On The Border - Marry Him Or Die

2.3

Angelina’s POV

I stepped out of the bus and hurried towards my house, day dreaming about the best cup of hot chocolate that my mom was well known for making during these harsh, cold winter days.

Winter in Seattle was always a constant cover of clouds, thunderstorms, and non stop rain, and I adored it like that.

You would always find me walking under the rain without an umbrella because of my passion to feel the rain pouring down on me.

Even if it ends up giving me pneumonia, I’d still do it.

Today was an exception though. It wasn’t a rainy day, but it was still pretty cold. I clutched my black leather jacket around myself tighter as I rounded the corner, went through the building’s front door, entered the hallway, and hurried to get my keys out of my small purse to get inside our cozy small apartment on the ground floor of an old ratty building.

We were poor. We didn’t have a lot of money to spend on living in a high end apartment or buying luxurious things we wished we had but didn’t really need to survive. We barely got by from month to month.

My name is Angelina, and as if a week ago, I am officially eighteen years old, but I’m still used to telling people that I’m seventeen. I was born and raised in Seattle my whole life. I only had one person in this whole world and that is my mother, Hope.

Hope, just like her name; a fake name but I’ll get to that in a minute, was full of hope and happiness my entire childhood life. Despite her struggles to provide for me at the beginning of our lives, and despite everything she’s been through, she always remained positive. She tried to give me the best childhood a single mom could ever provide for their child and she freaking nailed it. She was my age when she had me. Thinking about it now, I would be pretty freaked out if I was about to bring a child into this world and raise her all alone, without any help and with only a high school degree. But she never considered getting rid of me. Even through the disgusting, cruel circumstances of the way she became pregnant with me, she still loved me with her whole heart. She never resented me nor saw my monster of a father whenever she looked at me.

She never hid the truth of why I never had a father my whole life growing up. The first time I asked her about him was in kindergarten. She didn’t lie to me, she told me the truth from the beginning. While the real truth was too dark for a five year old to handle, she still managed to tell the truth using simple, friendly words that would satisfy the curiosity of my five year old self. She said my father was a very bad man and that if he ever found us, he would make mommy go away and never come back again, and then he would take me far far away.

That was enough to get me to stop asking questions about him for a very long time.

That was until I turned fifteen. My mom decided that I was old enough to handle the whole gruesome story of how I came into this life and still be able to live my life without any regrets or self loathing for myself or for how I ruined mom’s life before it even started.

She told me her story because she didn’t want me to live oblivious to the monsters roaming this earth without being aware of them and of what they might do if they ever sought us out.

My biological father, is named Damian Zade, a very powerful and evil man that is known in all of Canada as the king of the mafia there.

My mom; originally from Canada and with the birth name Pamela, knew my father when she worked as a maid in his palace. Her own father, who was working as a hit man for Zade asked him to hire his daughter; my mom, who was eighteen at the time to work in his palace because he didn’t want her to continue her education. He wanted her to start earning money so he doesn’t have to provide for her anymore and look out for his own damn self. Her mother had died when she was ten years old after she suffered from an aggressive form of cancer and so it was only her and her father who was heartless and cruel towards her.

My mom, left with no other choice, agreed to work as a maid in that palace, anything to get away from her father who never cared about her.

She lived in the palace for almost four months, until she ran into my father while she was serving him and his men dinner one night.

That’s when he noticed her for the first time. It took only one glance at her, and her whole life changed course and was built upon that short encounter.

Without going into disgusting, gut wrenching details, My father; being the asshole who believes he's entitled to do whatever the hell he wants, raped her once and then discarded her like she meant nothing to him, like what he did to her meant nothing. He left her with a scarring, excruciating memory and acted like he did nothing. Asked her to go back to her room, continue her work in the palace, and never mention this to anyone or he will put a bullet through her head.

She had no problems doing that. She was left broken and hurt for losing her virginity in the most gruesome way but she was actually glad it was only a one time thing and that he wasn’t the kind of man to keep using the same woman over and over again until she becomes totally broken and ruined in every way.

It was one time, but that’s all it took to turn her world upside down.

Two months after the rape, she figured out she was pregnant with me. No one knew what that vile creature did to her, she didn’t have anyone in that place that she could ever trust.

With no one to advise her or help her, she took matters into her own hands and fled the palace one night when Zade was away on a business trip. She left no evidence of her pregnancy when she ran away and she didn’t think anyone would make a big deal out of her disappearance and definitely not my father for she was nobody to him, just a woman he fucked one night and kicked out. She was certain he didn’t even remember her face nor her name. She thought she could get away, but she was wrong.

She fled Toronto, where she was born and raised her entire life and resided in a small Canadian town in the middle of no where. She thought she was safe after that. She thought no one would care about her enough to look for her.

She stayed in that town for three months, working at a small boutique as a dressmaker. That’s how she learned how to sew clothes professionally. She worked day and night trying to master that skill because she knew she needed to be good in order to take care of us and because no one will be there to help her raise me and provide for me other than her.

She was five months pregnant with me, her belly showing, when she ran into her father who was scouring the country looking for her and for the reason she ran away from Toronto.

One look at her, and he figured out the whole story without her having to even open her mouth to speak a word.

Being a heartless hit man without a soft bone in his body, she knew what was going to happen to her. Her father was going to drag her back with him to Zade and make use of the situation. He was going to use her pregnancy to make a fortune for himself for he was sure that Zade would do anything to protect his child and keep it under his wings.

My mom thought otherwise though. Deeming her father useless and pretty delusional about his stupid plans for them, she took matters into her own hands again and tried to save us both.

She was positive that Zade would probably kill her along with her baby just to get rid of them because she wasn’t of royal origins and he probably wouldn’t want to have a child from a lowlife like her. It would be no problem to him, he was a cold blooded killer. Another option was that he would lock her up until she delivered, take the baby from her, and kill her right after she gives birth, and that was something she would never allow to happen. A child raised in that kind of life would doom the child’s life before it was even born. She would rather die than have her child raised by that asshole, and let’s not forgot that that man has countless enemies that would do anything to get a hold of his child if they caught wind that it existed just to get back at him for the monstrosities he committed and is probably still committing until this very moment.

She managed to escape from her father’s clutches, barely, and decided that the entire country wasn’t safe anymore if she wanted her secret baby to stay a secret.

So she fled to the US.

She was absolutely sure that her father will go back running to Zade and inform him that she ran away with his child and Zade will see that as a huge betrayal and will never stop hunting for us both.

So, new country called for new identities. She changed her name from Pamela to Hope, claiming the identity of a man’s wife who was never pronounced dead but was very much dead. That man who is supposedly my official father on paper stayed with mom until she gave birth to me, gave me his last name, and then was asked by mom to never contact us again. Of course he took a very large sum of money for that favor and disappeared, never to be heard from ever again.

My mom was clever enough never to reveal her story to that man, furthermore making sure that our true identities stay hidden at all costs.

With her identity hidden, we settled down peacefully in Seattle and lived our small, simple life away from any sort of trouble.

She worked her ass off, day and night, a dressmaker at a very well known clothing design company, and made me in turn fall in love with fashion design myself. At thirteen, When I was old enough to accompany her to work without causing her any troubles with her boss, I started learning everything there was about fashion. A lot of the employees there helped me out a lot and taught me everything I needed to pursue my dreams of becoming a fashion designer one day.

Graduating high school at seventeen only, I managed to convince the CEO of that clothing design company to provide me with a fully paid scholarship on the company’s expenses by blowing her mind off with my designs and promising to work for them exclusively after graduation. I knew it was my only chance to continue my education and pursue my dreams, because my mom would never be able to afford the expensive tuition fees for fashion design college.

And what do you know, the CEO agreed to help us out because she was convinced that I had a great talent for fashion and that one day, I will be very famous for my designs.

While my life story and the way I was brought into this world should have broken me and made me hate my life, it did the exact opposite. It made me cling to live my life to the fullest, it made me appreciate and love my mom more than anyone in this whole world because of the way she did everything she can to protect me from my father and his enemies.

So here I am, an eighteen year old girl, a freshman fashion design student who just became a sophomore after officially acing all my exams, a part time dressmaker in a clothing company that provided me with my dream, and a pretty kick ass martial arts expert.

It was around the time my mom told me the truth about everything she suffered through on her own, when I was fifteen, that I decided that I want to be able to stand up for myself and have a fighting chance to protect myself from any asshole who ever tries to take advantage of me and touch me the way my mom was touched by that bastard who I will never consider to be my father.

Three years of training in martial arts, I consider myself to be quite good at holding my own against huge men, twice my size.

That was my life and I loved every second of it.

We were poor, and I had no problems with that. Our lives were simple but it was still the best life I could ever dream of having. Just me and my mom who wasn’t just a mom to me, she was my best friend, my sister, my everything. It was the best life because the alternative to that life would have been a dark, terror filled nightmare.

And I had no idea as I entered into our warm house seeking out my mother, that I was entering into the beginning of that dreadful nightmare that I never thought I would live in after everything my mom did to protect me from it.