The second time she lost someone to a freak accident, was her father, Walter. It's not a story she ever tells, not even once. She only tells people that her father passed away, because well, he did. Even if she didn't see a body, she knew he was gone. It's a way that you can just sense things, how the air feels a little different, and there is a heavy weight on the heart that can't be explained. So, she had known something had happened to her father before the police had even knocked on her door, greeting her with a smug oh we're so sorry when she knew that they weren't. Walter and Faith never had a good relationship with most police officers, despite Walter going mostly hidden in his antics, police officers still wanted him arrested for a variety of things. One of those things was having an insane amount of information on the corrupt officers in the Boston Police Department. Thieves don't just steal items, after all. They steal information as well.
For most of Faith's life, Walter had been the one person who believed in her no matter what. While her mother Lydia tried to make Faith into a trophy, to use Faith to have the life that Lydia never got, Walter saw Faith as the passionate and curious child that she was. When Faith didn't want to go to a beauty pageant, even after being all dressed up and hair done up in curls, Walter helped her escape to a nearby playground. It had just rained, and Walter laughed as Faith immediately ran for all of the muddy puddles, getting her dress ruined, her hair dirty, and Walter ran through all the puddles with his daughter. And when she tripped and fell down face first into the mud, and she looked up to Walter with wide eyes, not sure of what to do, Walter bent down, picked up some mud in his hand, and rubbed it all over his face, to match her. He grinned at her then, and little Faith immediately grinned back and hugged him. It was little moments like this that proved to Faith that her father loved her dearly, and it was one of the memories she holds on to the most.
As she got older, and she tried to go her own path, she was hit with obstacle after obstacle. When she was raped and shunned by those she begged for help, he was the only one to believe her. He offered her help, but she refused, determined to make it on her own, her own pride getting in her way. And while she learned later that it killed him to let her go through that alone, he recognized that she needed to. That she needed to prove to herself that she could get back up on her feet.
That was, until one day in 2004, when their lives crossed paths in unexpected ways. Faith had become desperate. She was unable to get a job, and while she was well educated, the son of the Senator had gone to every major company in the city, telling them not to hire her. She couldn't get a job at any accounting firm, law firm, even universities were turning her down. A degree in Mathematics and she couldn't use it, because she had to have her life turned upside down by the one man that seemed to control the city. She had no money. She was about to be kicked out of her flat. She had to do something.
She had already gone out a few times before, stealing a few items here and there, but never anything this big. She had never tried a jewelry store, she had never tried to just straight up try to do something like this in plain sight, but she needed the money. Just two of those necklaces, and she'd make out like a bandit. So, she moved.
As she walked into the store, and smiled at the security guard who greeted her, she was taking count of who was in the store. Two guards. Three clerks. Most likely someone in the back room. She moved her large purse in front of her as she approached the main case, with a lot of large, beautiful, and most importantly, expensive diamonds. "How may I help you today, Miss?" The male clerk asked, which really was perfect because she made sure to wear her lowest cut shirt she owned and her best push-up bra, and he was so more interested in her boobs than anything else. "Oh, I'd love to see this piece, can you show it to me?" She asked, leaning forward ever so slightly, pretending to act dumb, as he smirked and quickly agreed. As he set the tray of jewels in front of her, she looked behind him, "Oh, what is that? Can I see that too?" She asked with her sweetest voice as the door opened behind her, and she pointed to nothing in particular, slipping the necklace into her bag.
It was then that she heard it. "FBI! Freeze!" And that was immediately what Faith did. She froze for a moment, as she heard a man's voice, "Please turn around miss, and remove what you just put into your purse." Faith slowly turned around and as she looked at the man, her eyes went wide. She didn't say anything, only just took the necklace out of her purse and handed it to the 'FBI Agent' in front of her. The man went on to talk about how she was a wanted thief, which wasn't at all true, and that he was going to take her in immediately. She watched as he placed the necklace into his pocket but then seemingly pulled it back out, and handed it back to the clerk.
Faith's hands were placed behind her back, and she was handcuffed, and lead out of the jewelry store.
She didn't say anything, just found herself confused as instead of being lead to a cop car -- which was nowhere in sight, she was lead to a black van in the alley. As they approached the van, the man opened the doors and told her to get in. She did, and he followed, turning on a light and shutting the door, immediately unlocking her handcuffs. "Pumpkin, what do you think you're doing! You could have gotten caught, that was extremely careless."
Because the man sitting in front of her in the van was no other than Walter Harris, her father, and apparently...an FBI agent. Which --
"You just had to pick today and try to do the same thing I was going to do? Though Faith, you really need to work on your execution, kiddo. The whole 'femme fatale' thing is dated, we should work on that."
--- wasn't even true, because apparently her father wasn't an FBI agent, but a thief.
"Dad, what the fuck? You have a lot of explaining to do," Faith scowled, tossing her bag, to the ground and rubbing her wrists.
"Young lady! Language!" Walter chuckled, as he shrugged off his FBI jacket, and reached into the pocket, pulling out the necklace, "Why were you trying to steal this?"
Faith's eyes went wide in that moment, "I saw you give that back."
"You saw me give back a copy, that I have spent months re-creating. And here, my own daughter, almost ruins the entire plan."
"You're a thief?"
"Apparently, so are you. Like daughter, like father."
"You're not answering my question!"
"Pumpkin, there's a lot I didn't tell you. Come on. I think we need to have a chat." Walter gestured to the front of the van, as he moved to take the driver's seat, and Faith moved up to take the passenger seat. They started out of the alley and drove to Walter's place in the outskirts of the city, and talked for hours. Walter finally admitted to Faith how their family had the life they had when she was young - being a master thief, and a rather well-reknown one had it's perks. And, well, he had to play a few cons in the past, but it was all part of the job.
Faith, for her part, wasn't angry. Because she knew the one thing he was never lying about, was his love for her. Call it intuition, but it was something she had felt. Walter let her ask all the questions she wanted to ask, and to his credit, he answered all of them, even if they were too hard to answer.
Then, it became his turn to ask her questions. And Faith in turn, told him everything. How her life was destroyed, how she couldn't get a job due to the blackmailing, how nothing was working out and she had grown desperate.
He offered to help her. She refused, until he clarified.
"Let me help you become a better thief."
That was when it had started: Walter had given Faith a way to get her life back, in a way that she hadn't expected. Her life was stolen from her, so it was time to steal some of it back. Together, the two became an unstoppable team, as Faith learned all the cons and all the routines she needed. She knew all the stops, who to trust, and who not to trust. Walter taught her his old cons, and Faith helped him come up with new ones. Together, the father and daughter team had started to build up more than just their bank accounts. Their relationship got stronger.
As the years went on, they had started to gather too much money and needed businesses to hide it behind. Walter, the old style man that he was, opted for starting a construction company, and hid most of his share into the company, while using it to pay the construction guys working for him. He took good care of the workers, and they in turn took good care of him - it was a beneficial working relationship that worked for all parties, as the construction guys soon became a sort of extended family. Faith, for her part, went a less traditional route. With a friend of hers once commenting that her boss at her strip club was an asshole and how she wished she had a club owner who could respect women, and clients at the same time, Faith had the idea to start up Diamond Inc. As that business grew, she added in Diamond Services, the exclusive escort service. She took good care of the men and women working for her in all aspects, and they also became part of an extended family. Faith was getting her life back, one step at a time.
They worked successfully side by side for years, building their businesses, playing their cons, doing what they felt was necessary. Soon it had become more about helping those who were less fortunate than taking for themselves, and Faith was starting to feel more like herself. They started to gather information, to figure out who was corrupt and how to take them down, how to gather information and keep it, sell it if they needed to. They were a force to be reckoned with, and Faith felt strong, she felt powerful again. There were still plenty of things wrong in her life, plenty of things that needed to be fixed, but this was a step.
But as all things went, just as things were getting good, they suddenly turned bad.
This was when the second accident came into play.
In March of 2012, she found herself woken up by a police officer knocking on her door, informing her that her father had gotten into a car accident. As she went to get her jacket to run to the hospital, they told her there was no point -- he was badly burned in the accident and was not recognizable at all. The only way they were able to identify him was due to his dental records. Her father had died in the accident.
To have everything going so right, to only have it once again ripped away so violently, Faith fell into a depression. But she told herself that Walter wouldn't have wanted that. He would have wanted her to keep going, to keep working on the businesses, to take care of those who needed her. So, she tried to pick herself up. She mourned, and she tried to keep going.
But, his death was something she never talked about. Not how it happened, not how their connection was before he died, only that he had died. It's the fear of losing those she's close to, the fear of losing those that she loves, that drives her to try to protect what she has. She considers it a lifeline.
It's 2017 now, and it's freezing out, but it doesn't stop her from doing what she does every year. She goes to the graveyard where he's buried, and she stands in front of his grave, and tells him about her life. About the things that have happened. About how lost and confused she's been feeling lately, but that she's found some good in her life too. That one of the biggest weights on her shoulder is gone, and he'd be so proud of her. "I wish you could be here to see how things are going, Dad." She says, as she wraps her arms around her tightly, "I think you'd be proud. You'd...well you'd be a little confused about some of the things that's been happening in this city, but you'd be proud, at least, of me."
Faith presses her fingers to her lips, kisses them, and then places her fingers on top of his grave, "I'll see you around, Dad." She says softly, as she puts her hands into her coat pocket and starts back out of the graveyard to her car.
She doesn't see the figure watching her behind a tree, his hands in his pockets, a scarf around his neck, his gray hair styled up, the wrinkles on his face showing a life well lived. She doesn't see the sorrow on his face as he watches her leave.
She doesn't hear him when he says, "I'll see you soon, pumpkin."
And she doesn't see him leave, following after her.