February
Lucy's Age: 4
I have to admit to being rather more impressed with Venice than I thought I was going to be when we first met. She's still a complete mess, but she's showing much more in the way of willpower than I expected her to.
I don't know how Imastious always seems to pick incredibly, one could say almost psychotically, determined disciples, but he apparently has some kind of hidden talent there. It's a reminder to me that I need to be careful not to underestimate him.
Imastious isn't particularly subtle, but he is good at breaking people and usually he manages to keep them broken once he's achieved his aim. Honestly I'm not sure how I managed to maintain so much independence. All I can assume is that Imastious' methods work better on adults than on children.
Venice continues to whine about the hand that life has dealt her, and she still refuses to answer to the name I've given her, instead insisting that I call her April. While her strength of will should eventually help make her a better operative, right now it's a barrier that needs to be destroyed so that I can get on with the process of rebuilding her into something more useful to me.
Her sense of modesty continues to be one of the most effective tools I have with which to break her. Despite the terrible things that Imastious has already done to her, she continues to be the most unnerved by the fact that her clothes are little more than rags. She's little more than a scarecrow now, but if anything, that seems to have increased Imastious' desire for her.
I'd hoped that the starvation and Imastious' efforts would be sufficient to break her without the requirement of more direct action on my part, but so far she's withstood all of the more passive tortures I've inflicted on her.
I'd happily continue to wait her out, but Imastious has started expressing his displeasure with how long my methods are taking, and while I'm more than prepared to suffer through whatever punishment he might decide to concoct for me, I can't afford to have him take over her training.
Last night I tied her to her bedframe and ran a low-amp, high-voltage current through her, slowly increasing it over the course of the session. I think that this is the start of the breakthrough with Venice that I've been looking for. In hindsight it is apparent that she'd accustomed herself to the level of discomfort that was being inflicted on her. She didn't enjoy the torture, but she'd realized that she could survive it and therefore it had ceased to have as much of a motivational impact on her.
I believe that the secret to breaking Venice will be the perpetual promise of worse things waiting in the wings. I've also realized that I've been stretching myself too thin and focusing on the wrong things over the last several months.
Lucy is important to my long-term plans, but it's not as though she'll turn against me two decades from now because I shave a couple of hours per week out of the time I'm currently spending with her. I should have been spending more time with Venice than I have been. Her unusually strong will makes it harder than normal to get a real picture of what is going on inside of her mind, but that is a poor excuse.
If I'd spent more time exploring her thoughts rather than just the minimum amount of effort required to counteract the constructs that Imastious has been placing there, I probably would have hit upon the proper course of action weeks ago. It is a worthwhile reminder that not all of the tasks that may need done are truly equal in importance or results for a given amount of effort.
There is however one area in which I think I've been especially wise when it comes to investing time and energy into an undertaking. The plan that I could feel starting to come together a couple of months ago has been carried out and it worked flawlessly.
Because of all of the operations that I've run for Imastious, I've gotten to know some of the Red Hand Consortium leadership and there was one individual who stood out to me last year on the couple of occasions that I interacted with him.
As nearly as I was able to tell, Antoine was recruited several years ago and went to college on a basketball scholarship in an attempt to leave the gang life behind. An unexpected injury sidelined him partway through his first year, which wouldn't have necessarily been the end of his attempt to get out, but his mother suffered a stroke shortly after he was injured.
Based on everything I'd observed, Antoine considered his life to be a failure, but the more I learned of him the more impressed I became. He'd returned home and once again became active in his gang because that offered the best prospect of paying for his mother's medical bills, but he'd managed to avoid the more violent aspects of activity in the Red Hand Consortium.
Antoine was smart and he'd put his brief time in college to good use. He wouldn't be giving any Harvard MBA's a run for their money in the near term, but he wasn't up against Harvard MBA's. Antoine streamlined the gang's drug operations and then moved on to establishing a protection racket inside their territory.
It was Antoine's intelligence that originally caught my attention, but it was the fact that he'd returned home to care for his mother that had given me the handle on him that I'd been looking for.
A little additional research revealed that Antoine had a wife and a six-year-old daughter and he'd relied on anonymity as their main shield against the hazards that were part and parcel of his gang activity.
Once I knew where Antoine lived, it was a simple matter to kidnap his daughter, whom his wife had left at a daycare center. Possession of the child gave me all of the leverage that I needed in order to get her mother to meet me at the station under 125th Street.
Antoine hadn't ever been loyal to his gang. If I'd had any doubt it would have been put to rest by the speed with which he gave up locations, shipment schedules and account numbers. Antoine's loyalty was first and foremost to his family, which is ultimately what killed him.
Any rational person would have known that I wasn't going to let his wife and daughter go free. The sensible thing would have been to cut his losses, but he walked right into my trap and he came unarmed and alone, just like I told him to.
I'd spent a week before the Antoine operation developing a new contact with the Bloods, which proved to be unusually wise in hindsight. I'd suspected that the information I'd get from Antoine would be more than I could successfully capitalize on my own, but I'd underestimated just how much Antoine knew.
Under other circumstances I might have been inclined to let Antoine go. There is something to be said for the idea of keeping the dumbest breeding stock in circulation. The stupider the average human is, the easier it is for vampires to continue to go unnoticed in the shadows.
Antoine's lack of survival instincts certainly put him towards the bottom of the barrel despite the intelligence he displayed in most other aspects of his life, but he'd recognized me, which meant that I couldn't let him live. Besides, he was the major force behind Imastious' favorite money machine. With him gone I knew that Imastious would have a much harder time recovering from the losses that were about to sweep through his organization.
I cut all three of their throats and then disposed of their bodies in suitably violent ways. Antoine was stuffed into the trunk of his own car, his wife was hanged from the ceiling of their apartment, and I left their daughter in a nearby park.
Even while I was doing it I knew that it was probably overkill, but it was a key part of my effort to link the killing to the Bloods. As soon as the bodies were taken care of, I texted my contact in the Bloods with most of the information I'd extracted out of Antoine and then went out to make off with three of the juicier targets. I ended up several million dollars richer, the Bloods now owe me a major favor, and Imastious has lost an incredible amount of money and influence which will ultimately lead to a loss of manpower.
Lucy's presence is, in a way, responsible for all of this. Before she came into my life and reminded me of a sister long since forgotten, I wouldn't have thought to attack in this manner. An intellectual understanding by itself doesn't carry sufficient power to really take advantage of those kinds of familial bonds. All in all, it's been a very profitable few weeks.
Things have continued on much the same as before with Lucy. This year her birthday was a very subdued affair, which seemed to suit her just fine. Although the last year since I found her at times felt as though it was moving with glacial slowness, looking back at it now it's hard to believe so much time has passed already. I very much hope the next eighteen years go by equally quickly.