A small drabble. I've been getting back into my love for the movie Death Sentence and Billy Darley. A kind of letter from the girl Billy Darley loved to him and anyone else who may ever read it.
Everyone knows Billy Darley, fierce gang leader of the most vicious gang in all of Boston. But there are few, practically none, who know the truth about the man named William Darley.
I sit here writing this for no one in particular and with no intention of getting published, I doubt any paper would print anything that may seem to sympathize with the man who had killed so many. I write this because there is no one else to, I write this to remember the man Billy Darley was and always will be to me.
He was all the things people think of him as, in public, but few knew he came home to someone each night looking tired and defeated after taking on the entire city. When he walked through that door he wasn't Billy Darley gang lord, he was just Billy.
He could switch from cold hearted killer to over the moon romantic, as shocking as it may seem. He would come home with flowers just because they caught his eye and made him think of me. He'd cook dinner on my parents wedding anniversary, father's day, and mother's day; when I would usually wake up moping about. He would never want anyone to know any of this and I would have never thought to dare tell anyone. Billy knew what to say, when to say it. When he came home with adrenaline still pumping and rage pulsing through his entire body he would never turn that anger on me, like so many of my outraged friends thought. He would just collapse on the couch and glare at the black TV screen. I'd want to give him his space but he would grab my wrist and pull me into his lap, wrapping his arms around me and resting his head on mine.
It was, as odd as even I know it sounds, the healthiest relationship I'd ever been in. I knew him before he was Billy, when we met he was just William. He was a bright kid who helped me out of a bad situation more than once. He was my protector. And he was since I was about 10 and he 12.
People will remember him as Billy Darley gang lord, but what they don't know is that he was the only man who I ever truly cared about. I saw him for he really was, he let me in when he was shutting everyone else out.
He's gone now, because of a war that went further that it should have. Neither parties involved were in the right yet I understand why each of them did what they did. It was a chain reaction, an eye for and eye but it had gone too far. Both lost everything, including their lives.
Before Billy left the morning he was killed he had nudged me awake, I woke to the smell of bacon floating through the air of the apartment. He had the brightest smile I had ever seen on his face, grinning ear to ear. I was completely thrown off, he'd made me dinner plenty of time but never breakfast, he wasn't much of a morning person.
I looked down at his lap and saw his hand was closed around something small. Looking back up my eyes met his brilliant green ones, I said nothing just gave him a questioning look. He held up his hand, opening up his palm. A small black box sat in the center of his large hand.
I became his fiancé that morning, but I'd never become Mrs. Darley.
As much as people believe they know someone through stories or even most personal encounters, they never truly know them. There are many degrees to every person that only a few people in their life would ever understand or ever get a chance to know. Me, I got to know the person Billy wanted to be but because of his father he would never be able to be outside our apartment. I understood why he was the man he had to be outside, he was a product of his environment. But no one wants to hear that. He was a murder. A drug dealer. That's all anyone cares about.
It doesn't matter that he died after being engaged for only 17 hours. It doesn't matter that he had helped her get away from her abusive father. It doesn't matter that he had hid his brother in the closest when he was a kid and their dad came home in a drunken rage and took all the beatings he dished out. It doesn't matter that he made my worse days better just by wrapping his arms around me. He remembered dates, anniversaries, everything.
Though no one will likely ever see this, someone needed to say it. There was more to Billy Darley than being a gang lord, but no one will ever see that.
You will always be with me Billy.
Your fiancé,
Cassidy Grayson