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An artist with different shades of colour had painted the canvas of Adelina's life.

Red, blue, yellow, green; so many variations and tones.

Yet, Adrian Alexander Flores painted every inch of life with only one colour; black.

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The books and movies couldn't do justice to the crime world. Adelina wished she could go back in time and live a life of ignorance, but she couldn't.

And that was the real life.

When you make a choice, you live with the consequences.

What was right?

What was wrong?

Adelina often thought to herself as she carried out each task.

It didn't matter.

The conscious decision of right or wrong depended solely on who was the storyteller.

Pitifully enough, Adelina was just a pawn.

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Our minds have had the concept of heroes and villains instilled in them since birth.

In general, courage, selflessness, and action for the greater good were often some qualities exhibited by someone considered a hero, and it was often the case that they put themselves at risk to help others.

Contrastingly, someone malicious, cruel or immoral became the defining characteristic of a villain.

Often, it was seen that someone who acted in their own self-interest at the expense of others was typically considered a villain.

The pages of Google, AI, and every other place one could search the meaning for had this definition printed on them.

But that was the streamlined definition, wasn't it?

In reality, the lines would often get blurred when someone was considered a hero or a villain. Someone might act for the greater good and be considered a villain in the eyes of some.

While someone would do the most immoral act and still would be considered a hero.

Edward Snowden, a name many would remember, given he revealed thousands of classified NSA documents to journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Barton Gellman, and Ewen MacAskill.

Who would he be classified as?

A hero or a villain?

The answer was simple: To some, he was a hero, to others a villain.

It was all about how someone would perceive the action as- Right or wrong.

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Adrian Alexander Flores was a phantom. Everyone knew his name, but no one knew how he looked or who he was. Everyone only knew one thing; he was dangerous.

Tales about this man and the opinions shared by others amused Adelina to no end.

And in all honesty, it was pretty cliché.

The concept of dark, brooding and handsome men who ruled the underworld was only a figment of the imagination of many authors.

But that was the problem - fiction and reality were often harder to distinguish than one might think. Ideas of good and evil, heroism and villainy, were constructs that shaped how people perceived the world and each other.

Adelina knew this all too well. Her own husband and the love of her life, Daniel, worked for a secret service agency - an organization that some may call heroic for protecting national security, while others saw as deeply corrupt for justified reasons.

Adelina loved Daniel deeply, but she was aware of the morally grey areas he navigated in his work.

None of it mattered, as Adelina was pregnant with their first child, and Daniel could not have been more happy.

But Adelina mixed fiction with reality, and that rarely ended well.