Family Values

My hands were covered in blood. What kind of monster would do this? Blood drained from her neck where the blade had been just moments earlier. The red flow continued to seep out onto my pants as I knelt over her body. I closed her eyelids because I couldn’t bear seeing her lifeless eyes looking back at me. She didn’t deserve this. How could this have happened?

I bent over Angela’s body and saw the watermarks from tears on her shirt. I hadn’t even realized I was crying. I couldn’t get over the shock of it all. She was coming into our apartment from the store with groceries for us to make dinner tonight unsuspecting of the killer waiting for her. She hadn’t made it far into the apartment when she was attacked. All of the food was scattered around her.

Should I pick up the groceries or should I wait for someone to arrive? Her purse’s contents were also spilled out over the floor soon to get blood on them. That’s when I saw it, her little black notebook. I wiped my hands on my pants and stood to reach over to get her purse. This notebook was full of her dreams for the future, dreams that now would never be a reality.

Angela wanted to be a fashion designer. She was working on a new line of dress designs for her firm. She was on the brink of making a name for herself and was ready to make a splash with this new line. She had been working late every night lately trying to make this line a success. I was so proud of her.

Angela and I met at a bar almost a year ago. She was doodling on a napkin then, working on some new dress idea. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. So many men that night were staring at her too but she was just staring at a napkin, perfecting her design. I decided to approach her and try to draw attention away from the napkin. Thankfully, my pickup line worked and we talked for hours that night. She shared with me what she was working on and then revealed to me a purse full of napkins with incomplete designs where she kept all her ideas. So for our first date, I showed up with flowers and this black notebook to fill with designs and dreams, an upgrade from napkin dresses.

Within just a few months, we were spending every possible moment together. I’ll admit it hasn’t always been easy for me to let people in, but Angela was different. She was infectious in that way. She was the person in my life I could be myself with and encouraged me to be a better person. We moved in together only six months after meeting. Sure, my family had been hesitant about the relationship, what family wouldn’t be? But it didn’t matter. I bought a ring a month later that I still had in my pocket, just waiting for the right time. Now that would never come.

I flipped through the notebook seeing page after page of formal dresses, business suits and trendy tops that she had been working on. On the last page of the notebook was a list of dates and their significance. All of them having to do with our relationship - when we met, first date, first kiss, saying I love you, etc. She had written it all down. I smiled, it was just like her to want to note every detail of our relationship. That was one of the things I loved most about her. She remembered to always celebrate the little moments. The most recent date was just a week ago, finally meeting my family. She had been so excited to get to know them. I had tried to put off that step in our relationship. My family is complicated. I knew that would change things and it had, just not as I expected. With both of her parents gone and her only family really being some distant cousins she hadn’t seen in years, she was looking forward to spending time with them. She wanted to belong to a family again.

I put the notebook back in her purse and tried to position it as it had been but another pouch fell out. It wasn’t something I had ever seen her carry before. I opened it up to find stacks of cash. It was $20,000 if the bank receipt was correct. I knew things had changed in the last week, but I thought she still trusted me enough that I would take care of her and wouldn’t consider running away. She had grown paranoid. She was sure someone had started following her. She was scared to talk to me about it. In a way, I understood and in a way, it only made things worse.

My cell phone rang, and I answered it.

“Is she dead?” the voice said.

“Yes.”

“We’re almost there,” and the call ended.

My brother was on his way. He didn’t need to find this money when they got here. I took the pouch and stuffed it in my emergency bag. I wasn’t sure that I really wanted to be here when he arrived. After all, it was he who ordered the hit on her life. Her paranoia was based on fact. Someone was following her, watching her every move, but they weren’t going to hurt her as long as I had a say.

A week ago, when she met my parents and brother, she left the room at one point to go to the bathroom. It’s a large house and she got lost on her way back to the dining room. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She overheard a conversation she was never meant to hear. My family does dirty business, and she learned just how dirty and how connected our family is to recent crime events. She couldn’t get past it.

I recalled the conversation we had just a few days later in our bedroom when she wanted us to run away. She told me that if I didn’t want to come with her, she would just leave herself, but I never thought she would actually do it. However, the $20,000 said otherwise. She told me how scared she was, and I tried to reassure her that if we swept this under the rug, if she could just forget what she heard, they would trust her and everything would be ok. But she couldn’t forget it. She was too good for her own good. She wanted to tip off the authorities and run. She wanted to start over away from them. And honestly, I don’t blame her. My family disgusted me too, but I was trapped, in too deep. My family was all I had ever known.

My brother told me they had bugged our bedroom after the day of the meeting. They had listened to every word of our conversation and knew she didn’t trust them, and that’s when the hit was ordered.

My only hope in this is that she didn’t see her killer. I hope the last thing she saw wasn’t me standing over her holding the murder weapon.

But that’s what I was trained to do, my entire life. My brother ordered the hits, but I had to be the monster to carry them out. I thought this time would be different. I didn’t think they would make me be the one to kill her, but I was wrong. I shouldn’t have been surprised though. It was just as much a test for me and my loyalty to the family.

My brother and his associates would be here soon to clean up the scene of the crime. I looked over at the money pouch on the table. They had no rights to it. Maybe I should just grab it and leave before they got here. Without Angela, I had nothing more to look forward to. Our relationship was the one thing I had done right until I was the one who ended it. Perhaps this was my chance to start over. This money was her final gift to me.

A knock signaled their arrival, and I let them in. He and his associates got to work. Talking wasn’t necessary when cleaning up a crime scene was a common occurrence. I left to shower and change clothes. My brother was the only one there when I came out and the place looked as if nothing had ever happened. I may have been the one to hold the blade, but he was the real killer. He was the one who said it had to be done.

“Where did they take her?” I asked.

“You know where.”

“She deserves a better place than the other criminals we take care of.”

“Disloyalty to the family is disloyalty,” he responded.

What I realized though is that she had become my family. She truly loved me. She made me want to be a better person. My family would never want me to be better not when they had trained me to kill. So I did what I was trained to do. I took the knife and killed again.

His associates would be waiting for him in the car. I called them back up and told them they missed some things cleaning as I changed coats, grabbed my bag and walked out, intentionally going out a different way from them.

While Angela and I couldn’t start over together, I would take her final gift to me and do just that. I couldn’t be the good person she needed me to be, but I would be for my next family.