Lissomely

Lillium Lavao was the greatest thief in Chicago, which is saying something with Chicago having the highest scores when it comes to criminal activity. Miss Lavao, born from the least caring parental figures one can find without getting too sadistic, had learned by the age of five that she had no one but herself. This lesson was taught to her by none other than her dear sweetie pie of a mother when she left her daughter holding onto four pounds of coke when the cops came a knocking. And of course, thinking that the parents would come to collect their little bundle of joy, they took little Lilli in.

Her father had come to collect, but not her. He had come for the coke, and man did he give Lilli and her mom a walloping when he got back from the police station. He had been covered in blood and grime and wall powder from the heist he had just pulled to get the kid and the coke. If he could have, he would have left her. Lillium knew that as much as she knew that she would grow up to become a thief, whether she wanted to or not.

All the skills were there for her to learn, she had the thief trait in her blood, and she wished she would be able to escape the life before she ended up like her parents. Saddled with a kid they didn’t want, trying to make big scores while keeping a low profile, and always ending up on the negatives at the end of the week.

By age thirteen, she had made her parents proud of her by robbing the biggest bank in the city without anyone knowing until the closed the vaults for the day. Her parents had marveled and wondered how they were so lucky to get someone so slick for a kid, but before they could rejoice, the cops were banging on the door and Lillium was nowhere in sight. Perfect payback.

At age sixteen, she had to put someone in the hospital so she could make a getaway. She should have killed them, but she liked the color of the guy’s eyes and decided it would be a shame if he didn’t have any kids with the same eyes. She’d like to steal those eyes, keep them looking at her all day, every day. But that wasn’t the life for her, she couldn’t have kids, not until she was out.

At age twenty, she met him again. She had been perched like a cat on his railing, about to slip in and steal his two million dollar cat statue. It looked Egyptian, but she just knew that it was a gold statue of a cat. She was debating whether to keep it or hawk it to get out. She was leaning toward the money. She even had a state picked out for where she would reside after getting out of this Hell hole. Not that it mattered where she went, but the place she had in mind was devoid of people and crime. It was a house on the side of a road, she had found it on an auction site and wondered if it was a sign. Until she realized that the apartment she was robbing was his.

They stared each other down once she got in, and she knew those eyes just as he knew her lithe walk. He had been calling her Catwoman after she had hit him, and he had moved to a better neighborhood to see if she was after what he thought she was after. And he was right. She was after another life, another world, and he knew just how to give it to her.