*Three Months Ago*

It was a foggy October night filled with laughter as little children walked the neighborhoods with their parents, buckets half filled with candy in tow and I was dressed in my costume- a black eye mask and blonde wig not dissimilar to the one worn on those television shows with vigilantes portrayed as heroes.

I held out my police issue baton in public, glad that Amazon really did have everything. Granted it wouldn't do well in a gun fight, but it was my first night attempting to do something even remotely dangerous so I figured I'd taken things slow on my first time out.

The bars were crawling with girls dressed to the nines in costumes that left hardly anything to the imagination, so I was glad that my black liquid leggings were practically molded to my skin and my top was skin tight, so I wasn't going to stick out much.

I counted my steps as the spikes of my stilettos created an echo off of the taller buildings around me and took a few steadying breaths to reel in my nerves that seemed like they had a mind of their own.

Once seated in the bar that I'd only frequented a few times since I'd been in Boston, I glanced around at the partying college students and zeroed in on a few questionable looking guys eyeing the scantily clad women around them and tried to flush out my target's target.

It wasn't hard to find the group of three guys who were watching the women before them like they were their prey out in the wild and they were the lions, the predators. I kept tabs on them all night while I drank my glass of wine, nursing it slowly so I didn't give myself an accidental buzz, although that might've helped with the nerves.

The first one made their move. The girl rebuffed his advances and he retreated back to his table sullenly, conversing with his friends and I could just make out the words, "bitch," and "slut."

It was ironic how they assumed that a girl not wanting to go with them upon first meeting was a 'slut' just because of her rejection of them. I rolled my eyes at their idiocy and focused in on a man sitting by himself observing the room.

A scar trailed down the left side of his light brown skin and his dark hair was a shaggy unkempt mop on the top of his head. His gaze was piercing and unwavering and for a moment we locked eyes but I quickly tore mine away, terrified that he would be able to discern my identity underneath my mask and come looking for me in a dark alleyway somewhere. He screamed danger and disgust and he was my new target.

I meandered in the bar long after the college kids zipped out, eager to get to the frat parties that I was still too terrified to even gaze upon from the outside looking in.

When it seemed like I was about to be the last girl in the bar, the scar faced man (no relation to the movie) stood and wrapped his arm around a waiting girl at the bar not three stools down from me. I gripped onto the slimy and sticky bar top, awaiting the surge of rage to come out of the girl as he was outwardly groping her chest in public with seemingly having just met her, but she was swaying on her seat, clearly out of her wits.

She was dressed differently than the other females who had previously occupied the bar, her hair kept simple and her outfit considered conservative when compared to mine. She looked to be about in her late twenties and like she was drowning her troubles away. I hated the fact that I immediately saw her as easy prey, so I could only guess what the man was thinking of her.

She stood and swayed on her feet after leaving a few twenties on the top, waved to the bartender and strolled out of the bar, her lack of costume and general familiarity with the bartender making me think that she was a regular.

The man she left behind didn't seem too happy about his strikeout but before I had a second to panic about the fact that I was the only woman left in the bar, he took his unhappy self right out of the bar and I quickly followed, asking the fifty something year old bartender to close out my tab before making a dash for the double doored exit, the cigarette smoke a blanket of foul smelling fog as I stepped out into the rapidly cooling night air.

I controlled my breathing as I followed the sound of rising voices to my left, and soon I found myself standing in front of a closed breakfast joint, the lingering scent of donuts penetrating my senses that weren't already overwhelmed with impassioned panic.

His arms were on her, and she was struggling. That damned scar on his cheek glinted in the moonlight and I knew I'd have nightmares about it if I didn't find out a way to stop what was happening before me.

Thankfully, I didn't have to intervene too much as she began screaming at the top of her lungs and a few people darted to the area just as I finally reached their location.

"Hey! Get off of her, I'm calling the cops!"

There were two guys and a girl, and then a lone guy off to the side who watched on with horror at the sight before them. The attacker shoved the woman off of him and into the side of the building, her head bouncing off the brick exterior and I knew then that dark rivulets of blood would be cascading down the side of her face from the force of the hit.

The guy off to the side ran up to her as the other people saw the blood and got scared and ran, but I made sure the guy cradling her head was calling 9-1-1 before I slowly slid into the background and silently waited until the ambulance arrived.

I hadn't done anything, the other people that had heard her screams had stepped up and made the man disappear, I was just a bystander who did nothing to help and that made guilt swim in my stomach.

I'd be better next time, 9-1-1 already on the line before the guy could even get out of the building to harm another person.

I glanced at the woman being loaded into the ambulance, the paramedics already tending to her head wound carefully and I would have blanched at the sight of so much blood if I wasn't so used to the crimson colored liquid.

I vowed to be better next time, because as long as there was this sick need inside of me for vengeance, I would come back to take down the men who thought they had the power, but they were wrong. I was going to be the one with the power, to take back what was stolen from me and extend it to the women who needed it more than me in the moment.

I didn't notice, however, the police questioning the Good Samaritan as the attacker before I left, and I certainly couldn't have predicted that in just three short months I would have been trying to find evidence that he was the real attacker.

*Present Day*

"Lydia? Hello?"

Malcolm waved his hand in front of my face as I stared ahead of me blankly, the loud pounding of the bass eroding my eardrums. It was suddenly the next day, and I found myself standing outside the club next to the breakfast bar where the attack had occurred.

"What? Sorry, what were you saying?"

Malcolm gave me a withering look and I almost shriveled underneath his gaze.

"So right over there is where the eyewitnesses said they saw the attacker shove the woman against the wall and that was where her brain injury occurred so she couldn't identify her true assailant. That's why this case is relying so much on eyewitness testimony."

"Right, right, but we need to figure out if the security cameras in the nightclub caught any footage from that night. I just don't trust eyewitnesses, they vary so much and the proof that we need to show that this man is guilty as per the prosecution, we need more than flimsy half evidence."

"I totally agree, but how are we supposed to get that kind of footage?"

A thought flickered in my head, then.

"What about the bar directly across the street?"

I was a regular at the Four Leaf Clover pub, and James the bartender was like a grandfather figure to me. There wasn't a corporate headquarters that was overseeing him and dictated his actions considering he was also the owner.

"I think I have an idea. Follow me."

I traipsed across the asphalt in my heeled boots through the throng of people in line to get into the Royal club in downtown Boston, unaware of just who exactly was in the limo that pulled up to the front door just as I pulled Malcolm into the Clover, and while I knew I was in total denial, a part of me didn't want to look to confirm my biggest fear.

And I didn't have to look. We ducked our heads through the doors of the pub just as the paparazzi began screaming his name.