That you cannot live without the feeling of emptiness because it is the only feeling you comprehend.

I sound like a poet, right? That’s exactly how I felt as I lay on the bed, frozen. My body was there, but my mind was not. It had again wandered too far away, leaving my body at risk.

Back to reality, I understood what my body was clamouring to tell me and what my mind was trying to prevent when I had felt uncomfortable about sleeping with my brothers and Ken.