trigger warnings for suicide, rape (suggested), drugs, and abuse
Sophie Espinoza grew up in NYC. Her mother, Jessica: young, beautiful, absent. Her father, Ray: ex-boxer, pathetic, doting. Mom left when Sophie was still a baby, finding that she couldn’t love the older man she’d once thought the one, and shamelessly moved on to significantly younger/richer men instead. Dad was devastated. A “retired” boxer, he taught his baby girl all the critical moves to keep her safe on the rough city streets, and a few extra that had cost him his career. He hoped that she’d stay clean, go straight and make a happy life for herself. He’d tell her horrendous stories about the dangers of mixing with the wrong crowds, warn her against gang activity or gambling. She would pay no attention, because he was always out gambling and she suspected he worked as a supplier for a local gang anyway, so she thought him a hypocrite.
When she was fifteen, she came home from grocery shopping to find him missing. She found out that Ray had lost everything in a bet and had killed himself. Sophie felt betrayed, abandoned and furious - she knew that they could’ve made it through if he’d only kept himself alive. He’d lied when he called her his lifeline, a fat lot of good the thought of her had done for him in the end! She let anger rule her, let it distract her from the thought that she hadn’t been enough to save him.
Naturally, a fifteen year old can’t pay rent, especially when she was practically living off whatever her dad made at the betting table. Sophie was allowed to stay with neighbours for a while, but she was rowdy and angry and refused to allow kindness into her life. People pitied her, and that upset her, so she’d scream at them. She’d hit them. She’d do anything to convince them that she was a big, tough, capable girl and that she didn’t need anyone. Eventually no one wanted to keep her, so she found herself on the streets and very alone.
Not two months later, David Hawk found her. She was like an injured stray dog: weak, but with all the fighting spirit that one could expect from someone who’d had to literally hunt rats to stay alive sometimes. Hawk thought she was so interesting, so amusing, that he took her in. Took her under his wing, he’d said that day. She thought he was cheesy, therefore harmless, and let desperation guide her into his strong, tattooed arms. He wasn’t much older than her, and so handsome...
She showed him how good she was at snatching, at fighting. He laughed when she hit one of his best henchmen over the head with a baseball bat, he laughed when she stole money from a mother with children at her ankles. He told her that she was the most interesting person he’d ever seen, and that she could stay with him forever. He asked her what her name was, and she told him it was Sophie Raven. She wanted to impress him (and she just fucking knew her dad had been killed by gangsters over his gambling debts - what if this was the same gang and she’d die because of the relation?).
“Sophie Raven, huh? I like that.”
“You will.”
Forever only lasted a few years, but it felt like a true eternity. She became his right hand man, his best bitch, as he’d say. She preferred right-hand man. Sophie did anything he wanted her to. She stole, she sold herself, she hurt. She was violent, angry, and above all: alone. Hawk made her feel like she had a family again, like she belonged. She recalled bitterly the home she once knew, sharing no information on it at all. She said that she’d had a house, but “never a home, until this” at which point she’d gesture to the serpentine tattoo circling her left wrist and hand. Hawk let her into his supply of drugs, of drink, of food-- why wouldn’t she feel like they were friends? They weren’t, he reminded her when he’d get drunk and he’d hit her, or he’d try to force himself on her, or he’d scare her. Hawk scared her. Nothing scared Sophie Raven. That was partly why she stayed. She had to.
She ran away when she was nineteen after befriending a man outside the gang. She swore he sought justice every second he was awake, he was crazy about it. Benson was nothing like anyone she’d met before; he didn’t want her clothes off, he didn’t ask her why she’d taken so long at doing anything; he just kept to himself. Kept to himself, and his fucking law degree. She would listen to him reading out his texts “to get me to fall asleep”, but the relaxation of it faded when he would tell her of all the penalties of the crimes she’d committed in her recent years. She knew she was breaking the law, but she’d felt so untouchable around Hawk that she didn’t think about it. Not when she stole, not when she burned, not even when she would assault people when they’d stepped out of line within the gang. She didn’t even know about the rules surrounding sex work.
Sophie felt disgusted, and left the gang. Of course, someone who knows all the secrets can’t just leave, so she laid low with Benson for a while. Naturally, she had to tell him everything in the end (lying only lasted for a short time, after all). He told her that turning herself in was the safest thing she could do long term, and that if she played her cards right, she could get away with minimal jail time.
Sophie Raven wasn’t a victim, she was a careless mutilator of everything beautiful. She didn’t care who treated her badly, because she’d just treat them worse. She didn’t care about her past or her future, only living in the now because it was all she had. No home, nowhere safe to sleep. No friends, besides Benson. Sophie Raven didn’t care that she was a monster, but Sophie Espinoza did.
Make no mistake, there were never any inner issues with the two personalities she had. Sophie could act to save her life (and she had had to, multiple times), so the killer inside her was simple a mask she put on to make the bad people stay away. Espinoza knew exactly what she was doing at all times: manipulating people into believing that she was the extreme version that she once thought she’d been, while at the same time convincing herself that she was going to make it out in the end, some way.
She tried for a while just living low, looking for jobs that didn’t require nudity in any forms and she tried to set herself up to start her life again. She kept her name because she still wanted to keep a hold of the strong person she’d become. She wanted to become a taxi driver, but then she also planned to steal the car and leave for her father’s homeland of Mexico. She still stole, she was still vicious, but only to those who did her wrong first. Fundamentally, she kept a low profile and it got her through a few months.
She turned herself in just before she turned twenty-one, as Sophie Raven - however she later confessed that she’d adopted the name as an alias to keep her safe from her pimp, her own personal serpent: David Hawk. She remembers vividly how she sat in the grey interrogation room, confessing to as many crimes as she could remember doing, while at the same time clearly showing how Hawk had made her do it. In actuality, it was at that moment that she realised that she’d only ever been a puppet, a play thing, and she broke down.
Nevertheless, a prison sentence was given on the grounds of being an accomplice to several crimes she couldn’t blame him for. She was released a year later for good behaviour, and they even put her in touch with a company that offers jobs to ex-convicts. She became a cleaning lady, and got an apartment with two other people, and now she’s on her way.
Hawk, on the other hand, got himself a pretty little life sentence. What hadn’t he done? Of course he pleaded innocent to it all, unaware that it had been Sophie who had ratted him out. His new second in command took over the role as Top Dog within his precious gang, and kept themselves alert for anyone falling under the radar who fit Sophie’s profile. Naturally their secrets that she knew had stopped being so important now Hawk was gone, but she still knew too much for her to be just let off the hook.
Sophie doesn’t talk about her father, her old life, or her time in prison much. She goes by Espinoza now, to give honour to the memory of her father; because she knows he deserves it, despite abandoning her in the horrible way that he had. She doesn’t forgive him, but she won’t forget him either.
