Page 3 of All Your Firsts

Two

Rosie

The landscape outside Gage’s car window transforms from the bustling city of Chicago to the vast expanse of Illinois, disappearing before I can fully take it in. I’ve been so wrapped up in my head—between the worry my father was following us and what leaving with Gage could mean.

I glance upward as we pass a sign, and I see the words ‘Welcome to Indiana’ against a backdrop of black night.

I whip my head toward Gage. “What are we doing here?”

“Where were you planning to run off to before I stopped you?”

I bite the inside of my cheek as I contemplate my answer. He doesn’t need to know I had planned on just winging it.

My plan was not to have a plan at all. My whole life has been planned out. I wanted to embrace the freedom, feel it sweep me away and shape my authentic identity.

Everyone has always known me as Rosie, the straight-A student. The goal-oriented good girl, as praised by my teachers. Rosie, the well-mannered and obedient daughter. My peers havelabeled me a prude on multiple occasions, albeit not to my face, as nobody would dare disrespect a Mafia princess. But I’ve heard the whispers.

I don’t want to be confined to a box of labels that I never chose. Mafia Princess being at the top of the list of labels.

I desire freedom.

To embrace mistakes, forge cherished memories, and assertively reject what doesn’t benefit me.

I reject the notion of being a passive vessel for my future husband’s desires with no sense of my own identity.

“Just to a friend’s house,” I say with a shrug.

“Alexa?”

“No.”

He must consider me stupid. Running to my best friend is the first place everyone would look.

“Then where?”

“I-I don’t know.”

“It’s not safe for you to just leave without saying a word. Our family has enemies everywhere. You should know this better than anyone after you almost got kidnapped.”

My head snaps toward Gage, my eyes widening in disbelief as he resurrects one of my deepest buried emotional scars.

“Don’t you ever bring that shit up to me.”

The thought of the day I was almost kidnapped from my art class at nine years old makes me want to throw up or have a panic attack, maybe both. I’ve prayed to forget that day, and his mention of it pisses me off. From time to time, I’m reminded of that day through unsettling nightmares that continue to haunt me.

Guards are part of our everyday life, and I didn’t think twice as I walked out of my afternoon class and trailed a man in a black suit. The moment he directed me toward the rear of the building, I could sense something was off. I looked up, but the guy staring back at me was a stranger, and before I knew it, it was too late. As his massive hand closed around my arm with a death grip, I couldn’t help but scream in pain.

The bullet fired and struck the back of the target’s head silently, but its impact echoed through the man’s body. He let me go and collapsed to the ground with a resounding thud, taking my canvas painting with him.

That was the day I witnessed the grim spectacle of a life being snuffed out before my very eyes.

The day I realized our life, our family, was devoid of happy colors. It was filled with tragic blacks and ugly reds, just like the man’s blood that stained my canvas painting as he bled out onto it.

From that day on, I felt the suffocating grip of my freedom being reined in. I wasn’t able to join art class, ballet class, or any other class I had been looking forward to.

Two teachers, one specializing in art and the other in dance, came to my house for private lessons. The only time I could escape the confines of the property was during school hours, but always with strict supervision. This lasted until I went to college, and even then, I had constant surveillance. What twenty-one-year-old wants their every move to be monitored?

“It’s the truth, Ro. You shouldn’t have just left without saying a word.”

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