Prologue
He thought that I was just going to get up and leave him. Never talk to him again. He thought that I was going to get tired of waiting. Tired of wanting him. And he couldn’t have been more right. I was head over heels for this man when we started talking. Before he ever said hi to me. Before I decided that I was more in love with this man, that I didn’t even know, than I could ever be with someone else. However, he wasn’t always the man that I hadn’t met. Or the man that I was going to admire from afar. Soon he came to me with an assignment. You see, I was a writer. That word- was. I used to never use it but now I use that word more than I use any other word you see. He was the cause of a lot of changes in my life and not all of them for the better. An assignment, I say, one of the most important assignments that our company had ever had. The Prince was coming. And I was to be the one to write about it. I don’t know why he chose me. I had just been a beginning writer there. But I was chosen and I wanted it to be the best story I’ve ever written. You see, our company, wasn’t really a company. In fact what we did was frowned on by most people. We were attacked by the media but at the same time worshipped by them. We were reporters but we weren’t the right type. We got the information but we didn’t really write about it. We sold it. Our unofficial name? Paparazzi. But this assignment was different. I was the “official” reporter of the Prince. I was to follow him around and keep up on what he does, where he goes, and who he was with. It was going to take up all my time. I was to take notes and only when he was gone was I allowed back into the office to write all the information I was going to sale. The paparazzi are made out to be liars but more often than not, we’re telling you the truth. The ones that had the truth revealed about them. They’re the ones that lie. The ones that are hiding the truth from the world. I always tell the truth. Sometimes I may not have all the facts but I told what I know, and since I had taken my job seriously, I always made sure that it was the truth. The reason I was so excited about this assignment though, wasn’t because of it being for the Prince. It was because I would be working with him. The one who made my heartbeat go faster and faster every time he entered the room. He told me that day, ‘You will be working with me on the Prince assignment. Here are the details and I want you to meet me here tonight at ten with a bag for a week. Wear nice clothes and bring nice clothes for when we go out. We will be staying in the same hotel as the Prince. You are dismissed and you may go home to get ready.’ I was up and out of my seat before he could say anything else. I didn’t want to disappoint him. I was putting my jacket on when he said loudly in front of all of my colleagues, ‘ By the way, Marianna, your work is the best I’ve seen in ages.’ I blushed. Everyone else was staring at me and looking angry. I ran out the door after mumbling a quiet thank you. As I slow to a walk when I get down the stairs of the office building, I ran into an old friend. Well really he had been a new friend but an old guy. His name was Andrew Parsons. I called him Old Man Andy. I had told him that I was in a hurry and couldn’t talk long. He understood but he looked troubled now that I think about it. I wanted to stay and talk to him to figure it out. But I wasn’t thinking about him. I was thinking selfish thoughts that could kill me if I were to think about them now. But I had ran back to my apartment and packed all of my nice things, which was a lot and went back downstairs with my bags. I had a couple of hours until I had to be back at the building so I asked my apartment building manager if I could store my bags in in her office until I was ready for them. Her and I have a close friendship so she said it was okay. After I had left my things in the office behind her desk, she had several people coming in all the time because those were some of the best apartments to live in. There were always a couple rooms left empty because she was a very strict building manager and didn’t tolerate some things. And those things were things that most people did, and they hid those things, they lied about doing those things. So when she caught them she didn’t give them another chance, she didn’t let them know that she knew, because more often than not, they didn’t know she knew. They would just get a letter saying that they were expected to moved out by the next week. They would complain. I had been there the longest. I had been there for 6 months. I had at least seven different neighbors in that time period. It had gotten to the point that Emily, that was her name, moved me into the apartment next to hers on the top floor. It was the second biggest apartment in the entire building. Hers being the biggest naturally. The more I think about that old building the more I miss it. It burned down three weeks ago. It was my fault. I have a target on my back. But why am I telling you that when you don’t even know me. I can’t help but think that if you knew me that you would believe me about this, that this target, this bounty on my head, is all over a false accusation. I never murdered that man. I never touched him. It was him. The man that I had fallen so deeply in love with. And the truth is, I was more in love with him than ever. He was scared that I was going to leave him. But then he did the worst thing that I could ever imagine. He threatened me. And he followed through with those threats until I snapped. And that’s what I’m here to tell you. I’m here to tell you of my innocence and the day I snapped. But first an introduction. My name was Marianna Yulley. I was 17 years old. I was an orphan. I was a high school dropout. I was a criminal. I am innocent of all the things I’ve been accused of.
