Chapter 1
PROLOGUE
"Oh shut up Flynn because you have no fucking idea what you're talking about," she seethed, feeling her patience running really low, glaring deeper into his eyes as if trying to see through his soul. He blinked a couple of times before standing back.
"This is wrong Chelsey. Everything you're doing is wrong and you chose this, you made your choice and because you made your own choice then I'll also make mine no matter what," taking in a deep breath, he took out his handcuffs from his back pocket and swayed them midair so she could see them.
" You're under arrest Chelsey," he said, his face stoic and void of any emotion but the whisper like tone of his voice gave away his raw emotions he was burying deep down. With a shallow sigh, he said, "and in case you haven't realized this, I didn't want to do this but you forced me to, I have no choice.." his face no emotions but his voice carried a hint of unwillingness and pain.
"Oh fuck you Flynn," she spat with a scrunched face, a face filled with pain and anger and resentment. The cloud of tears she held back for all these years decided to oversaturate and pour now, making her feel like shit.
"You have no idea what you're talking about," she screamed as Caspian's men ambushed and pinned her down.
Pretending like it didn't affect him, Caspian turned and looked away instead, away from how they brutally handcuffed her, away from the injustice...
Like always...
"Boss, what do we do with her?" Caspian's subordinate asked, pulling him out of his train of thoughts, blinking twice, he replied, " put her in an isolated cell for now, I'll deal with her later."
"Sir," he simply replied and Yanked the girl with the fiery hair with him.
" A choice is a privilege only the rich have, not low lives like us Flynn," she said.
Her voice resonated in his ears for a while, awakening every nerve fiber in his body...
Did he make a mistake by doing that? Or did he not. That was one question he couldn't answer.
Despite everything though, the sweet sound of Flynn from her mouth sounded oh so holy in his ears, if only she was that holy herself.
Oh God, why am I like this? He groaned internally, turning, he headed for his car.
*************
At the creaking sound of the door, she stayed still. Her head rested on the table and her red fiery hair covering her face, she pretended to be asleep. She thought it would be a little funny to lighten up the mood around here because everybody always glared at her like they wanted to kill her ,just bounded by. Well who cares?
Listening in, she calculated the motion of the soles of the shoes that approached her, unlike yesterday or the days before, it was only one.
"You've given us quite the chase Miss Jordan. I'm pretty impressed." He said, his voice gruff and yet gentle. Like he was. The mixture of both which made girls drool over him but he didn't care about that anymore, this wasn't high school anymore.
Pulling out a chair with a creaking sound, he plumped himself on the seat across the table and stared at her. Wondering for how long this would go on for. You know, play the sleeping game with him.
"Alright, cut the shit now. I know you're awake," her chuckles followed briefly after that, slowly, she raised her head from the table to meet her ocean blue eyes with his emerald green ones and an amused smirk played on her lips.
"Caspian Flynn," the name rolled out of her tongue, lased with some heavy breath in the way she said that name.
Kind of like how she said it a few years ago.
10 years to be precise. The only difference was that, the passion And truth behind saying it then was different from now. She wasn't that girl anymore, she was a changed person with a whole new purpose and feeling passionate like a her freaking 17 year old self over some ironic high school crush she could only dream of having because he didn't belong in her class was so not one of her plans.
"The one and only," they smirked in unison, their eye contact intense, as if a competition to see who would break the stare first but being each other's equal, no body was ready to take the fall. "Surprised?" He asked.
She burst into an ear piercing laughter which was well known to be so annoying but that was the whole point right?. Staring stoically, Caspian glared.
Sighing whilst nodding her head, she put her handcuffed hands on the table before her and pursed her lips, pretending that she was thinking when actually, there was nothing to think about.
"Maybe... I guess I just didn't expect to see you so soon after uhm.."
"After you and I spent a night together then you drugged me and stole from my house." He finished the statement for her, pointing her finger at him she squealed.
"Yeah, right. That. Bingo Romeo," she proudly smirked.
"You services are pretty good though but I couldn't stay too long you know how it is, get the job done then leave. You know what I'm saying Romeo." Nodding, Caspian pulled out a note pad and a pen from his pocket and placed them on the table before him.
Slowly, he unbuttoned his armhole buttons and rolled his sleeves up to his elbows, giving a free view exposure to his grade A muscular hairy arms that flexed with every movement he made. It was sexy and he knew and didn't try to hide that.
"Alright Jessy,kessy,Cathy, Cherry, which ever name you are currently using as your disguise, why don't we play a little Q and A, how about that?" He asked although it wasn't really a question and neither did he really need her approval but anyway. Vigilantly, he glanced at her. Perhaps longer than he planned to.
This woman right her was no doubt beautiful with everything a man could wish for, just a little bit too feisty and rebellious for Caspian's liking. She was pretty but was not tameable, unlike the rest of the women in the world ,she was not crazy about Luis Vitton or make up and pedicure. She was crazy for blood and for theft.
She did several stuff for a living, robbing banks, being an assassin and stuff but people didn't know that and they weren't even going to know and neither would she ever get caught had she not being assigned a mission that involved her biggest and hottest high school crush Caspian Flynn.
As much as she hates to admit it, she may have flopped a bit that night at Caspian's house. Otherwise, she wouldn't be sitting here.
" I like Cherry better," she said honestly. Blowing the gum in her mouth, it blew off with a loud pop sound that echoed across the room, much to Caspian's annoyance and her enjoyment. Caspian wasn't known for his patience but for some reason, he was been pretty patient with this woman right there but she really was skating on thin ice.
"Sorry," she grinned but even a blind person could make out how inauthentic that grin was.
"Alright Cherry, let's start it easy. Why don't you tell me what your real name is, yeah?" Eyeing her carefully, he studied her body language and repeated his question slowly this time, without tearing his eyes from hers still.
"Michelle Obama," she said and laughed, joining into her humor, Flynn laughed too before his laugher slowly turned cold and sinister. Gripping a handful of her fiery hair that felt so gentle to his touch, he tightened his grip a little but she glanced at him. Completely unfazed. What kind of a woman was she after all?
"I'm going ask you one more time Red head and I need complete honesty here alright?" Waiting to see if she had anything to say, he continued when she said nothing.
"Who...…Are.....you?"
A sudden silence befell the two and only the sounds of their breaths could be heard in the room. Seemingly becoming serious now, she moved in closer to Caspian, ready to be honest.
"Pennywise," trying to imitate his laughter, she threw her head to back and laughed.
She continued playing dumb for a while, knowing better than to giving up her identity. In all honesty, she didn't have an identity. Nor anybody to call her own. She'd lost everything and everyone 10 years ago when she was only 17,her family, her only reason to stay sane and alive in this fucked up world. She lost it all so yeah, she didn't have an identity so she didn't know what Flynn was talking about.
Besides that, she was convinced he didn't recognize her, who would recognize a nobody like her anyway, especially after 10 years. Well surely not Caspian Flynn, that's for sure. She was grateful for that, the last thing she wanted and hated so much was her hurtful past which she'd left behind to be brought back.
Everything connected to her past was a chain reaction of nothing but trauma and pain to her and with great difficulty, she buried that hatchet in the deepest pit of her mind and she so wished it could stay that way.
"Hey?!" He snapped a finger at her and she snapped out of her train to Busan.
"Listen, I said my name is Chelsey Jordan okay," she snapped when the little session was starting to annoy her now but the look Caspian gave her showed just how unconvinced he was but she also wasn't planning on trying to make him believe her either. He'd believe whatever his ears felt genuine either way.
Sighing heavily whilst pinching his nose ridge, he pushed the chair back and stood up.
Glancing at the huge screen see through window on his left on which he could almost see his boss's eyes, Mr. Hawkins sieve through, he moved back.
Caspian was normally known for his unique way of working.
With his working methods, he made it to the top ranks faster than an average officer but he just settled for being a detective instead, that is why Hawkins Detective Agency specifically called him all the way from NYC to handle this case.
Nabbing somebody like her wasn't an easy and everyday thing to do and with the chance, they wanted to completely exploit the opportunity as much as possible and the best man for the job just happened to be her very own ex highschool mate Caspian Flynn.
On normal bases, with the leverage to use any means possible to get her to talk, Caspian could have gone the hard way and tortured the truth out of her but something more than a magnetic pull held him back. Restrained him even.
Annoyed by this involuntary urge to not lose it, he decided that he needed some air and time to think about the best approach to get her to start talking so he turned to leave.
"Let's take a 5minute break and maybe while at that you'll decide if you want to do this the hard way or the easier way Cherry," he said. Halting by the door, he turned to face her, a knowing smirk played on his lips as he said, " or correctly said, Olivia.... Olivia Byrne," with that, he opened the door and walked away.
A heavy breath escaped her lips, her eyes stuck to the door that just closed. Her heart drummed against her chest, this was one of those few times when she felt her heart palpitating like that. She couldn't believe that Caspian recognized her after all. How?
After all the make up and hair redo she did constantly, Caspian Flynn of all the people recognized her, who would have thought. This definitely made the head line, Caspian Flynn, the hottest guy she went to school with actually remembered a 'rebellious bratty' low life like her after 10 years. Of course she was kind of making the headlines a lot recently but that didn't explain how and why he recognized her.
Holy living crap. She gasped and mentally screamed. Did he know it was her even that night?
Well fuck... Her life wouldn't get any crazier than this.
Groaning internally, she slumped her head back on the desk and let her mind take a quick detour to the past.
********
" He's gone Olivia, your father is no more."
She still remembered the words like they were recent but it had been about a year and a half since he died but the pain never left her.
Olivia Byrne was a young girl with nothing but a low life and a poor status as society classified, stuck in a big city that felt overbearingly overwhelming for her.
After the decease of her father, her mom started dating Billy about a year after and soon they got married and had a cute little baby boy called Daniel, everybody was happy. Well everyone but Olivia.
She never really liked Billy but her mom thought she was just being a pathetic little shitty brat who is failing to cope and move on and trying to stop others from moving on too. Sure, maybe she was right. Olivia couldn't stand the thought of another man taking her father's place but as long as she behaved and tried not to ruin her mother's marriage, everything was good.
Despite the hateful things her mom said when she got drunk though, or at least she always told herself her mom was drunk whenever she said hurting things to her, just so she wouldn't take them to heart, she still loved her immensely.
She and Daniel were the only people important to her in this world other than her dad and she didn't want to lose them too.
A lot of things changed after Jacob died, Olivia changed and so did her Mom Olive, that is why Olivia refused to give up on her mom, because they've all being through the same pain together and she understood that. That is why she behaved herself no matter how much of a dipshit Billy was. Gross and disgusting.
They moved to Chicago 6 months after Danny's birth when her mom got a job there but their lives didn't get better. Life in Chicago from a small town was a complete opposite. Everything was expensive and high class, not to talk about the stupid hierarchy class bullshit they did.
Literally, it was like a remake of the 1800 nonsense where there was a class and session of the rich only and those that followed.
Well for the Byrne family, they fell at the button of the pyramid. The poor class, they were grateful there was no slavery class below the poor because they might have just been there. Working for the rich group, didn't make things so easy, they over worked Olive and paid her so little plus Billy who just changed drastically. He started drinking and gambling with their savings then taking his frustrations out on the family.
She tried to convince her mom that they should move back to the small house their dad left them, it was small but she believed they'd do just fine. As long as they're away from Billy and this crappy place, she was down for it but her mom refused to move back and she hated her for that.
She was basically working for Billy to gamble with the money and Olivia didn't appreciate that and whenever she tried to speak up, she often got slapped and starved by Billy.
So much for Chicago.
Being on the lowest rank and with everybody at school knowing that the man who once pissed himself while drinking his guts out at a bar was her stepdad, yeah life was pretty Good, right?
The only thing she was thankful about was her scholarship that she got after working her butt out for months in her new school but it was also in jeopardy.
With Billy using up all their money in gambling, her scholarship could be taken from her. Unlike the rich kids, only a few selected poor kids were offered a scholarship but that was only 50% of it, they had to pay the remaining 50 themselves but now that they were penniless it meant that she couldn't continue with schooling.
She was determined to make it work though, despite it all, she wanted to make it in this biased world, for her mom and her brother. The better life she envisioned for herself needed more flesh and determination and she wasn't going to let Billy get in the way of that.
Her grades were also good enough to get her to a university of her choice so all she needed to do now was find a way to pay off her final year fees before she graduated.
After great difficulty and tonnes of recommendations from the few unbiased teachers in her school, she managed to secure 3 jobs for herself, one at a bar downtown, another at Starbucks and another one as a pool and wash room cleaner in the school..
Non of them came easier obviously, nothing comes easy for a Grade C, as they called the lower rankers in the society. She was only grateful that the pervetic male chauvinists settled for touching her breasts than anything else. That was much better.
Everyday they had to make a choice but their choice wouldn't change anything because they didn't have a choice. They had bills to pay and stomachs to feed and for Olivia, dreams to fulfil.
People judged them, calling them names like Rebels, freaks, cheapsters, sluts and whatever and they were right. Grade Cs were all that and more and they were not shamed of it. Everybody played their part, in order to survive, they did what they did.
Society didn't give them a chance in anything better so all they did was hustle. The methods were wrong but neither was their struggle right and neither did society give them the leverage of making the right choices.
Grace Cs were like people stuck in a maze, a maze of poverty and all the negative things that they couldn't escape but just had to live with it. Only one in a million escaped this maze but the rest slumped back to the cold dirt. Like everybody else before, she dreamed of breaking free from the maze but how could she when they society is denying her the chance?
We're stuck in a maze, followed by the haze.
Planning an escape but stuck in an arcade of dirt and loneliness.
We're all human but yet we're not all people.
We all make a wish but not all of us have the power to make a choice of what we wish for.
When we do get a chance, we wish for what seems promising In our world.
A choice is a privilege of the rich~. Olivia....
