Love at the end of the tunnel.

Pain was not new to her.

She was not new to pain either.

When you grow up as Harriet DeVille, you become close acquaintances with pain.

All kinds of pain, it did not matter what type of pain it was; physical, emotional, mental or any other sort of pain you could think of.

When you were the pinche of the DeVille family, you could boldly claim acquaintance with all kinds of friends.

You could even claim to be friends with pain if you wanted.

As the lowest person on the totem pole, the last link in the food chain, you became familiar with pain at a young age.

With a father, whose existence no one was aware of, and a mother who had died in childbirth. You automatically became the perra of the family.

Harriet was well aware of all this, it was her life story, she knew it better than any one else, not even her own subconsciousness knew the story as well as she did.

But as she lay in the basement of the Castillo, with her blood smeared face and hands, she could not stop thinking of her pathetic life.

The past sixteen years of her life, or as many of them as she could remember had been nothing but a living hell.

She was sure that no other child or teenager any where in the world could claim to have a life half as bad as her's.

It was pathetic and silly, but that was her only claim to fame, if her uncle Carson had any say about it, it was the only claim to fame she was ever going to have, because he was going to make sure she did love long enough for another claim to fame.

If he had his way, she would have been dead and buried by now.

Not that the family would care enough to give her a burial or cremation,they would probably dump her body in a canal and forget that she had ever existed.

He had been well under way to beating the life out of her, when his perky younger sister, her aunt Ivy had stopped him.

It was not by any chance out of the goodness of her heart, hell no.

It was doubtful if perky Ivy, the drama queen of the DeVille family had a heart.

She had stopped her brother because she still needed some one to take the fall for her, the next time, she was caught driving with a white powder coated nose and a pouch of nose candy on the arm rest, or some other such childishly nefarious behavior which was the drama queen's stock in trade.

Harriet had been taking the fall for her and other members of the family, since she was fourteen.

Tobias DeVille, the patriarch of the DeVille family picked who suffered for what crime.

He seemed to delight in picking her more often than he picked other family members.

He had gotten her a birth certificate and driver's license that claimed she was nineteen when she was barely fourteen, just so she could go to prison for the crimes of other family members, especially his darling little girl, Ivy.

She knew it was piteous, but she had actually come to enjoy her nights in jail.

No doubt, a prison no matter how comfortable it might be, was not the idea place for a teenage girl to enjoy visiting....

But Harriet did not mind admitting that she almost enjoyed her nights in prison- the devil name was so well feared, and their under ground world of crime was so well run that even a lowly member of the family like herself never had to spend more than a night in the arms of the law.

Lately she had actually found herself wishing that she could spend more time in prison.

Her nights in prison were the most restful nights of her life.

Her family may treat her like trash, but she was still one of them, and she bore the fearsome DeVille name.

Both the policià and the other inmates were wary of her family name, not wanting to do any thing to pitch themselves against the mighty DeVille clan.

Their wariness pushed them away from her, and she was left peacefully alone.

The fact that she always withdrew into herself when ever some one brave enough tried express any form of interest in her or even tried to talk her, also pushed all her Co prisoners to stay away from her.

All this made her time in jail the most peaceful time she would have in weeks.

In jail she was left to herself. It was much more than she could ever hope for back at home.

In the Castillo, hoping for a full night's rest was nothing but a pipe dream.

Ivy liked to use her the same way one would use one of those fancy American stress balls, by squeezing her as tightly as she could to make her feel better.

It was certain that she would come in to Harriet's tiny closet of a bedroom at least two times in one night, either because she could not sleep, or because she had had a bad dream, for some reason, the only way she could calm herself down enough to sleep after a bad dream was to pace up and down, dragging Harriet after her by her hair, more often than not, she ended up pulling the hair out.

Harriet had enough bald patches to show for the nights she had been used to battle insomnia.

In recent years, uncle Carson had taken to spending more than half night in her room, bending her over her bed, while slamming in to her from behind.

It was no secret that Carson had turned his neice into his home whore, the whole family and everyone else who worked for the DeVille family was aware, but everyone turned a blind eye and acted like they had no idea, that the first son of the mighty Tobias DeVille was fucking his baby sister's daughter.

Not even Tobias cared, he probably felt that she deserved it for being the cause of his daughter's death, Tobias had never forgiven her for that, it did not matter that she had not intentionally killed his daughter, and if the creator had given her a choice in the matter, she would have chosen to die, so her mother could remain with her beloved family.

However, none of that mattered to Tobias, as far as he was concerned, Harriet had been responsible for his daughter's death and she deserved what ever treatment his family meted out to her.

Harriet had seen so much pain in her life, that she should be used to pain by now.

She had been through too much pain for some one as young as she was. It had been made worse by the fact that it was her own family, the very same people who were supposed to love her unconditionally were the same ones who were causing her pain.

In the sixteen years she had lived with them her family had treated her worse than trash.

Perhaps if she had been pretty like her aunt Ivy, life would have gone easier on her, and she would have much lesser pain to live with.

But beauty was far from her and she ended up a scrawny ugly little zorra, and her family had treated like the little bruja they believed she was.

Hell, even a dog would have been treated much better than she was by her family.

She was used as a punching bag, a human doll to be put to what ever use her family choose.

They had not hesitated to put her to good use.

She was treated almost like a slave and made to do the most dreadful chores that no one else in the family wanted to do.

She was even used as bait, when her family fought for their territory with other gangs and drug cartels.

She had been through so much pain that she had grown a thick skin to deal with pain.

She even fancied that she had grown immune to pain. Her family had hurt her so many times that she should be used to it by now.

It was ridiculous for her to expect anything else from them.

But ridiculous or not, she had been extremely hurt by the fact that her family all turned blind eyes to her uncle Carson's actions.

Why she had expected them to do any thing else was beyond her reasoning.

She had known this people for sixteen years and in all those sixteen years, they had treated her worse than trash, she had received worse treatment like than a dog.

So, why would she expect them to suddenly see her as human.

To them, she was probably as useful as an old and tattered couch.