Page 1 of The Ripper

PROLOGUE

STARTING ANEW

ARELLA

9 years ago

I died.

Not literally, though some would have argued that the freezing cold I exuded lately could have meant that I was as close to the afterlife as a breathing human could ever be.

So, I wasn’t dead per se, but rather just… touched by death, after having witnessed it one too many times. That’s why I decided to delete the part of me that crumbled on a field at seventeen.

No birth certificate, no medical records, no nothing.

Dead. Buried. Forgotten.

Erased from existence.

The girl I’d been, up until three weeks ago when I received my new paperwork, was gone. I would never repeat her name, never speak of her, never think of her ever again.

As I stood in line for border control in the Boston Logan International Airport, clutching the new passport in my hand, I was overcome with excitement.

I opened it again, rereading my new name, excitement taking root inside me, flooding my body.

Arella Santino, nineteen, freshman at Harvard Medical School, with a scholarship, no less.

The name still felt strange to my tongue, even after having repeated it hundreds of times. I rehearsed introducing myself in the mirror, the smile I was going to display, the body language. I had everything planned down to the last detail, so that nothing could stand in the way of my rebirth.

It was a lie, but I wanted it to turn into the best lie ever told.

And maybe one day, that lie would turn into the truth.

And so, when I thought about who I was going to become, one singular thing came to mind.

Warmth.

I wanted to leave the cold behind and be warm again, to have the ability to let people in while applying the lessons I had learned, to show kindness and be gentle to everyone deserving of it. I wanted to be helpful, selfless.

I wanted to save people, preserve life, and cherish it, because it was a fragile little thing. Here one second, gone in the next.

Arella was my salvation. She was the ‘me’ I wanted to be, had to be, needed to be, and I was going to work on her until my actual dying breath, because she was my last chance at actual life.

My last hope.

When I gave the passport to the man at the counter, he smiled at me, and I smiled back, brightly, happily.

“Welcome to Boston, Miss Santino,” the officer said as he gave me back my passport.

“Thank you,” I answered with a smile, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear as I took the papers back.

With a curt nod, I passed the counter and headed towards the luggage pick-up zone. I looked around while I waited for my suitcase to turn up, my eyes settling on the man across from me, who seemed out of place in the sea of colorful people.

He wore black from head to toe, every piece of skin visible being covered in tattoos, built like a mountain, tall and commanding looking. But it wasn’t his size or his darkness that intrigued me, it was the linear scar that stained his face. It started from his left brow, diagonally cut down his nose, and stopped right about the corner of his lip, as if someone took a knife and haphazardly carved him. I wondered why. I wondered what had happened to him.

Was he military?

Was he a professional fighter?

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