Allena couldn't remember a time before where she'd really been in control.
As a child, she'd been her parents little toy, an experiment more then their child. They'd dressed her up in pretty clothes and taken her to all the social events they could fit into their calendar. She'd had to stand by as she was shown off to the people her parents were trying to impress (her parents called them friends, but even her young mind knew that those people were really just vultures looking for their next meal.)
Her only refuge were her studies, quiet nights alone in the den with books that would never give her anything but knowledge. She was a particularly bright child- her vocabulary at age ten surpassed that of most people twice and even thrice her age. And when her parents discovered that, they used it to propel them even higher.
That was her childhood- always in the spotlight, but always alone.
She read all manners of books to try and escape the lonely chasm that had become her life. She'd dream that one day, she'd be the girl swept off her feet and taken away from her hell (she believed that hell was a very real place, although her parents had never enforced any kind of religion.) She tried to believe that one day, she'd experience the world through the end of her own fingertips instead of through the pages of a book.
She was what her parents considered a "triple-threat"- she had money, brains, and, what they considered most important, beauty. She'd taken after her mother, and it became more and more obvious as she grew older. She was a small, graceful young woman with jewel-blue eyes set into a heart shaped face. Many a night her mother would brush her hair back from her face and tell her, "One day, you'll be the talk of the town. Then some rich, powerful young man will fall in love and sweep you away."
She were right, and her life took a turn for the worse.
Behind the glittering, beautiful world that Allena was forced into, there was a darker, dirtier place. Crime organizations ruled the underground- and most of the above ground as well. Gangs ran rampant in a never-ending war that decimated neighborhoods and terrorized cities. And the leader of one of the most powerful gangs in the city, maybe even in the world, had taken a keen interest in the young prodigy.
It was all business. Her parents, more then delighted by his power and wealth, were more then willing to overlook his crime affiliations and hand their daughter over. And thus, the miserable child that was Allena Perry became the miserable adult known as Allena Duke.
She had just turned 18.
It was a beautiful, terrible life. Allena was given everything a woman could want. She had every little trinket and toy that would have made any other woman swoon. There were women to wait on her and make sure she never had to lift a finger. And every single night, she found herself alone.
The only thing given to her that she really enjoyed was the vast library he had provided for her- at her request, of course. He undermined her brilliance, didn't believe that women should be- could be- educated. But for all his talk he wasn't one to deny her anything she requested. Maybe that was his own twisted version of love, or maybe he believed he could buy her happiness just like he bought his own. She began to believe that was all love was- the deeper the love, the higher the price tag.
By the time she reached the age of 21, she'd begun to slip into depression. She'd curl up in her library and watch as the tears fell onto the pages of whatever book she had picked up and smeared the words, and she couldn't even be bothered to care. Life had become meaningless.
It was then that he decided to saunter into her life.