When I was younger I was like most girly girls. I wore the fake tiara's, waved the magic wand, and said some spells. I wished for superficial things such as beauty, gold coins, and row upon row of beautiful dresses.
Most girls wish for things and they don't come true. Mine always did.
For the longest time I thought it was normal to have a two closets...one filled with gowns and another filled with normal clothes. I also thought it was ordinary for a normal looking button up shirt to cost $200. Just comes to show how out of touch with the real world I was. Well, until I was ten.
My father used to leave for an hour in his car to take a stroll to his shed that mom lovingly called his man cave. It was the one place I wasn't allowed to go. Which for a ten year old was exactly where I wanted to be.
I remember waiting for Dad to enter his shed before I approached out of the clearing. My sisters and Mom was watching TV at home and didn't even hear me, the youngest, leave.
Initially I was frustrated that the shed had no windows to peer in. So, I just stood and stared at the door knob for what must have been five minutes before I realized the door was locked anyway. When I heard the latch unclick, I scrambled to hide behind the shed.
Just in time for my father to open the door and carry a huge plastic bag out to the river nearby. Where he tossed the body like a sack of potatoes. As a kid, you hope for any explanation to unsee unpleasant scenes. However, as I opened the now unlocked shed door, I couldn't unsee what I saw then.
So much blood coated the floor and on all of the walls, was every torture device known to man. "Rhea?" asked my father in a tone I never heard him use. Only because he never used his your grounded tone on me before.
"D-da-daddy?" I asked him as I quickly spun around. "I'm scared," I remember telling him.
Walking towards me, he held out his hand for my to take it. "Rhea, it's okay to be scared. It's what you do with that fear that's important." My father said, "All of that blood poured out of a useless man who was going to hell anyway." What my dad forgot to mention to me that day was how he was destined for hell as well.
Instead, my father took me out for ice cream and told me a bit about his side of the family. How they've been killing sinners and the like for a long time and what an honor it was to do so. I took in his words but I didn't really believe in them. What my father was and still is; is the head of the Saint Louis Mafia group known as The Grim's.
From age ten and onward, it was me and my father's secret. Mom and my older sisters didn't know the truth. That our beautiful things were all paid in hot sticky blood.
Which is why my mom didn't understand my change from dressing up like a princess to wearing the still expensive, but simple in appearance clothing. Nor did she understand either my sudden fascination with literature over shiny baubles and tiara's of any sort.
My dad meanwhile would take me to his work when I got older. I never saw him torture anyone physically but I have seen a few times when he would strike fear in a man's heart by simply speaking. For some men, my dad was the Boogeyman while for others, it was all business.
That's how I met my husband. I was in college and on spring break. I was supposed to be road tripping with some of my other bookish friends but instead got an urgent call for my dad. Apparently, he came into a large sum of money and he didn't have time to bring it to the person who does the money laundering. So, with his clean money, he bought me a plane ticket to Buffalo, New York.
When I saw the storefront, I thought I got the address wrong. However, when I went in I saw the one girly girl wish I held onto in my heart. I saw my prince.