The name my mother gave me at birth was Alexander, a name not too strange nor too common from my native land in Cuba, how a poor wretch born from poverty ended up as one of the greatest torturers and experts in my field, is something that even I don't recognize.
I started doing small jobs in commerce when I was 11 years old, 5 years after my father was murdered in a scuffle with money involved; any excuse would have no effect at those moments, he left us out of simple greed.
No one in my family asked him to take risks and act like an idiot for something as fleeting as money; all my mother and siblings and I wanted was a peaceful life, no matter the precarious situations we were in, we were happy as long as we were together.
We didn't care if he gambled or drank, he was always the best to us, but that selfish attitude cost him more than our patience. The one who felt the blow the most was my mother, who despite the news the only thing she could do at that moment was look at me and shed a tear after embracing me and my 3 siblings.
She did it as a promise to the world, to her children and to the God we prayed to every night.
Her feelings ran so high that she earned the respect of her neighbors and people of great respect with money from all over Cuba, who admired her for her willingness to get her children ahead, and especially for the smile she gave to the world. Her acts of effort were so great that she could ask for different jobs without pay just so they would give her the opportunity to apply for official positions in order to raise more for us.
But the world doesn't help all people equally, my mother had been suffering from early stages of cancer even before my father's death, and the overload of her efforts gave her another step toward the abyss.
None of this would lead me to commit crimes, just like her smile that she showed in the mornings when she gave me breakfast, I became a person who wanted and aspired to be like her.
But the world doesn't want good for anyone, not in the world I was born into.
***
One of the nights when we were playing in the living room with my siblings while my mother knitted clothes for us, a curfew was being enforced for the marginalized neighborhoods with the highest rates of robbery and violence.
The rules were simple, no one goes out after 7 pm and before 6 am. The army decided to take extreme measures in the face of a wave of violence unleashed in 2018, anyone who went out was at risk of being executed immediately as a form of cleansing against marginal groups.
A mistake that would cost not only my family's lives, but several others. The problem didn't originate because the army decided to enter houses, most respected those boundaries; the problem that started in those raids, where those marginal groups decided that since they couldn't win in a face-to-face confrontation, they would hide in their settlements.
The question that anyone with intelligence would ask themselves, is what happens if not everyone respects the rules and decides to enter and clean up against these insurgents?
Any plague of cockroaches would scatter toward the nearest places in search of hiding spots.
That's what happened to my family, a group of 5 people entered and killed everyone in the living room. They slit the throats and stabbed my mother and siblings, the fate was the same for me. They ran a knife through me.
It was all for nothing the screams that my mother let out through tears and blood; she died in the only way she never imagined while raising us.
My 2 older siblings and one younger tried to resist just like I did, but we were overpowered and one by one eliminated. The last of all was me, I received a stab wound to the stomach.
The screams my mother made bore fruit of hope, before me a boy of only 5 years old who only had left a massacred family. The screams in my head couldn't show all the emotions I could feel at that moment, I could only think about the death of these people.
My salvation was the notification to the army about a possible conflict at my house.
The moment they arrived a chaos unfolded that in my memories would not come to pass as I blacked out from blood loss.
When I woke up I was in an intensive care unit in a hospital in the capital.
I asked about my family, no one was able to answer.
Only an officer who rescued me was able to tell me the bad news, not before telling me that they couldn't catch all those involved from the army in what happened.
One of the perpetrators had escaped.
There's no way to be so inept in this life.
What would come next would be getting an adoptive family, that or an orphanage. But in my plans was no longer to become the person with a normal, honorable and respected life that my mother would have wanted, the path of blood and punishment was the new goal.
And that didn't end when I killed the person responsible for killing my family, I also took care one by one of those involved in the raid who disobeyed orders, giving them the only opportunity to ask forgiveness for all their sins just before dying.
***
My path deviated so much that I managed to become a monster incapable of satiating the revenge for the pain of losing my family.
All that was until the moment I found my second family, my second home, my second chance.
All that was until a year ago.
Now I stand before someone who in the future will become everything I needed in my childhood and me now, a 17-year-old boy, thin and pale with completely black hair and gray eyes.
And with a complex change of personalities that deep down helped me feel like when my siblings and I were home, safe and with my mother's smile.
A void that would take the miseries lived from my past, forgiving what was done and giving me one last chance.
The chance to live with a smile like the one my mother gave when she cared for me and my siblings.
This was no longer about resilience, it went beyond revenge.
Here begins my redemption.