Chapter 9 –The Past: A Life Shattered
Chapter 9 – The Past: A Life Shattered
"This pain is just too real
There's just to much that time cannot erase
I've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone
and though you're still with me
I've been alone all along…."
"My Immortal" - Evanescence
Julia woke up in a hospital bed. It had been difficult for her to open up her eyes. She felt sore and stiff. The air had that sanitized or chloroform-like quality that she had hated all her life. It was now making her nauseous.
Her heart began racing faster and faster trying to remember all that had happened that night. She sat up and began screaming Erik's name. She tried to get up from the bed but the pain on her shoulder was too much. She had tubes and needles stuck to her arms. Her hands and wrists were bandaged. She began crying from all of the pain she was feeling physically and emotionally.
She saw two tall figures come in into her room. She looked at their faces and she just knew what they were there for but she still had to ask.
Her lower lip was trembling. "Where is he, where is Erik?"
She looked at her father with fear but her mother's eyes gave her the answer.
Julia let out a jarring scream. She didn't want to hear anything else anymore. Julia went on screaming for a while because that was the only way she knew how to express her pain. She just wanted to die.
"Sweetheart, I'm so sorry," he began saying. "They did everything they could. They had a hard time even with you in surgery. You lost a lot of blood too."
This could not be happening she told herself. Tears were flowing from her eyes like rivers do after a major rain storm. She was inconsolable. This whole horrible episode felt like a nightmare that she couldn't wake up from it. As the realness of it all sank in, she realized that this was not a nightmare. Nightmares ended, but this was actually happening to her and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
The nurses rushed in and had to restrain her. Her shoulder hurt like hell.
Why were they restraining her for? Why where they being so mean to her? Couldn't they tell she was in physical and worse, emotional pain?
Suddenly, she felt the pinch. They were sticking a needle on her. She screamed harder and tried to release herself from being restrained. She heard her mom sobbing. A minute later or so, the medical staff finally let her loose. Her eyes got heavy again.
For the next two weeks everything was like a daze to Julia. People came and went to the hospital. Policemen came over and got her statements. It wasn't long before she figured out they had no real suspects nor anyone in custody so she quickly lost interest in talking to them.
After three weeks of being at the hospital, Julia was wheeled out of the hospital by her family. Her parents took her straight to their house. She didn't even go to Erik's funeral because she couldn't handle it. She didn't want to speak to anyone but everyone kept on calling, kept on visiting, people kept on sending her things. She couldn't care less and she found all that attention annoying. Her entire life had been destroyed in about ten minutes and nothing made sense to her anymore. She didn't have a reason to live anymore.
It was another month before she ventured back to their downtown condo. Erik had given it to her as a gift and they had lived such happy times in there. Her parents had been making trips there to get things for her and check on it. When she finally went back, her mother insisted that her brother went with her. That's when she figured out they actually never left her alone because they were afraid of what she was going to do to herself.
After a minute of being in the apartment for the first time, she broke down. Everything in that apartment was a reminder of the life she had lost. Her brother held her tight and kept telling her that someday things would be all right. Somehow Julia didn't feel that would be possible for her ever again.
That same evening, Julia had an epiphany. She recognized that Julia had died the day Erik got killed; that was the day she became Jules. Jules was the person who remembered clearly the words that were spoken: "Finish him off……You heard the orders… he wants him dead." Contrary to Julia, Jules actually had a reason to live and that was to track and kill those who had wanted Erik dead. Julia was completely defeated but Jules was very much alive and thirsty for revenge.
Jules forged a plan but to get the wheels in motion, she needed to give the appearance of normalcy in front of all of her family and friends. So, "Julia" went back to work and began to slowly socialize. Her loved ones were surprised at her miraculous recovery and stopped watching her. Jules used 'Julia' as a façade until she could locate the perpetrators. Behind everyone's back, she began going to the police to learn more about whom they were, started her physical conditioning and began going to the shooting range. She was no criminal but she was learning to think like one, to act like one.
When she felt more confident, she began venturing out to the neighborhood where it all had happened. To keep under the radar, she began wearing different attires, disguises and aliases. Seeing the scene of the crime for the first time since the shooting was really brutal on her. But every time she went back, she would force herself stop by because it made her stronger somehow.
Two detectives were particularly helpful to her: Detective Jessica Wallis and Detective Joel Silver. Both of these detectives worked in the gang unit. Wallis was a four-year veteran and Silver had been there for three years but had gone under cover. Jules was very attracted to his practical knowledge of the streets and he seemed to be very empathetic to her situation. Detective Silver seemed to understand her pain. He was the first person to point out that the attack had been carried out by a gang since he his undercover status had given him great insight to the various gangs' methods. Julia told him everything that happened that night. When she told him about where they had stopped to buy drugs, how the attack was carried and what she remembered of the men, Silver made the connection. Silver believed that the Darley's were behind the murder. Through him, Jules learned most everything she knew about the Darleys and how they controlled the area of Boston known as Rockside. Very discreetly, she began getting her hands around everything that had to do with Bones and Billy Darley who where the leaders of the gang. Jules knew that Darley senior was the brain and his son was basically the leader of the muscle part of their operations.
Through Silver, Jules also learned an extremely valuable tip. The Darleys had a rival gang that was quite strong and powerful. The head of the gang was Duke Trenor. Jules thought it would be beneficial for her to check them out and her observations confirmed everything that Silver told her. After evaluating the situation, Jules saw two major opportunities for her. Since the Trenors hated the Darleys, she could directly forge an alliance with them. The other possibility and the one most attractive to her, was to associate herself with them somehow without revealing her true motives. Then, she could figure out ways to make it look like the Trenors wanted to take the Darleys out. Jules didn't think it would be hard to taint some of the corners and start false and nasty rumors to put more pressure on the already existing tension and distrust between the two groups. Her goal was to start off a turf war between the two gangs. That would be a total genius streak because they would decimate each other. All those fucking gang bangers would get a one way ticket to hell and she would have to do the bare minimum. Jules was even open to the possibility of getting herself involved with Duke himself if need be to get her plans carried out.
However, to accomplish all of this, she would have to fly under the radar. She knew she could do that, but the desire to take down the Darleys herself made it more difficult than she had expected it to be. If she could only find an accomplice. It would be difficult to find someone to trust that would break break ranks with the Darleys. For that she would have to take advantage of someone's weakness and discontent with the status quo. In the end, Jules' goal was to be able to look at Billy and Bones directly in the eyes as she shot them dead.
As she quietly solidified her plans, the double-life that Jules lived was proving to be too exhausting. When she needed strength, she headed to the cemetery. There she would talk to Erik to gather the courage she needed to carry out her plans. Or at least she felt, she was talking to him and she would "tell" him about her plans.
She also began liquidating her accounts, selling her belongings until she was ready. One day, she never came back to her parent's house or to work. That was the day when she officially assumed her new full-time identity as Jules. Sweet, proper Julia no longer existed. It was ironic that the pet name that Erik had given her was "Angel" and out of this mess, the only thing that had survived was now a demon. The demon's name was Jules.
Jules sent her and Erik's parents a letter saying she had decided to travel around the world to find herself. She was conscious that it was not fair to them or Erik's family for her to leave like that but they served no purpose in her life anymore. Most importantly, if anything in her plans went wrong, a lack of contact with her would keep them out of harms way. Jules could not bear the idea of staining her hands one more time with the blood of another loved one.
Her personal vendetta was now on its way and she was not going to stop until it's very last consequences. She had to see through that the Darleys were finished.
Notes:
Thanks for reading!
Coming Next: Background on Jules' accomplice
