I Dare You To Meet Me
Chapter 12

If there was one thing I learned since my arrival at the first foster home that took me in, it was that the world was a place full of cruel and selfish people.

Yes, there may have been kindness and good intentions in some, but it was unfortunate that they were in short supply.

When I arrived at the place where, according to me, I would spend the next three years, I did it with resignation, ignorant of all the events that would occur in the future and that would make me bring out a side of me that I had never known before.

Not even a week had passed since my arrival before the teenage girls who lived with me demanded that I hand over my belongings, arguing that everything in that house belonged to everyone. Obviously I refused and got into a fight to defend what was mine.

When I tried to explain it to the person in charge of us, she didn’t care and punished us all equally.

A month later I was attacked again by the same girls, this time losing some of my clothes in their clutches. In revenge I went into their rooms and tore them apart with scissors leaving them useless. What was mine was mine, and I would not let anyone else have it in their possession.

Of course this only brought me another punishment, and more trouble.

The girls developed a feeling of hatred for me and were always looking to get me into trouble. Aside from the beatings they gave me, but no one could blame me, I had never in my life been forced to protect myself from physical attack before, so it was no surprise how bad a fighter I was.

Three months full of fights, black eyes, broken or stolen things, yelling, punishments, and many other things the warden transferred me to another house.

There it was much worse, because unlike the other house, it was inhabited mostly by men, a closed place that did not allow us to go out freely, full of teenagers with altered hormones and very few women was not something nice or safe for me.

I preferred a thousand times the assaults of my former classmates to the leering and lustful looks of the boys there.

I tried to be very careful, but it wasn’t until a month after my arrival when one of them dared to enter my room at night and tried to get into my bed.

In my fight to get rid of him I earned a black eye and a split l*p, but by some miracle my screams woke up the people sleeping nearby and helped me get rid of the intruder.

The boy who was barely a year older than me, but had amazing strength and sickening determination, swore that I was going to be his or he would murder me in the attempt.

Filled with fear for my life I begged the manager to transfer me back, which he agreed to after giving me almost half of the money I had brought with me from my home.

In the third foster home I had become a defensive person, distrusting even my own shadow, reacting badly when anyone tried to approach me, and spending long hours in the solitude of my room.

It was a boy my age named Nikolai who, despite my rudeness and threatening cries, did not give up and kept insisting on my company until I gradually came to consider him my friend.

Nikolai taught me how to sneak out at night, we both went through the cold streets of Russia, and did all kinds of illegal activities, well, he did, I just accompanied him.

He introduced me to his circle of friends, which consisted of five men and one woman. At first I was sullen and rude to them for the simple fact that they moved in shady environments. Like buying/selling drugs, or illegal fighting and racing.

But time showed me that they were not bad people, just people desperate to survive in the crappy world we lived in. Me and Nikolai were the youngest of the group, while the oldest was the leader at 23 years old, it wasn’t much of a difference, but it felt like a huge chasm.

Little by little I began to trust them, all of them, I never told them where I came from, or who I really was, but I told them other things, how I had been happy with my mom until she died, how my dad had abandoned me, how I was alone. They understood me, and gave me a family.

That’s how the first year passed since my family left. The kids tried to keep me out of the problems they had, because they knew I wanted to stay clean from that world.

Until the night that changed everything.

We had gone out to an illegal fight where Nikolai would participate to earn money, obviously we all went to support him. The fight was proceeding clean and fair, or at least everything that can go in the illegal underground. There was a lot of money at stake and the stakes were sky high, none of us had the slightest doubt that Nikolai was going to be the victor that night, as he trained almost every night and had been preparing for that fight for months on end.

In the end he won the fight by submission, and while we all enjoyed his victory, his defeated opponent, in an act of cowardice, attacked him from behind. Hitting him severely in the head, the chaos that ensued is a blur in memory. All I knew was that the blow had most likely inflamed my best friend’s brain, causing him to fall unconscious, and that before we could get to him the police arrived on the scene causing us all to run in different directions.

My unconscious friend was crushed by hundreds of feet looking to escape the place, making his situation worse. The guys pulled me out of there without being able to get close to him to help him, when we finally found out about Nikolai it was because the police went to the home to talk to the person in charge to report that he died from a brain hemorrhage along with other injuries on the way to the hospital and that it had happened during an illegal fight.

Of course, since our friendship was known to all, they took me to the police station for questioning, I denied everything, after all they had no evidence against me. So they had no choice but to let me go.

I cried for my friend for weeks, my savior, my brother, my light in the darkness. Now he was with the rest of my family. Watching over me from heaven.

When I found the courage to look for the others I found they were like me, drowning in grief. Filled with rage at the unfairness of life and my own weakness, I asked them to show me what it was like to be in their world. Obviously they refused at first but after much pleading on my part I became a member of their gang.

I learned to defend myself, I was good at hand-to-hand fighting, and using bladed weapons and firearms, even if I didn’t have the best aim. I used the money I had left to buy the motorcycle Nikolai had saved so much for, and the reason I had gone to the fight that night. And after several accidents, nothing too serious, I became a good racer, loved that motorcycle, and took care of it the same way my friend would have. I never did business with drugs, but I made sure to protect the backs of others to make sure no one suffered the same fate as Nikolai.

And through mistakes and learning, the second year passed since I had been alone in this world, only I was no longer alone.

Being with the boys made me get a reputation, a name, the fights I got into to defend myself or my friends did not always end well, my body was filling up with scars, some from bullets, others from knives, one or another broken bone. But it was all worth it when people started to fear us, to fear me. My heart was slowly closing, I never wanted to love someone again so they would leave my side. One-night stands, heart-pounding drunkenness, running around the outskirts of the city. That’s what my life had become.

I was no longer the same good and innocent girl, I was tough, I was strong. I was still a Kozlov, but the way I saw the world changed radically.

One night I lost a bet with one of the boys, and that earned me my first tattoo, three wolves howling on my h*p, one for each member of my family I had lost. I was so in love with it that little by little my skin was filled with ink, two full sleeves from my shoulders to the top of my wrists, my back, and that was it. But the two tattoos that had the most meaning were without a doubt the wolves, and Nikolai’s name that I had written above my heart in cursive letters. The only ones on those parts of my body.

And so had been my life, I spent the third and last year enjoying the adolescence that I could never live when I was at home with my mom and grandparents.

I was free, I learned to be independent.

And I loved it.

I had almost completely forgotten my old life, as the world seemed to have forgotten me. But no, the problems and responsibilities had not forgotten me.

They were just waiting for the right time to come back to me.

And a month before my 21st birthday they finally made their appearance, with a letter addressed to me that had arrived at home.

Seeing the Kozlov Companies logo on that envelope made the reality hit me like a bucket of ice water.

What everyone says is true, ignoring the problem was not going to make the problem ignore you.

I had already lived freely for the past three years, regardless of the conditions. Now it was time to face the past and settle old debts.

But things were different, I would see to it that they were.

For after all.

I was no longer the same Natasha Koslov who had cried for her family and had been unable to do anything to take away what was rightfully hers.

I was now Tasha Medusa Kozlov, and I would take what was mine by hook or by crook….

Or the hard way.