Edna

CHAPTER ONE

In the tiny apartment in downtown Miami, on a day the sun shone, threatening to burn the beings underneath its watch, I stared at my husband in absolute despise. I bit my lower lip, feeling pissed and enraged as badly as possible. For someone mostly calm, I had flipped and there was no going back.

In our years of being married, I’ve had had to put up to and with every silly act and art my husband Daniel Jones had always pulled up. But if there was one thing I, Stefania Edna Rumetova wasn’t going to permit, it was the one problem he as husband had found himself drowning in of late.

My half-Russian, half-Ethiopian face could be seen in the opposite mirror in the room, flushed red in rage, with my eyes bloodshot as well. I could not swallow Daniel’s addiction any longer without protesting. His defiant nature not to desist from prohibited substances has left us broke, without proper money to fend for our daily needs. The fact he wouldn’t realize it, is only making things worse.

“I cannot keep living this way Dan”, I protested right to his face, feeling righteous of myself as I duly am. “You either clean your mess up or I leave with our baby”, I threatened. We never really have the time to take care of our three year old daughter because while I go out for work in the demeaning hotel as a cleaner, Daniel goes to work in the pizzeria.

Daniel simply chuckled, staring me in the face without a care in the world, feeling stone drunk and high on powder at the same time. I could feel myself about losing it, so I decided to do some cleaning, which has a way of helping me keep calm when I get angry.

“Can I have a beer?” he asked without shame just as I cleaned up the floor, without making an attempt to get up from where he sat.

“Really? You want a beer, even when you’re stone drunk, high, and broke as hell, while your mates are out there providing for their family and sending their kids to school by being dedicated and hardworking?” I asked him, looking to spite some positive response or so from him.

Seeing he wasn’t perturbed by my words, as they brought him no remorse or shame, I decided to leave him be to go and dump some trash out by the back. I had my mind occupied by thoughts that threatened to make me fall over a large can I had mistakenly stepped on.

“That was close”, I murmured looking down at the can, and before catching sight of something green, looking very much like a dollar bill.

My heart yearned in anticipation, as a swirl of excitement rushed through me. I bent over to pick it up, while gently sweeping my eyes around the trash site hoping I wasn’t being watched or being a part of someone’s joke.

Upon picking up the green paper, I realized it wasn’t money, but a paper with the words;

“Jill, you’d find your money at the address written at the back of this paper”.

I pondered on the note for a brief moment, wondering what money would be at the specified address. My urge for some financial assistance to help foot the bill that had come to pile up over the past year tickled my fancy towards heading over to the address, and hopefully get lucky enough to get the money.

I needed the money, and my desperation yearned for some action, so I set out immediately, knowing the place in the address as an old abandoned building, I was even more positive I could get lucky.

I told Daniel nothing about my movement, hoping to keep him in the dark as good as possible. I hailed down the next cab I could see coming, asking him to take me there straight away, with my heart racing so fast it threatened to jam out my chest out of excitement.

If only I knew I was heading for a secret agency, and not the money hunt I had thought it out to be...