Luja Mahdavi//7f

Crime is not something you can do on the side. It's a lifestyle, baby.

“You can’t just half ass it, Luja”, mama would tell me at the beginning. “You half ass it and you get caught”, she had a point. There was no room for silly mistakes. There was enough to worry about already with dad being so ill. This family could not allow for any more of us to go down. We needed to make sure we could keep our heads above water. That was our job, mommy/daughter bonding with some pretty high stakes.

Things were not always this drastic. There was a time where my brother and I were kids, our dad was able to work a job and our mom was an honest person. There was a time where Kaiden and I would sit outside under the sun and play with marbles. Sure, we were living in a war-torn country, but we were still able to be kids. There was a time where we truly loved one another in this family. That time now feels only like a distant memory. I no longer can recall the last time I had an actual conversation with my own twin brother. I no longer recall the last time my own dad was able to give me a hug. I no longer recall the last time my own mother showed me affection unrelated to the job.

What a wonderful life we all are living.

“Your looks could kill darling, use that to your advantage”, mama spoke softly as she pushed my dark hair behind my ears. “Be confident, be intimidating, never show them that you are afraid. Never accept any less than the original demand. Make sure they respect you.”, that is what she told me right before she sent me to my very first “meeting”. The nights leading up, mama and I robbed and vandalized a local shop. Baby’s first heist, as she put it. The day after the robbery, mama sent some of her old friends to destroy the goods and intimidate the owners. She was a professional in putting the fear of God into anyone. I was being sent in to demand a protection price. They pay us a reasonable sum and mama calls off her goonies.

The beginning was hard. The people we were taking from were just doing their best to make an earnest living. I questioned if what we were doing was really the only thing that there was to help us. However, there was no denying the high I got from the power I held. Who knew that a teenager like me would be able to channel that level of confidence. The real feeling of success would be our weekly cash counts. Seeing our earnings, holding it in my hand, that is when I truly felt alive. Money makes the world go round and my family’s financial security never felt better.

Maybe crime did run in our DNA.

I wanted more. As time progressed, I wanted more. I learned to love the submission of people when they handed over the cash. The sound of begging was music to my ears whenever someone needed a loan. The cracks of people’s bones when they would not pay, that was an entirely new level of power. With each bit my hunger for more power, more adventures and more danger grew. I was a little crime machine.

Mama told she has never been this proud. She never thought she would be able to connect with me on this level. She said she has never seen more alive, danger dominating in my eyes. She also said we could not get ahead of ourselves; I was getting arrogant and needed to remember she was in charge of the operations. She was the one with years of experience. Before our dad asked her to stop, for his sake, for mine and Kaiden’s sake. He wanted us to have a mother, he did not want her risking everything for the thrill of it all. I cannot even imagine how hard that must have been for her.

Now days, at 16 years old, this life has consumed me in every which way, and I am only an echo of that little girl that would play marbles with her twin brother. Someone who was once my best friend, my entire life, hardly knew who I was anymore. We did not talk shop in the house. Our home was our home. He would not know of all the things I did, my father on the brink of death would not know what has become of his little girl. There were days where all I wished for was to be that little girl again, ignorant to all the horrible things I was capable of. There were days where I would give anything to have an inch of the humanity my brother surly still had.