Page 29 of Bad for You

We simply stare at one another, and although I’m saddened that Lenny looks at me with hatred in his eyes, I don’t regret what I did. It’s either eat or be eaten, and I soon realize that I would, that Ihavebetrayed the one I love.

“Daddy’s proud, baby girl.”

That voice is familiar.

But why?

It comforts but disturbs me all in the same breath, and the fact eludes that I just heard my father’s voice.

I don’t know if it’s his, or maybe I have finally succumbed to the voices inside my head. Regardless, I know that I was reborn tonight.

I was reborn into who I was always destined to become.

SEVENTEEN YEARS OLD

“Ci stai provando?”

Franklin doesn’t appreciate my sass and charges toward me, swinging his sword like he’s in some B-grade martial arts movie. But like always, he fails to connect with me as I easily dodge him.

“Too slow, old man.”

Insult someone’s pride—works like a charm.

He should know better. He’s been my sparring partner for years. He’s taught me all I know. But the thing he never anticipated was that I would eventually outfight him.

I came here a broken, scared little girl, apiccolaas Gianna still calls me, but now, I’m an uncontrollable force that will stop at nothing to get what I want.

And what I want is a simple request.

What I want is to find my mother. I don’t know what I would say to her when I do, though. I guess I just want to look at her eyes…look her in the eye as I cut out her heart, just as she did to me.

I’m not being melodramatic. Thanks to Franklin, I know how to do such things.

The second thing is to burn Saint Maria’s Orphanage to the ground, but not before torturing Father Merry in the most creative of ways.

Again, thanks to Franklin, I can give a man a very artistic Colombian necktie in ten seconds.

But I would savor my time with Father Merry just as he did with me. Just the thought has my body tingling in excitement.

Once upon a time, these things were my main reasons for enduring the tests Gianna laid down for me. For years, she fed me. She schooled me. And in return, she pushed me to my breaking point—until I no longer could feel my body physically and metaphorically because her grand plan was soon to be revealed.

She adopted me all those years ago for one purpose and one purpose only—to be a killer.

I’m Gianna’s secret weapon. No one suspects a young girl to be able to do what I’ve been trained to do. However, I wait for her to reveal my purpose in her grand scheme because I know she has something big planned.

I say I’m ready.

But she says that I’m not.

So I wait.

I train.

And this is the reason I stay here. I cannot go until I get what I want.

And pay no heed to the longing I feel wheneverheignores me, which is all the time.

This brings me to my last and most important want.

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