Stella is a 17 year old trained assassin. She has lived an extreme life where she has been trained for a particular purpose that requires control, stealth, practicality, ruthlessness and a lack of emotion. Then something unexpected happens - she falls in love. This is her story.
The story is about a damaged girl with a secret history that gradually unfolds. Stella is trained to be an assassin from an early age in a secluded school called The Academy, run by a fraternal organisation. She has lived an extreme life where she has been trained for a particular purpose that requires control, stealth, practicality, ruthlessness and a lack of emotion. Then something unexpected happens - she falls in love. This is her journey; exploring new emotions, and battling to somehow integrate her two very separate lives.
At first she was cold, ruthless, able to compartmentalise her thoughts and feelings and emotions, trained to be cold-blooded in all that she does. After she falls in love with Samuel a 17 year old school student, her whole life changes. She is caught up between two different worlds. With him she tries to deal with true attraction, with tenderness – both given and received. She knows what would happen once the Academy learns about her secret; however, she would do anything to protect this love.
Prologue
The Orphanage
South of England
2005
The night I became my true self was the night before my 8th birthday. I was in an orphanage in the South of England. I was not left at the doorstep; I was handed in by my own mother without so much as a backward glance when I was about 2 years of age.
I knew my date of birth, because a couple of months ago, I sneaked into the office and checked my adoption details. I found out some important information about myself. My own mother who left me here, had filled in a form. It said her name was Annabel Johnston. She was a young, single mother, no more than 20. The paper did not have any information about who my father was and there were a lot of printed words on it that my little mind had difficulty in understanding. However, I saw that the consent form had her signature at the bottom of the paper and I knew from that point in time that I became the responsibility of the orphanage.
I kept asking the same question every single night when everyone went to bed: ‘Why? Why didn’t she want me?’ Maybe she found me ugly. The children here kept telling me I was. They thought I had freaky eyes. They didn’t look human, the icy bluish colour would more suit a wolf than a girl. Apart from my eyes I looked normal like the rest of the children, starved body, short, brown hair and fair skin. They kept our hair short because it made it easy to manage. I didn’t have my mother’s white skin.
It was a rainy November, brown leaves were mushy on the ground in the garden. We were not allowed to go out in case we got sick, died of pneumonia and caused them a lot of trouble completing paperwork. It was a crowded orphanage without enough staff. The rules were harsh and the carers were harsher. The children learnt to be invisible really quickly once they were admitted to this godforsaken place.
I was sleeping as peacefully as you could in a cot bed with 20 other children, including 2 babies, on the second floor of the orphanage. I remembered some of the children preferred to sleep in the same bed just to keep warm. The heating was never on and it got very cold.
One of the night wardens was doing his nightly walk. They did this at regular intervals until 1 in the morning and then God knew what they did afterwards.
Thursday nights were always bad. The warden who was on duty Thursdays, almost always took a child out in the middle of the night. The next day the boy or the girl, it did not matter, was always covered in bruises. Sometimes they had difficulty in walking for days. They always ended up with dark, sad, dead eyes, constantly crying. I called them the ‘lost ones’.
It was a Thursday night. When I went to my bed I just prayed as much as I could that it would be a different warden that night. The room was freezing as usual. I could hear some children’s teeth chattering. I breathed out and it steamed in front of my eyes. I decided to keep my socks on. I did not normally feel the cold as much as the others, but I did not want to risk getting sick. I was wearing my pyjamas and I pulled my socks over my pyjama bottoms. I put the sheet and the thin blanket over my head. It was warm enough. I closed my eyes and fell asleep praying that it would be a peaceful night.
It was the same night warden. He was a big, burly guy. I heard his heavy foot steps first in my sleep. The floorboards were creaking. He had a torch in his hand which he enjoyed flashing into your eyes while you were deep in sleep. He walked past a couple of cot beds, I had pulled my blanket on top of me but I was wide awake, listening to every single sound. The soft snoring of the babies… The boy in the corner bed, who was taken 2 weeks ago, was pretending to sleep but he was shaking in fear in his bed. I could smell the acrid stink of his urine. The warden went past his bed and suddenly halted at the foot of my bed. He took three more steps and waited as if to check if anyone was awake. At that moment, I knew it was going to be me. I would have to go with him and there was nothing I could do about it. He turned towards me, crouched by my side and with his right hand he covered my mouth, whispering
‘Get up’.
His breath stank. His dirty hand was covering my mouth and with his other hand he was pushing my right shoulder down. My face was squashed under his big palm and breathing was getting difficult. I thought of biting his hand, but I knew I wasn’t going to achieve anything.
Once the warden made sure I did not have enough air to scream, he moved his right hand onto my left shoulder and pulled me out of the bed. I did not fight, there was no point. I had seen other children trying to scream or fight, but nothing had happened, he always got his way with them. No one came to help. Everyone was scared. Most were awake but pretended to be asleep. Whatever he did with the children he had taken, this had been going on for a long time. Nothing would have happened if I had screamed. My own mother had abandoned me with these people. I was by myself and would always be. During my time there I learnt to be invisible. I tried to follow the rules in spite of their harshness. But tonight’s events proved that you could not escape. I was not invisible. The best thing I could do was to face my own destiny.
He pushed me to the floor and told me to follow him quietly. I didn’t have time to wear my slippers. I followed his footsteps until we reached the end of the corridor. It was dark. He put the code in and opened the metal door. We walked down a long corridor and descended to the first floor. I had never been to this side of the building. We came to a sitting area. The lights were on here. The floor was carpeted, there were two worn armchairs and a sofa. There was also an old small kitchen unit in the corner. A TV sat on the other side of the room. It looked like orphanage staff used this room for relaxing. The first thing I noticed was the warmth. The heating was on. Attached to the sitting room there was another room. He told me to go in there and wait. I turned and faced him
‘Why?’
He slapped my face and pushed me in and then locked the door behind me. It was a small carpeted room with a single bed in the corner. It was the room where the night wardens slept. I was wearing my pyjamas and socks. Frantically I looked around to find an escape route but the only window was locked. The next thing I did was to search for a tool which I could use to defend my self against whatever or whoever came from the locked door. There was nothing that could be used as a weapon. It was a very basic room, the bed had a metal frame. I tried to push one out. The metal was cold and rusty. It looked impossible to break one of the bars with my little hands. The locked window was overlooking the garden. Unfortunately it had metal shutters. I tried to break the lock by hitting it with my hands. It didn’t move at all. I sat down on the bed. There was nothing covering the sticky mattress and I could feel the springs under me.
Suddenly, I heard voices, one of the voices belonged to the warden, the other one was also a man. They were discussing money. The warden did not sound happy and wanted more. He was telling the other one:
‘You left so many marks on the child last week, he needed stitches. If I start taking them to hospital every time we do business, the bastards will arrest me. I’ve already to pay a couple of nurses to keep quiet.’
The man did not want to pay more, he said that they had a deal. The warden was going on about me being a virgin. At the end, the other man gave a phlegmy cough, it sounded like they struck a deal.
Then I heard his footsteps, he was coming in. I was so scared, I could feel tears running down my face and my hands shaking. I heard the distinct sound of a door unlocking, somebody walking in and locking it again. I was sitting on the bed. I lifted my head to look at the stranger. He was a middle aged man with lines and wrinkles on his face. His hair was long, grey and matted as though it hadn’t been washed for a long time. He had a cigarette in his mouth. I stared at his hands, they were old with yellow stains. His nails were dirty. He slowly took his jacket off and sat on the bed next to me. The springs made a squeaky sound under his weight. He took a long drag of his cigarette, blew the smoke out towards my face. I felt like coughing but I didn’t. He asked my name but I didn’t respond. He raised his hand and held my face:
‘You have got queer eyes’
The cigarette still in his mouth, he pushed me towards the bed so hard I hit the bed post. My temple started bleeding. I tasted my own dripping blood. He then held my legs and pulled me down on the mattress. He wanted to pull my pyjama bottoms down.
I managed to kick his face with my left foot and I heard his nose cracking. That drove him mad. He punched my face so hard I thought my head would explode and at that moment I lost it. I felt a surge of energy going in and around my self. My whole body was vibrating with it. I was not in control of my body or my mind. I just embraced the sensations. I held his hands in mine and squashed them, hearing the bones crunching one by one. Then I pushed him to the floor. He stared at me as if I was a wild animal. I stood up and walked towards him slowly. Blood was running down my face. He tried to get up and raised his now deformed hand to smack my face again. This time I attacked him. I bit his throat with my bare teeth. He fell down with me on top. I wanted to feel his blood in my mouth, I craved the metallic taste. I bit his thyroid cartilage, tried to rip it. His cigarette fell on the floor. I then bit into his jugular vein. Oh the taste of his blood was so nice, delicious. I didn’t let go. I was sitting on his hips holding his arms. All this time he tried to grab me in order to throw me away and it was getting more and more difficult every second. I was so strong with all this power surging through me and he was getting weaker by the second as he was losing so much blood.
When he was lifeless, his head fell. I stood back on my feet and looked around the room. His blood was pooling around his head on the carpet. It was then I noticed some smoke. The cigarette was burning the carpet, the small flame got bigger. Now the fire was licking the curtains of the small room. I remembered that the key was in one of his pockets, I searched both and found it in the left. I walked towards the door to unlock it. My feet were wet. My socks were all soaked in his blood.
The night warden was nowhere to be seen. I walked towards the kitchen unit, checked the drawers and bingo! discovered a box of matches. I walked to the windows. I lit a match and set the curtains in the staff room on fire too, went to the sofa and lit 2 more matches and left them there. By the time I was on the ground floor near the main entrance, the staff floor was on fire, flames were covering the building. I hit the fire alarm button and left that damnable place through the main door, the same door through which I first entered this cursed orphanage with my mother holding my hand 6 years before.
Now it was in flames.
I started walking towards the main gate. I passed through the front garden, the dead leaves of autumn were squelching under my feet. I heard an explosion. It was probably the gas connection to the kitchen unit. I felt as light as a feather as if I could fly away with invisible wings. Approaching the main gate I realized a metal chain was used to secure it. I was not bothered, I knew I would be able to break it with my bare hands. I pushed the gates open. The blood was caked on my face, mine mixed with the man’s. I licked my lips and savoured the metallic taste.
There was a black car waiting outside the gates. The driver casually stepped out and opened the back door for me.
‘Ms Stella I was sent to pick you up and take you home, please get in the car’.
I looked at the man and then the car. I was confused, but having no other choice I got in.
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