From the Diary of Nathan Moriarity
Life wasn't so bad, you know? I had it pretty good for a while, depending on your definition of good. Things didn't start out so great, what with my rat b*****d of a father being a no-good angry drunk, and my mother splitting right the night of my 10th birthday. She promised to come back for me. She never made it back. Part of me thinks he killed her, the other part thinks if he had he'd have been too tired to beat me senseless when he came home and told me she was gone.
I put up with it for 3 years before I took off on my own. It wasn't easy, being in Miami with no home, but I made do. I hooked up with a few other kids like me, and we made our way from meal to meal, shoplifting and stealing food off street vendor carts so we didn't starve. When I was 15, I fell into the hands of Rico Vendratti, a small time drug dealer who saw potential in my theiving skills. He put a roof over my head, clothes on my back, food in my stomach, and he didn't ask for much in return. Just that I do whatever he asked, be it breaking into some wealthy old lady's house and taking her antique jewels, or spending some...quality time with him.
I wasn't the only one in his ring, but I was a favored one for a good long while. He bought me my first guitar, and I learned to play it. He also refused to let me get involved in the drugs or the guns. He said he needed me sharp and with a clear head to steal for him, and unarmed I was likely not to get my a** killed by the cops if I was caught. I guess I should be grateful for that.
It was a decent existence, then came the wars. Rico sat back and watched while two drug families duked it out over territory and customers, territory we'd always sat on the periphery of and nibbled off the overflow from. Both groups were decimated, and that was when Rico swept in and finished them both off. We took over the entire area, and the income level skyrocketed. It became easy street. My theiving targets became much more ambitious. Safecracking became an artform to me, and I loved to play those tumblers as much as my guitar. Banks were a bit too much heat, so we stuck to jewelry stores.
By the time I was 19, I no longer remembered what it was like to have nothing. I was in love, I was driving sportscars, getting new tattoos on a whim, wearing designer clothes, living the good life. Like all great things, of course, it had to come to an end.
One of the drug families Rico had taken out was a small portion of a much larger Columbian group. They had bided their time, moving people into Rico's organization, building their resources from home, and on the night of my 20th birthday, they destroyed everything I knew. Rico and I were sleeping, when the door was kicked in. I watched them murder Rico in front of me. I was in shock, and I knew I was next. I managed to hit the panic button on the side of the nightstand, and all the lights went out. I scrambled through the hidden door in the back of the closet and fled into the night.
I cut my hair, pawned two of my diamond piercings, and bought a bus ticket to New York City. There I picked up another guitar, though not the sweet Ibanez I'd had before, and I made pocket change playing on streetcorners so I could eat. I felt like I was 13 all over again. I met a couple other guys and formed a band, "Sherlock". It went well enough with the new name I'd picked up for myself, Moriarity. I knew the Columbians held grudges, and that they didn't forget easily. I was hoping the sea of humanity that is NYC could hide me.
The band made enough that we could share a crappy studio apartment in an even crappier part of town. There were plenty of groupies, but I never let anyone get close. I couldn't afford to, everytime I did, they left me one way or another. When I first received the "Free Trip" notice to the island, I thought it was a scam, and I set it aside.
3 years of relative anonymity was all I had. Then I noticed I was being shadowed on the way home from gigs, saw black cars parked outside the apartment with people in them. I thought maybe one of the guys had a stalker, but then in the crowd at our last gig I saw a few faces I recognized from back in Miami, from the night Rico died. That "scam" suddenly became my lifeline. I took the plane ticket, and headed to Moreau's Island, not realizing that I was in for something much, much worse than anything the Columbians could have done to me.
