Adelia's little black book of revenge

We lost the cops after five blocks.

A record for Mikey, our Prius-obsessed getaway driver. Not just inconspicuous but also good for the environment, he liked to boast. Michael Galaphy, everyone—a conservationist and bank robber.

Within an hour after our heist, we basked in our continued success around the round, marble-look table Ciara rescued from someone’s council pick-up pile, and stuffed our stomachs with hamburgers and Jordan’s homebrewed whiskey.

Eight robberies in eight months, and eight hundred thousand dollars between the five of us. We daydream of our futures, of what we’ll do with our riches once the Jackpot is found. Mikey aspired to retire upon a tropical island and start his own environmentally-conscious foundation. Jordan wished to live a lush travel life, seeing the most beautiful places whilst sleeping in the most comfortable beds. Ciara desired to disappear, live completely off grid. She claimed we’ll never see her again.

None of them realised it’d never come to pass, not if I had anything to do with it.

These were the moments I dreaded ... when I felt at home here, when Jordan remembered my allergy to pickles, when Mikey made me laugh until the whiskey shot from my nose, when Ciara told a story so vivid I existed only within them. Because I forget Mikey drove the ute which dumped my father’s body on the highway, I forget Jordan tied the ropes around his wrists and ankles, I forget Ciara made the phone call which lured him out of our home.

But it doesn’t matter how hard I laughed or cried or ate, I could never forget it was Anthony, my high school sweetheart, who pulled the trigger. My father’s protégé and our ring-leader, not one for celebrating anymore, swaggered out of our room in his usual jet black garb, hair still dripping and a self-satisfied grin on his face. He swept up beside me, took my chin in hand and fit his lips to mine.

It used to repulse me, kissing the man who killed my father whilst pretending I was still hopelessly in love. But since imagining my lips coated in venom, I welcomed each soft caress of his lips on mine, even found excuses to gift him as many as possible in hopes one day I’ll get to watch the light fade from his eyes.

“I have a gift for you, Adelia,” he whispered in his smoker’s voice and led me into our room.

On the cloud-white quilt of our king bed lay a worn black leather journal. I glanced at him askance and he motioned for me to take it.

I knew the handwriting within instantly—Dad’s.

My throat was too thick to laugh. A good thing, too, else I might’ve blown the cover I’d held for three years. Agent Jones asked it of me after he showed me the evidence which left little to no speculation around the murderer, but wouldn’t hold up in a court. There’s too many technicalities, Jones claimed. So here I was, pretending. It shouldn’t be so easy to disconnect from who I truly was, to leave behind the girl who loved soccer and lattes and pyjama Sundays.

But grief changed people, corrupted them.

Three years ago, when everything was perfect, Anthony heard down the robbery-vine of the wealth hidden within Candice Falkern’s multimillion-dollar mansion and organised the heist. Dad refused to accompany them, tried to warn Candice anonymously, but Anthony had contingencies. He hired mercenaries and cat-burglars who weren’t afraid of a little private security. But once Candice was beaten unconscious, the safe cracked and the money in the van, Anthony stole the security camera footage and left his new allies for the cops—whom Jones believed were paid off.

Realising how unhinged his protégé had become, Dad stole every dollar of the estimated three million haul, along with the camera footage. They killed him when he refused to reveal where their fortune lay, where the proof of their horrifying crime was buried. And so its stayed lost, despite Anthony’s and Jones’s best attempts to find it.

“You don’t like it?” Anthony asked me.

“I love it,” I assured him, gifting him a venom-kiss. “Does it mention the Jackpot?”

He frowned, his elegant brows bunching. So handsome, my father’s killer. “No. But, you knew your father better than I.”

Not a gift from the kindness of his black heart, no. After a honeyed smile, I assure him I’ll analyse it with an eagle eye and request solitude. He gave it to me willingly, believed my claim that I’d tell him immediately if I found anything.

But I was a Black Widow and he’s an arrogant fool.

I read through Dad’s scribbles for hours, from robbery plans to entries gushing about his day. I read and cried and reminisced. Polaroids taped to pages captured the last holiday we took with Mum to our beach house before the cancer won, when a pelican stole the fish from her plate. But the happy memories faded as their absence crashed into me, and I see my mother dead in a hospital bed and my father in the morgue.

Locking myself in the bathroom, I retrieved the waterproof bag with the burn-phone Jones assigned me from the toilet tank and cranked the shower to hide our conversation. I sent him photos of numbers that might be coordinates, of riddles and robbery blueprints.

Days passed as I read on. Anthony planned the next heist, a bank three towns over with four times the tills of the last, and we never saw a flicker of red and blue in the Prius’s rear-view mirror. I told Jones about each bank, but he sent no backup. He wanted the proof hidden within the Jackpot, buried because my father didn’t know who to trust.

We don’t hurt the tellers, the security guards, the customers. Not physically. But every till was less than Anthony expected.

He broke the marble-look table with a single kick after our expected two-hundred thousand haul revealed a measly eighty-thousand and I disappeared into the bathtub again to read.

I heard Dad’s gravelly voice saying every word within that little black journal, his dry humour in the riddles and could picture his mischievous smile parting his black beard as if he knew each of these scribbles would send his protégé insane with desperation.

Days of reading turned into weeks. A full month passed before my umpteenth revision showed promise within a hand-drawn blueprint of an unnamed bank, appearing half-drawn and forgotten. I assumed it useless, a plan thwarted before it finished forming within Dad’s mind, until I noticed the familiar faint creases. I followed the long smoothed out fold and typed the coordinates into Google Maps.

The red pin appeared and my breath caught.

Mum’s beach house.

My mind reeled, my heart a thundering crescendo in my chest and a spark of what might be joy ignited within me.

Freedom.

It’s what my father offered me.

Revenge.

The next day, I smuggled a pickle onto my burger. My throat and tongue swelled. I couldn’t breathe. Ciara drove me to hospital and Anthony declared I couldn’t join them on the heist tomorrow, asked me to rest and read. They’ll be gone for three days.

Perfect.

I take my father’s Jeep Wrangler and go to the beach house, a half-day drive up the coast.

The paint flaking, the windows shattered and graffiti littered the walls both internally and externally. It’d been six years since that holiday, since I’d crossed the threshold of the double aquamarine doorway. Looters stole much, but the house was dead to us the moment Mum passed away and whatever sentimental value might’ve lingered was forgotten.

I retrieved my phone and followed the path of the coordinates out the backdoor, across the sand backyard and into the shrubbery. Branches clung to my sweater like little hands as I followed a path that didn’t exist, doubting every step and wondering if I’d fallen for a trick meant for Anthony.

At last, an outhouse appeared. Sun-bleached blue and overgrown with hardenbergia vines. A gentle shove proved the hinges were rusted together and I took a hammer to them until they shattered.

With my throat tight, chest swelling and anticipation an eel twirling within my gut, I pulled the broken door away and threw it.

Nothing. No toilet. No sink. No bag full of money or sign telling me where to go next.

I kicked at the sand, shrieking my frustrations into the sky and fell to my knees.

So close. I had been so close to being free, to being able to look into Anthony’s eyes and tell him how I hate him. Tell them all how I know what they did to my father and ensure they rot in prison for the remainder of their lives.

Get up, Adelia. My father’s voice breezed through my mind. Get up.

They’re the words he said to me after a bad tackle during a soccer game, the words he said to me the day Mum died, the words he wrote in his own will.

I don’t want to. I dug my hands into the sand beneath me, wishing it would swallow me and take me to my parents.

And I realised, with sand up to my elbows, of course, it’s not right there. Only a fool would leave three million dollars above ground.

I scurried to the outhouse and dug. Scooping out handfuls of golden sand until the dry granules were dark and wet, until my fingernails burned and hands ached, until I scraped along the top of a steel box.

My hands were numb, buzzing from the friction by the time I dragged it out. No padlock, no number combination. I flipped open the lid and sobbed.

There was more than three million dollars inside, stacked in gladwrapped bundles.

A dark part of me insisted I take it and run—it’s more than enough money to disappear with. I’ll never have to even think of Anthony or be reminded daily of what he did to my father. I could be free. But this money was the reason Dad was dead. It was dirty money.

Alongside the stacks sat a small black case I could only assume held the footage of Anthony and the crew at Candice’s mansion and a note.

My beautiful Adie, I did a lot of wrong things in my life, but you are not one of them. Which is why I couldn’t leave you empty-handed. Go to your room, lift the floorboards, find your freedom. I wish it were more, but I swear on your mother it is clean. All my love, Dad.

I buried the box back into the sand as well as I could, tossed the vine back over the outhouse and ran back to the house. I hauled up the trick floorboard in my butter-yellow painted room and felt my heart crack open.

A black bag lay within the hole where I used to hide candy, but inside it weren’t stacks of hundred dollar bills wrapped and clearly stolen. They were crumpled notes and jars of coins, as if all those nights I thought Dad was on another heist, he was working, making clean money, as he called it, because he knew I wouldn’t accept it otherwise.

I was a mess when Jones answered my call, informing him of the Jackpot but not my father’s final gift. I counted it as I waited for them to arrive, grateful for the plastic make as my tears coated every piece.

Dad was wrong, twenty-thousand dollars was more than enough for the fresh start I craved.

Agent Jones arrived and over the next three months, Anthony and the other’s trials commenced. All were charged for their parts in the attack and robbery of Candice and that of my father’s murder. All were sent to prison for life, without bail, and I got what I desired.

Freedom.