2. River
2
RIVER
T hat fucking bitch.
Those three words keep going through my skull on repeat as soon as I wake up on the cold, hard floor. How long have I been here? I don’t have a clue. My vision’s a little blurry when I first open my eyes. It’s still light out, so it can’t have been all that long. Long enough for her to get away, though. That stupid fucking bitch.
Because she’s gone. It’s like I can feel her absence, so I know I’m alone here. My head is pounding where that little slut hit me. My vision’s still blurred, but getting better as I make my way to my feet. The room spins, and I have to lean against the wall to hold myself up while my stomach feels like it’s flipping inside me. It takes a few slow, deep breaths to get control of the nausea, but soon I’m able to move without it feeling like I’m about to hurl my guts up.
All because of her. And because Ren lost sight of the goal.
I told him we couldn’t trust her, but the useless prick didn’t listen to me, of course. He fucked up everything. Fucked up my plan, my revenge, my fucking life. After everything we’ve been through, after all of our work and the hours spent talking over every last piece of what we would both have to do, he decides to let a little cunt change his mind. Like she’s his family now or some shit. Like she matters more than me. More than blood.
I always knew I was better off alone. Without a woman to fuck with my head and get my priorities screwed up. How many times did I tell him we needed to stay focused? How many times did I remind him why we started this in the first place?
Somehow, I manage to stagger to the kitchen and turn on the cold tap. Splashing my face with the icy water is like sticking tiny needles in my skin, but it’s enough to wake me up a little more. I’m still fighting a brutal headache and sometimes my vision doubles, but I’m alive. It’ll get better.
And once it does, I’ll make sure the little bitch who did this to me regrets it until her last breath… which won’t come too long after I get my hands on her. It’ll only feel like an agonized eternity to her thanks to the damage I plan to do. Slowly. One cut at a time.
Cupping my hand under the tap, I catch some water and slurp it up. That helps, too. Like it wakes up my insides as it spreads through my chest. It doesn’t do a damn thing to cool off my boiling rage, though. It’s been boiling for too long now. It’ll take a lot more than a cold drink to put it out.
Years. Most of my life. There’s been a burning inside me all this time. Hatred pushes me forward. It’s what keeps me breathing sometimes, when the memories are too thick and too painful and want to crush me under their weight. Those are the times hatred is my best friend. Rage. The need for revenge.
The water feels good against the back of my neck once I splash it there before I turn off the tap. It’s so quiet in here now. All I hear is the thudding of my heart. Every thud makes my head hurt that much worse, but I can’t calm it no matter how much I know I should. Every time I close my eyes, I see the face of another person who’s betrayed me. Another person who needs to die for what they’ve done.
Though now, there is a new face, Scarlet. I like to remember her the way she was just before she hit me over the head. Wide-eyed, terrified, struggling even though there was no point. At least, that was what I thought before she taught me otherwise.
She has to go. Not only because she gave me a lump on the back of my head, either. Not because she left me here to die. Because she turned Ren against me. Before he fucked her, it was the two of us. We had everything we needed. We had a goal, a reason to get up every day. I could forget the worst of the memories even if only for a little while, because I had something to direct my energy toward. I had my plans.
She turned my plans into nothing. Made them useless. I put all of this together with the two of us in mind. My brother and me, the way it’s always been. The two of us against everybody who ever caused us pain. And there was so much pain, wasn’t there? For no fucking reason beyond the sad truth I figured out when I was way too young: some people just like to hurt other people because they can.
Rebecca could. And she did, and so did her braindead acolytes. They only needed permission to be the worst possible versions of themselves. Cruel, cold, sadistic. They told themselves it was God’s will or whatever it took to help them sleep at night. After a while, I bet, they didn’t have to bother with that. They slept soundly without having to justify their cruelty.
How many nights did Christian spend sleeping well while one or more of us shivered and wept in the dark?
Here’s the thing about that. Something he never figured out. I doubt Rebecca did, either, since she’s got the imagination of a fucking fruit fly: you hurt somebody enough times and leave them locked in the dark to get over it, and eventually they learn to stop dwelling on the pain. A defense mechanism at first. A way to cope with the sort of shit that would break an adult’s brain, much less a kid’s.
Over time, they turn their thoughts away from their agony and toward the people responsible. They start to think. Plan. Hate. They imagine what it would be like if the positions were reversed. If the person who humiliated them, tortured them, broke them down was the one on their knees begging for mercy.
Give it enough time, and imagining isn’t going to do the trick anymore. It’s time for action. And all those vivid fantasies can come to life.
Even now, with my head threatening to split in two with every tentative step I take toward the kitchen table, I have to grin at the memory of Christian’s terror. There’s never been a more satisfying moment in my entire life than the moment he realized all the pain he’d ever inflicted was about to come back ten times over. I look down at my hands and can still see them coated in his warm, sticky blood. The memory makes my cock twitch and my chest swell with satisfaction. I wish I could do it all over again, I really do. A piece of shit like him deserves to die more than once, and I sure as hell deserve to be the one to make it happen.
Killing Christian was a drop in the ocean, though. One piece in a much larger puzzle. He might have taken sickening pleasure in what he did to those of us cursed by his presence in our lives, but he wasn’t acting on his own. He had his orders. Somebody granted him power over us.
Rebecca’s face and her snide, holier-than-thou smirk replace Scarlet’s image at the forefront of my mind. This is all her fault. She started this. She is a fucking cunt who needs to die slowly and painfully. Her son will die even slower for what he has done. Following his mother’s footsteps, taking kids off the street, abusing and grooming them before selling the poor souls to the highest bidder.
I won’t stop at destroying New Haven, either. I’m going to burn down the entire world for what they did to me. I don’t need Ren or anyone else. Hell, I’d rather be alone, since I’m apparently the only person I can count on. Fuck Ren and his little bitch of a girlfriend. Fuck them all.
There I was, figuring the living hell we both suffered through would be enough to bind us together forever. That at least there was one person in the world I didn’t need to explain myself to. One person who understands. How naive could I be? How trusting? I should’ve known somebody would come along and steal his attention and his loyalty.
My teeth grind together at the thought of his betrayal. My own brother. I’m doing this for both of us—can’t he see that? No, he’s blinded by a tight pussy and a nice pair of tits.
He needs to know what he’s done. How he’s betrayed not only me but everybody like us. Everyone who knows the pain and humiliation we went through. The ones who are too weak to fight back. The ones who never got a chance to grow up and decide for themselves whether they wanted to be part of Rebecca’s sickness.
I grab a hold of the pen and start scribbling down a letter to my dear brother on the back of a piece of scrap paper.
Ren,
Scarlet ran off. I tried to stop her, but she hit me across the head and left me for dead. The only good thing about her was her mouth when it was wrapped around my cock in the shower. She didn’t like the way I fucked her throat, though. Even cried a little. She needs some better training, if you ever see her again.
Since you fucked up so royally last time, I will move forward without you. Don’t contact me again.
Hope to see you never,
River
Maybe I should’ve gone into detail about everything I did to his precious Scarlet. It would give him something to reflect on the next time he decides to betray me. Oh, who am I kidding? There won’t be another betrayal because I can’t afford to trust him again. I meant it when I said I’m leaving him behind. Cutting the dead weight free. Let him see how far he gets without me keeping him focused. Let him see who will take him back now that he’s fucked over every other person he was ever close to. Quinton and his precious family, for instance. He has nowhere to go now. He’s going to figure out in no time what a massive mistake he made, crossing me.
I throw the pen across the room, so fucking tired of this shit. Everyone is against me. It’s all fucking hopeless. I have no one. I’m destined to be alone forever and always.
One thing I know for certain, I won’t stop until they’ve all paid. Revenge will be mine, even if it’s the last thing I ever do.