Chapter Seven

My memories didn't come flooding back like a waterfall, like I'd expected them to. They came drop by drop, like light rain splashing into the pond of my brain. I remembered my family history piece by piece, building up a puzzle from the corners in.

I remembered things that had happened with them, the things we had done, but I also remembered the things I could do. I remembered how to lie, avoiding my obvious tell, and how to pick locks. I wasn't sure I wanted to remember how good I was at deceit and crime, but it was all coming back along with the memories of my parents.

A memory in particular kept flooding my brain, coming to the front of my mind again and again. In the memory I can't be more than seven. We're living in this apartment complex that my parents used to own. The top floor is entirely taken over by our family; my parents and I, Damon and Finn with their father and my other, older cousins, Jessop and Eric.

I'm sat on the floor in front of the TV, watching some kids show. Damon, aged ten, and Finn, aged fourteen, are sat on the couch behind me arguing. They get up, grab their bags and head to the door, "We'll be back before morning."

I jumped up, "I'm coming too!"

"No you're not, Ava." Finn told me.

"Why?" I asked indignantly.

"You're too young." Damon said, "And you're just a girl."

"I'm not too young!" I told him indignantly.

"We're going out stealing." Damon said, "Little girls can't come."

I stuck my chin in the air, "Stealing is wrong."

At that, my father finally looked up from his desk, "Who told you that, Ava?"

"It's that school you send her to." Finn said, "Teaching her all these morals. I don't see why you don't keep her home like you did with us."

"Stealing is wrong." I insisted.

"You should take her with you." My father said, "Show her what our life is really about."

The boys complained but my father insisted. I wrapped my coat around me and followed my cousins into the night.

Back then even Finn, the oldest of us all, had been considered too young for help out with the real criminal matters my family were involved in, but our parents believed that good cons and criminals started young and so took great joy in sending my male cousins out to commit break-ins and petty theft. This was the first time I'd been encouraged to join them.

They'd already selected a target; a nice house a few blocks away from our apartment complex. Damon busted the lock and we all crept inside. Finn began piling anything valuable into a bag he'd brought and I stood and watched. Damon ran around excitedly, trying to scout out anything of particular interest.

"Hey, Finn!" He hissed, pointing at a large painting on the wall, "You think it's a safe?"

I watched, bemused, as he lifted the painting off the wall to look behind it. Even I could have told him that only people in movies hid safes behind paintings.

"Ava, come over here and hold this." Finn said, holding out the bag. I walked towards him, but then stumbled and tripped on what appeared to be nothing. I caught myself before I could fall over and took a step backwards. Bending down, I lifted the rug to see what I'd tripped over. The floorboards were slightly stuck up in a rectangle too perfect to be shoddy craftsmanship.

Finn had pushed me out of the way before I could get a better look, pulling the boards up, "Here's the safe. They can't have closed it properly last time they opened it. That means they probably opened it recently, so there might be a lot of money in here."

The safe was electric with an eight-pin code and likely alarms that would go off if you entered an incorrect code too many times. Damon pulled a tool out of his pocket and handed it to Finn, who began attempting to pry the safe open.

He'd been fiddling for only a few minutes when something snapped inside the safe and a shrill blaring sound began filling the house.

"Crap." Finn said. Damon looked at him in panic.

Rushed footsteps came from upstairs, heading towards us. The footsteps hit the top of the stairs and lights flooded the house. A male voice yelled, "Whoever you are, I've got a gun!"

Damon's face went white. I nearly peed myself.

And then the lights went out.

The alarm stopped blaring too, because my utter terror had caused me to short-circuit the entire block's electricity.

Damon and Finn looked at me incredulously, then grabbed everything out of the now open safe before bolting from the house, leaving me to run after them with my little six year old legs.

After that day they took me out on every single one of their raids.

-o.O.o-

I knocked on Victor's door at nine o'clock on the dot. Even though this was the time we'd arranged to meet, he opened the door shirtless and shoeless, holding a bunch of papers in his hand. When I'd managed to pull my eyes away from his bare chest, I looked up at him quizzically, "Are you ready?"

"I'm sorry - come in, Ava." He said. Much to my dismay, he pulled a shirt on over his head before leading me over to the living room.

"It's not like you to be late." I commented, not as a criticism but merely as an observation. It was very out of character.

"It's a case I'm working on." He explained, "It's had me up all night and I completely lost track of time."

I couldn't sit down because papers littered the entire room; floor, tables and chairs. I raised an eyebrow, "Really tough case, hu?"

Victor ran a hand through his hair in frustration. It was strange seeing him like this. He was usually so confident and sure of himself, knowing all the answers. He was always so collected and together, and I'd never imagine him to be the kind of person who'd have their papers strewn out across the room like a tornado just hit.

"It's been ongoing for years, but they've just handed it over to me." Victor explained.

"I bet I could figure it out in a day." I told him. He shot me a look and I held my hands up, "Joking, sorry! Sheesh! You really are in a bad mood."

"I'm sorry." Victor said, "Give me half an hour and I'll be ready."

"If you need to focus on the case, we can meet another day." I suggested. Victor looked pained as he tried to decide, "Really, I don't mind."

"No." He said, "I need a break and going out with you will be the perfect way to get my spirits up. There's nothing worse than trying to figure something out when you're in a bad mood with it." He began tidying the papers away, "The case isn't going anywhere; I can carry on tomorrow."

He went to get changed and put shoes on and I stayed in the living room waiting for him. Using my gift, I flicked on the kettle from where I sat on the couch and waited until it boiled to get up and make two cups of coffee, black for him, white with sugar for me.

Once he's dressed and we've finished our coffees, we go out for a walk around the block. Hand in hand, we walked our familiar route past the park, the library, left at the coffee shop, then circle back along the river.

"I'm sorry about being late." Victor said.

"It's no big deal." I said with a shrug.

"No, it is." He said, "We've hardly seen each other recently and I was really looking forward to seeing you today."

Guilt crept up inside of me. It was my fault that we hadn't been meeting much. The last two weeks I'd been filled with such a moral dilemma about my parents that I'd been too distracted to think much about Victor. And even when I did think about meeting him, I couldn't bare to keep lying to him. Keeping my past a secret from him felt like a betrayal, made all the worse by what he did for a job.

So I'd been avoiding him as much as I could.

"Apology accepted." I told him, "And I'm sorry that I've been so busy recently. I've missed you."

That much was the truth, at least. I hated being apart from Victor, but each new memory that resurfaced seemed to push me further away from him.

That first night, when I short-circuited the electricity, was just the first night of my criminal career. The boys saw me as useful after that, as did my parents, and I was dragged along to many more raids. At first, I went reluctantly. I still believed that what was happening was wrong, but I was too young to stand up to my older cousins. I like to think that I always believed it was wrong, even as I got older, but I'm not so sure. Maybe I just learned to block out my conscience, or maybe I really did start to consider what I was doing okay. I'm not sure, because I still can't fully remember. I feel guilt now though, even thinking about it.

I remember a time when I was almost thirteen. We'd moved up from breaking into people's houses, in a large part due to my 'usefulness'. I could turn of alarms and security systems, open electric locks and doors, and turn of surveillance cameras. Damon and Finn turned their attention to companies and local banks, hunching over blueprints and hatching elaborate plans. I was rarely consulted during this stage; I just followed orders.

When we arrived at the bank of a small, but rich, town twenty miles from where we lived, I immediately set to work disabling the alarm. I was still learning to properly use my gift then and it sometimes took me a while to figure out the complicated security circuits. That night, I did it in almost record time, and Finn clapped me on the back, "Well done, Ava."

I close my eyes and scan in my mind for security cameras, then use my gift to pause the tapes. When I started them again, it would be like no time had passed. Next I open the electric lock on the door and push it quietly open. Damon and Finn follow me inside.

I start working my gift on the main vault whilst Damon and Finn begin picking the locks of the safety deposit boxes. I crack the lock and begin to load money into bags.

Damon steps into the vault behind me and lets out a whistle, "Jackpot."

Finn followed, grinning, "Good find, Ava."

We left the bank, re-locking the doors, re-enabling the alarm, and re-starting the surveillance footage, with thousands and thousands of dollars stuffed in our bags and in our pockets. My cousins lifted me up and we ran down the street, laughing and whooping as we made our way back to the waiting car.

Perhaps, I thought, there was a part of me that had always enjoyed it. The adrenaline, the thrill, the rebellion of it all.

"Ava?"

Victor's voice pulled me back to reality. He was smiling at me, "You totally zoned out. What were you thinking about?"

I shook my head, "Sorry. Nothing."

That was the other thing. Every day it was getting easier to lie and to hide my thoughts, skills that I'd completely lost along with my memories. I'd become aware of my tell and I knew how to hide it; when I lied, I tended to touch my hand, scratching it or rubbing it. If I concentrated on not doing it, it was easy to hide.

"Well, if I can have your thoughts for one moment, Miss Ava, I asked you a question." He said.

"You did?" I asked.

Victor laughed, "One day I'll figure out what goes on in your head when you zone out like that."

I rolled my eyes, "I'm listening. What did you ask?"

"We're going on a vacation in a couple of weeks." Victor said, "Just a long weekend really. I wanted to invite you."

"Wow. That would be awesome." I told him with a smile. A whole weekend to have him to myself in some romantic setting abroad. "Where are you going?"

"France." Victor said. I wandered where in France; perhaps Paris, the city of love? "It's a ski holiday really, we're going to the Alps."

"Oh." I said, my excitement falling.

"Oh?" Victor said, raising an eyebrow.

"I don't think you'd find me much fun on a ski holiday. I can't ski." I explained.

He looked at me incredulously, "You live less than two hours from the Rocky Mountains and you never learnt to ski?"

I shrugged, "I didn't always live here, and my parents didn't have much time for skiing when I was growing up."

"Where did you live growing up?" Victor asked.

"We moved around a lot." I said, "The longest place I can remember was Nevada."

"What did your parents do, to make you travel so much?" Victor asked. I hesitated, unsure what to say, "I'm sorry, I know you don't like to talk about your family. I'm just curious."

"No, it's fine." I said, "My dad was a businessman and his company moved him around a lot. My Mom was an actress so she could work anywhere really." The lie rolled off my tongue easier than I expected, "I got fed up of it. My father was constantly working and my Mom was so selfish, she didn't care if we got pulled out of school every few months."

"We?" Victor asked cautiously.

"My cousins lived with us." I explained, "Damon, who you've met, and some others."

"So you left?" Victor asked.

I nodded, "There were other things, but I don't really want to go into all that."

Victor nodded, "Your childhood sounds a lot more interesting than mine, anyway."

I laughed, "I'll bet."

By the time I was seventeen, we'd moved to Las Vegas. Finn was now twenty five and was well immersed in the family business, spending most of his time with them. He'd passed the baton to Damon and I, and we'd readily accepted. Of course everyone had expected Damon to take the lead, but it turned out that I did. As the only one who'd been to an actual school rather than make-shift home education, I was smarter than Damon and more creative. My gift was more useful than his and I eventually became the natural leader.

We robbed casinos and clubs and broke into the penthouses of expensive hotels, stealing from rich businessmen whilst they spent thousands on prostitutes down in the private rooms. In our spare time, we used our fake IDs to get into the casinos and helped each other cheat at card games, raking in the money each night.

I used to love dressing up in fancy clothes and swanning around the strip. It was the brief period in our lives when Damon and I truly got along. We were both rich, carefree and living in Las Vegas with fake IDs. The world was ours.

A few months before my eighteenth birthday, my Dad began introducing me to his 'circle'. He invited me to 'business dinners' and introduced me as his protégé daughter. I knew what he was doing, because I'd seen him do the same thing with Finn. I was just surprised that Damon hadn't come first.

This was the first steps to moving me from the small scale crimes committed by Damon and I and into the big leagues with my parents and other cousins.

I wasn't sure how I felt about it. I'd grown used to stealing and even small scale heists, and I didn't feel much guilt anymore. I even found myself enjoying it. But I told myself that it was because I wasn't really hurting anyone. Those big companies and banks didn't really lose any money, and the rich people we stole from always had insurance which would cover their losses. Besides, it was just money and things. What my parents did, the big leagues, was a different matter entirely.

And that was what ultimately led to the night I left.

"At any rate, I never learnt to ski." I concluded, bringing myself back to the present.

"You'll be in good hands." Victor told me, "We've all been skiing since we could walk. Sky couldn't ski either, but Zed taught her and now she can almost keep up with the best of us."

"I wouldn't want you to spend your whole holiday teaching me on the nursery slopes." I protested, "You're going to have a good time."

"I'm going to spend time with you, away from here." Victor said, "Zed, Yves and Xavier decided they wanted a break to be with their soulfinders, and they invited the two of us. Ava," He stopped and took me by both hands, "Please say you'll come."

I smiled, "Of course I'll come."

"I can't wait." Victor said. We'd managed to walk all the way back to his apartment building and we stopped outside. He kissed me and said goodbye, leaving me with a mixture of excitement and everlasting guilt.

A/N: I didn't expect this chapter to come out so long, but I hope you liked it! I know not a lot actually happened, but I wanted to show you a little bit of Ava's past as it will be important later in the story.

Thanks to everyone who reviewed/favourited/followed! :)