Everyone knows Cruella and the story of her rather swift descent into madness, so I won't waste anyone's time with that. The story I want to tell is my own. While the part I played in Cruella's story was minor at best, it was a part nonetheless, and I think it deserves telling.

I won't bore anyone with the unnecessary details of my early life, so I'll keep my awful little backstory brief. My family was poor. Mum found work cleaning where she could, my father, having no great skill at any trade, took up any work he could find, while I honed my young abilities as a thief. I guess it wouldn't have been all that bad if not for the fact that my old man was a violent drunk who squandered every penny he and my mum made on the strongest spirits he could afford.

Horace was my escape from home in those days. He lived with his mum in a run-down block of flats not far from my own little shack. On the days or nights when I'd come home from my own mischief and hear the all-too-familiar sounds of my father drunkenly beating my mother, I wouldn't even stop at the door, but kept going straight to Horace's. Then, when Horace's mum took sick and died, I offered for him to stay with me. I had nothing more to offer than my friendship and a place to go, awful as it was, but at the time it was more than what he had.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

That turned out to be the final straw for my worthless father. After a week of complaining about another mouth to feed, he snapped and beat my mum for the last time, then drank himself to death next to her lifeless body. Horace and I found them when we returned home the next morning.

I didn't have it in me to cry for them. I covered my mum's body with a blanket then turned to the stinking lump that was my father. My small body filled with rage as I kicked his awful face as hard as I could. Over and over again I kicked and stomped his corpse, until Horace had to pull me away.

"It's over, mate. Let's just get out of here," Horace said.

"You're right, you're right," I said as I tried to calm myself. But as I looked around at the destruction of and in my tiny childhood home, I knew there was one more thing I needed to do. "Burn it down."

From then on it was just Horace and me. Two orphaned twelve-year-old boys on their own on the streets of London; filching, picking pockets, and dodging the peelers. After a few months, we'd worked out a nice little routine, having learned the best places and times to ply our skills. We never could've guessed that one particular morning in Regent's Park would change the course of everything.