Diamond Desire

Chapter Eight

Sanity was a myth that I was no longer a part of. I had grabbed the deranged by its cruel and unrelenting hands and forced it to keep me in its grip until my flesh was bloodied with effort. I was never going to be free. Even if I made it out one day, I was going to feel the everlasting effects like a stain on my spirit.

There were claw marks made of depravity on my soul, and no matter how many times I tried to heal them, they always remained. Like scars made of all things wicked. I was in the darkness and it controlled me now. Not with fear, but with acceptance that I was never seeing the light again.

Right now I was in a dungeon, sitting with my daddy as pieces of him fell onto the floor with each day that passed. The stench was so foul that even breathing made me want to die more than the drugs in my system, sprayed sporadically through the air ducts, and the tainted stench of poison coating the walls of my tomb. He was falling apart, like jelly left in the unrelenting Vegas sunshine. Drip. Drip. Drip. Pieces of him rotted away and landed on the floor in a puddle of fresh grief.

“Daddy,”I laughed and laughed and laughed as I banged my head on the one-way glass part of the wall, desperate to feel anything other than hopeless despair. “What do you think your God would say if he saw us? What would you say to him if you saw him, huh? Would you get on your knees and beg him for help? Or would you scream at him for allowing such darkness to stain our lives?”

He never answered. At least not out loud. In my head, the voices that replied were a different story altogether. They screamed and begged and did all manner of things as I continued to hit my head on the wall until I bled.

A part of me knew I didn’t want to bleed – didn’t want the pain. But most of me was desperate to feel something inside other than cold and empty. I wanted to feel anything other than the pain that had been around the first few days I was held. Then the silence that had followed the rest of the time I had been left alone. Almost alone anyway. I could hear someone crying nearby. A soft voice of a little girl. I had no idea if she was another figment of my imagination, but I didn’t care.

She was the only sound in the darkness that was my current life that reminded me there were other people in the universe than me.

She was the only distraction from the voices in my head.

“You are a child, Sapphire. A stupid, stupid child.”I hit the glass harder, cracking open the skin on my head enough that blood stained me and dripped down my face.

My cheekbones were sticking out more than usual. Granted, I had sharp features anyway, but thanks to God knows how long without food they were in danger of going past the nineties’ hot vibes and into dangerous territory. But I didn’t want to be skinny. I didn’t want to have parts of my bones sticking out of my flesh in the way I knew would soon happen. I wanted to have curves and a softness to me that had always made me feel confident and happy inside. But I guessed my stalker was trying to take that away from me too – they were trying to make me hate myself even more than I already did with my black hair and pointless fucking life.

The girl cried again. She whimpered and sniffled and hiccupped loud enough for the walls to feel like they were vibrating.

I hoped she died soon.

She deserved to be free of the pain – she deserved to feel something other than whatever made her so damn unhappy when I heard her nearby.

My fingers dipped in the blood on my head, drawing circles as the sharp pain gave me a respite from the silent numbness as I stared into the slight reflection in the two-way glass, knowing nobody was on the other side watching me. They hadn’t been there in ages to taunt me – far too long really, considering they had only left a handful of bottles of water behind that were three sips shy from running out. I had been taking it carefully – not wanting to die at first. Now I wished I’d used the water to drown myself or something on day one because my stalker hadn’t come back to me in days.

I’d been left behind to rot just like my daddy had once she’d had her fill of hurting me and trying to make me play her game.

Cassie fucking O’Malley was a deranged bitch, and she hadn’t liked the fact I’d refused to give up, so she said she’d make me.

She said she would leave me be until I realized she was only trying to help me.

That she was right, and I was just another Montana fucking idiot. Well, I wasn’t an idiot. I was just drugged up, hungry, and a teeny bit… unwell. Mentally. In my brain. My non-existent brain that had tapped out days and days ago in a bid to protect itself.

“You think you are a queen? Look at you.”My reflection was messy. So so messy. “What kind of queen loses her mind? What kind of queen lets the villain win?”

I wondered how many showers it would take to get me clean again. Sure, partly from the dirty feeling on my skin - I had trashed the bathroom in an attempt to escape and couldn’t remember the last time I’d showered. But I didn’t mean that – I meant from the dirt that stained my soul. The one that would never get out unless I cut it out. The one my stalker had beaten into me. Drowned into me. Cut into my flesh with her knife.

I knew it was a woman. I knew she was John O’Malley’s older sister. I knew she was the girl that my daddy’s grandfather had done unspeakable things to. That much I was certain of. But even without her mask and voice changer, she’d had me on her drugs the entire time and even now, the vents on the walls would occasionally blow something inside, turning me far more deranged than I ought to have been. So I had no idea what she truly looked like – what she sounded like. She was no more familiar to me than she had ever been, and it was frustrating as hell.

I was so close to lifting the mask off my monster but she was just out of reach.

My fingertips were grazing the edges of her identity, but not close enough to lift the mask for sure.

“You killed your mama. You killed your daddy. You killed your boyfriends and friends.”My grin grew brighter, more savage, as though I could scare my reflection. “You should kill yourself and rid the world of you, but you won’t. Do you know why?”

My reflection didn’t answer, so I did it for her. I did it loud enough to hide the sobbing that was in the walls.

The sobbing that was the only thing reminding me I wasn’t alone in the world.

“You are too stubborn. Far too stubborn. You will let yourself fight until the end and allow the bad guys to kill you before you ever lift the blade to your own neck for them.”I smashed my head against the glass harder, disappointed in myself even if a part of me knew I wasn’t well – that I wasn’t in full control.

Again and again, I repeated myself until I was dizzy enough to be sick. Only then did I let myself drink the last mouthfuls of water that remained and continue my pursuit of sanity.By punching the mirrored wall repeatedly until my knuckles felt broken, blood stained my arms, dropping onto the floor and adding the state of it.

I just kept laughing even as the pain kept coming because again, the pain was better than being empty. The pain and the nearby crying were better than silence and numbness.

I had no idea how long I did it. No idea how long I hit and hit at the same spot, refusing to give up no matter how badly I wanted to do so. The only reason I eventually gave in was because I couldn’t feel my hands anymore. There was an odd sort of numbness coating my flesh and I knew what I had left – the option I had been warring with for Gods knew how long when I realized my physical strength was not enough and that I needed a weapon to aid me.

“Daddy, I’m sorry.” I made my way back to what was left of my father, and I bent to him, shoving my fingers into what remained of his arm, desperately searching for the things I needed to survive even if I didn’t think I wanted to anymore.

Things like bones to use as weapons. And lock picks.

Once finished with his arm, I moved to his thigh, taking that bone too. It was the strongest – the best one to use. It was hidden beneath layers of his rotting flesh. Stashed away under pieces of muscle and fat and blood that I had to scour through with my bare hands like a fucking monster.

I wondered again how many showers I would need to feel clean. How many times my hands would need soap for me to spot anything other than what currently stained them?

“When I die, if your God turns out to be real, then I will not repent.”I breathed as I desecrated my daddy’s corpse. “I will make him kneel for me and beg for penance for all this — for all he has allowed to happen. To you, to me. To everyone in this world who has suffered. I will ask him what he thinks of me and why he deemed me worthy of this life.”

Once done with the task that made me far sicker than anything before, I returned to my one-way mirror, my set of tools beside me, the buzzing and throbbing in my brain loud enough to quiet the voices down.

My kit was rather morbid and sad. Bones and enough electrical supplies from a random vent I had ripped off the wall that would give enough of a charge to set fire to something, if I could figure out how to behave like Logan and fashion something fun. Either the building or I could burn. Both would do. Both reminded me of what I had lost and would never see again.

What I had caused to be taken from me because I was a piece of shit who cared more about revenge than my fucking loved ones.

With my ears honed onto the crying that I imagined, I repeated my actions, hitting the glass over and over and over. Refusing to stop. I had no idea how long I kept at it, but eventually my body shook with tremors, sweat dripped down me, and I… I… I wanted to stop. I wanted to give up and die.

I wanted to let my stalker win.

I was going to let them win.

Then the glass cracked. The tiniest of chips. The smallest of breaks in its armour. Enough to shut down every other thought of mine as I kept going – over and over again until the crack turned into a spiderweb of near freedom a moment before falling and shattering over the floor.

Over me like rain made of evil.

Over the little girl tied to a cabinet handle that was in a set of filthy blue pyjama shorts and a vest covered in clouds. A pretty east Asian girl with pale skin, black hair to her waist that had not seen a brush in too long. With light hazel eyes that were so fucking familiar that I instantly started crying, even before I saw the scars on her skin, the emptiness in her gaze, and the pomegranate tattooed on her skinny wrist.

“Hi.” I ought to have wiped away my tears, blood, or murder stare, but I didn’t care to. “My name is Sapphire. Are you okay?”

In my head, the words sounded normal. They came out at the right speed, with a pleasant tone and not at all empty. In reality they were slow, croaky – my throat had been sore from my screams and lack of use. I sounded like a fucking psychopath and not at all like a confident woman who wouldn’t be evil like whoever else the poor thing had dealt with.

She stared at me through her own tears, for the longest ten seconds of my life. Then she shuffled over, moving away from the glass that I had spilled – the stuff that had inadvertently cut her arms too. Not that she got far on account of her bindings holding her in place.

“I… I am Yumi.” She spoke English fine, but her accent was thick enough that I knew I had to pay attention or else I would miss what she said. “I am not dead. You look dead.” She waved at the state of me.

I was losing a lot of blood. My head, my hands, and the cuts from my stalker. Now, with the shards of mirror in my skin, I knew I was in trouble. But I didn’t fucking care. I didn’t care about anything except grabbing my weapons and hauling myself through the mirror into the little cupboard room, that had a door and – blessedly – an even better weapon that I could use. Towards the little girl called Yumi that I knew I would take with me, even if it was so both of us could die.

She was definitely older than Diamond, but younger than Delilah and Yeva. If I had to guess, even through her skinniness and bruises, I would have put her in the twelve to fourteen mark. Neither option was good. Neither helped me stop crying long enough to reassure her I wasn’t a deranged bitch.

Truthfully, I was sure I was a little deranged now.

“I’m okay too. I am just looking to get us out of here.” I explained.

She nudged her chin to a backpack in the corner of the tiny room, that seemed almost like a security office of some kind, with monitors that were turned off on top of a desk, a TV on wheels that was far too familiar, and a single chair and filing cabinet.

“A man had too many weapons. He left it yesterday, and I tried to reach for the knife.”

I rushed to follow Yumi’s suggestion, dropping to my knees on the glass stained ground, barely even feeling a thing as I searched for what I needed.

There was a knife, like she’d said. A serrated hunting one.

There were a handful of grenades.

There was a revolver. Three bullets inside of it.

A bottle of full water and a protein bar.

I took them all. The gun was in my hand, the grenades dangled precariously in my grip, and after quickly shredding through the rope that tied Yumi to the cabinet, the knife was shoved into the strap of my bra, hopefully well enough to keep it there until I disposed of the gun and had to use it too.

I opened the water, drinking a third before I handed it over alongside the protein bar. “Here. Have this before we go, but be quick.”

She gratefully took the water, only having half before she offered it back to me again. She did the same with the protein bar and even though I had intended to go without more than my first sip, the fact she insisted warmed something inside my cold, dead, heart that made me a tiny bit more aware of things than I was.

The crying girl in the walls that had been my only companion for God knows how long wasn’t made up. Nor was she a ghost. She was a stolen child who refused to take all the food and water we had before we escaped our dungeon together. She was a fucking fighter, and I was going to use the last dredges of my strength to get her out of whatever fucked up place we had been captive in together.

“Shoe things in here if you want them.” She yanked open one of the drawers, showing me what looked like security clothes from whoever’s work place we were in, after I had confirmed she was the only other innocent in the building that she said she had been in for at least three weeks.

The other girls had been sold on already.

The boots were too small for me, but only half a size too big for Yumi. The navy long sleeve shirt inside was big enough for her to wear like a dress, and the stun gun we found too was even better. She was protected and dressed in something a little nicer for whatever the elements were if we made it outside.

“Hold this and use it on the bad guys.” I showed her how the stun gun would work as I grabbed a pair of thick white socks, shoving them over my bloody feet as the tiniest bit of relief from the floor.

My body was still in the same ugly prom dress I had first woken up in and I didn’t care to change it – it meant nothing to me now. Not when I was too busy trying to find a way to escape or die anywhere other than where we were.

Not when I had been in it for so long that I had become numb to how it made me feel and what it meant.

“Stay behind me.” I ordered, and the little girl nodded her head.

The door inside the room wasn’t locked. It didn’t need to be, really. There was no way my stalker thought either of us would get out – no chance they thought I could escape what I quickly realised was a weird room in a massive mansion I didn’t recognize.

Not that it mattered anyway when Yumi seemed to know exactly where to go, and quickly whispered directions to me. I hated and loved that she knew the way. It made things easier for us, but it also meant she had been paraded around the building far too often and I couldn’t think about that now.

I couldn’t think about anything other than using the last piece of my energy to get her out of here and finding a way to cause some damage.

My outfit, bitter memories and everything else mattered even less when there was something far more important lying in the way between us and our final exit – something in the giant open hallway, filled with marble, gold and rich people bullshit on the walls, like dead deer heads and antlers, that made me pull my lips in disgust.

There were maybe two dozen men. All in various stages of sleep. I had no idea why the Vice Kings were in the same building as my dungeon even if I felt like someone had told me, but I didn’t care to remember or figure it out. I just presumed that John O’Malley knew what his sister was like and had been helping her with his minions. Either way, it didn’t matter.

The light outside told me it was nighttime. A grandfather clock I quickly found on the opposite side of the room let me know it was nearly four in the morning. The same clock that chimed, rudely waking a few of the men who instantly spotted me there, bloodstained and manic and holding my various weapons. They barely registered Yumi as she hid behind me, doing her best to stay out of the way like I’d told her to.

“Shit.” The burly guy nearest reached for his gun, but he was already dead.

Three bullets in my revolver.

Three bullets into three gangsters.

Dead. Dead. Dead.

I was an excellent shot even when insane. I guess it was the only good thing about me I had left. That and my inability to give a fuck about living in a world that had nobody left in it for me to love beyond my uncle. And sure, I would hate leaving Beau. But leaving him and potentially finding a happy ever after with my men? Being able to see my daddy and mama again? Mal?

I would die for that.

I would die happily. The only reason I wasn’t putting a bullet in my head now was that I wanted to get Yumi out safely, and I was too spiteful not to kill Vice Kings before I kicked the bucket.

I would never die in my enemies home, I would die in my own. Where I was safe.

The other gangsters woke up the instant my gun went off, but they were still too late. Too late to do anything but scream as I threw a handful of the grenades into the room, yanking Yumi and only ducking behind the wall for a minute so that death wasn’t instant and in such a horrific manner.

She laughed when things exploded, and I laughed with her. But unlike the girl I was not amused, I was… I was… I was fairly sure I was insane. I had cracked beyond repair. I wasn’t finding it funny because my enemies were being slaughtered. I was amused because I was one step closer to death.

One step closer to whatever the fuck was out there for me, and where those I loved now resided.

“One gangster, two gangster, three gangster, four.” As the world around me exploded, I hummed a little rhyme to myself. “How many brains can we paint on the wall?”

Their screams began as fire engulfed the room. Their screams ended by the time I got to my feet, trembling and half-deaf. I didn’t need my hearing, anyway. Corpses had no use for it, and that is what I would be soon enough.

Once I found the rest of the people in the building.

Once I found the piece of shit responsible for hurting me – for hurting those I loved.

A door on the opposite side of the room was kicked open, a woman I knew shoving her way inside through the smoke, a handful of unarmed gangsters behind her… God, they were dumb. Who didn’t carry a gun in a house that they held someone captive who would love nothing more than to torture them? I mean, one of them had a knife, but it was a switchblade; nothing compared to the wicked knife I passed over to Yumi, as I used my daddy’s bone as a sick sort of satisfying weapon against my new foe.

I wanted to make her bleed with something of my daddy’s, so she felt just how much he hated her, too.

“Fuck.” The woman ran a hand over her face, her big brown eyes wide and filled with fear.

Fear that was valid because I laughed as I saw her. I laughed and pointed my daddy’s bone toward her as a promise that she knew I would fulfil.

“Run.” She hissed at her men in such a way that I knew she was aware I was going to kill her. “Get the fuck out and call John – call Cass.”

Cass.

Why was that familiar? Why did that name seem important? Why the fuck did my brain flag that as something as I felt blood start leaking from my nose and down my lips… it seemed important that I remember it, but for the life of me I couldn’t. My brain was almost… almost emptying. Thoughts and memories were slipping out of me so fast I ought to have been scared but I was too busy thinking of a single thought.

Killing Elaina.

Yumi seemed to agree that murder was important because she pushed past me, chasing after one of the gangster men in particular who had taken one look at her and headed for the hills. I probably ought to have stopped her, but I was busy, and she seemed like she was having fun when she tackled the man to the ground with her knife in his back and a speed that I was envious of.

The same knife she pulled out and used to stab him far too many times to count as she laughed at him and asked how much he enjoyed being her little whore now… a statement I shivered hearing, but not enough for it to touch me yet.

I was still laser focused on something more important to me – something I would not be letting go.

Something that I had yearned for, for far too long.

Something I would not make mistakes with again.

“Mommy!” I yelled across the room as I strolled Elaina’s way, ignoring the burning bits of debris that stung my flesh, or the wicked sharp shards of things I trod on. “Don’t run from me – we have so much to say to each other!” I laughed. “Come on, why are you running away? I thought you liked playing games!”

Elaina had turned on her tail and went back the way she came. Shame. Shame. Shame. Running was for cowards. Running was for the weak. I was no longer weak. I refused to be weak again. I was going to lean into the thoughts that the voice in my head screamed at me until I had nothing left to give but my life.

I was going to do whatever it was I had been trying to do today… wherever I was. There was something important I had been thinking about, and I guessed it was Elaina. It had to be. She was the only one here and nothing else mattered… nothing else was a thought in my mind.

And as I held onto my daddy’s withering bones, latched onto by pieces of his rotting flesh, the flames licked the walls around me, suffocating me with their power. Laughter stained my lips as I bared my teeth, facing the inevitable with no remorse tingeing my words and with enough hatred on my tongue that I would taste it long after my death.

I raised the bone in my hand, staring at it with a smile that a tiny piece of my mind flagged as being wrong, but most of me seemed to enjoy.

“Come on then, daddy. Let’s see how your God likes me now.” I followed my mother across the flaming hell of my cage, feeling nothing but death in my heart.

Hers, then mine.

Bones were good as weapons. They were strong and hard to break. They were even better for smashing things. Say a woman. As she scrambled to unlock a door that would let her outside. Her fists were banging on the wood, the smoke in the air making her cough up her lungs, and she was panicking over the state of the death that came for her. It was like she could taste it in the air or something. Each step I took toward her, each glance she made my way, it felt like she was seeing something in my face or my eyes that said she was not making it home to see her shitty choice in husband today.

She would not make it anywhere but to hell.

Perhaps that was why she tried to fight me. Perhaps that was why she had turned around and attempted to hit me. But she was not a fighter – she used weapons and her husband’s reputation. She knew how to throw a punch, but she was not prepared in the slightest as I dodged her blow and swung my ailing body around, head butting her in the face.

Elaina wasn’t able to cope as I broke her nose and grabbed her hair, slamming her face against the door for fun. She couldn’t do anything at all when I turned to the window beside us, the one bigger than me and made entirely of stained glass, ready to make my ultimate escape… my final fight…

The difference between Elaina and me was I was fighting for my vengeance. For my soul. I was using my dead father’s bones as weapons after tearing them free from his rotting flesh. I was half-unconscious, bleeding out and drugged up. I was angry and desperate and willing to risk death than recapture. Death over living with such pain.

She was nothing.

With a snarl, I slammed both of us through the window, using her like a shield to stop most of the glass from hitting me. And sure, the glass cut me open even more than I already was, but I didn’t feel it. I didn’t care about it. I barely even noticed anything other than Yumi scrambling out behind me a moment later, eyes wild with bloodshed and pride, presumably in herself.

Elaina noticed our fall. She cried and coughed and tried to fight through her pain. She crawled over the glass on the ground, whimpering as she felt each tiny stab into her worthless skin.

“Stop fighting.”I snapped. “You took everything from me. You can’t possibly think you’re going to get away with it, so stop fucking fighting.” My words sounded funny… sluggish.

Slow. Pained.

The world was blurry at the edges and I could have sworn I tasted metal on my tongue alongside the ash. At some point Yumi grabbed my arm, steadying me, and it was only then I realized I felt faint. But again, I didn’t care.

I was busy.

Elaina looked at me as I stood above her on the random driveway outside a mansion I didn’t know, like a God watching her minion.

“I didn’t kill your men!”she snarled. “They escaped – they survived. John’s the one who killed Malone – he’s the one who did all this with his sister! I did nothing to you!”

I wasn’t dumb enough to believe her or care about John’s sister, even if I didn’t understand what she was on about, but felt like I should. Elaina was talking shit; she was trying to worm her way out of things… so instead of listening I slammed the bone into her stomach, watching how she screamed and cried out in the dark night of a place she thought she was safe in.

A place she had been a monster, never expecting that her little toy beasts would get free.

I watched as she raised her hands in front of her, missing fingers amusing even in my current state.

I watched her as she used those filthy hands to plead for her life.

“You touched Misha with those hands.”I stared at Elaina as I dragged the hunting knife from Yumi’s offered grip. The girl presumably didn’t speak a lick of Spanish, but she could tell what I was doing still. “You touched Beau, and Darius and God knows how many other people. You fucking hurt Lincoln – you hurt what’s mine and that will never do. Never, ever, ever.”

“Please.”She begged me. “Please – I didn’t want to do any of this. I just did what I had to do to survive.”

Elaina was playing victim, and the truth was, she was one. She had been a victim of her family, of her husband, of her life. She had been dealt a shit hand from the minute she was born. But she had thrived in it. She had taken things from others – my mama, my sanity, my men. She had willingly and without mercy raped a fourteen-year-old boy until she got her twisted little Montana baby that she could use for whatever fucking leverage she had asked for.

I may have been forgetting my damn name almost, but I remembered how Elaina had laughed on that video when Malone was killed.

She had fucking laughed and even if I pretended for a moment she had not committed all her other sins – that she had not forgone all forms of consent and done what she had done to those I loved and those whose names I would never know - that one alone would never slide.

I refused to let Malone be laughed at when he was another person I loved who had been taken from me – when he had sacrificed himself for his boys; my boys.

Malone had saved me from the darkness, and he had been my rock for over a decade. His death would not go unpunished and all those who had a hand in it would beg me for death by the time I was finished with them.

“What did you get for having me? What did you ask for in return for handing me over to my daddy?” I had been curious about Elaina’s motives the moment I found out about my parentage and seeing as I didn’t have long left to find answers, it seemed fitting I try. “You tell me what I want to know and maybe we can… talk.”

She didn’t answer me at first. She just whimpered and tried to move again. It wasn’t until I pointed my knife to her throat did she open her lips, tears streaming down her face and blood pooling beneath her body.

“When I worked in a Vice King whorehouse, I had a daughter with John before I had you. Then when you were young, I had a son with him.”She panted the words like they were a secret she had long been keeping, even from her God. “Silver and Steel.”

“Those are stupid fucking names.” The words slipped out before I could register what she actually said, and it took me a moment as I shook my head, trying to work through what I needed to know. “Why does that matter?”

“Because John told me Silver died when she was little – he she was killed in a gang attack.”Elaina spat. “But he had sold her off, and then kept trying to breed me like a fucking horse because his dumb bitch wife struggled to get pregnant and he was desperate for a son.”

Her words rubbed me the wrong way, but I was far too dizzy to say anything about her attitude and disrespect to a woman who struggled having a baby.

“And what has that got to do with me?” It didn’t seem relevant yet.

“I didn’t want another child of mine to be sold or turned into a replica of their father. But the only way out from John was through the Montana’s, so I needed leverage that Ford could never resist.”She hissed. “I made you and used you as a happy little future piece of leverage for when I got pregnant again. Then when I had Steel, I called in the favor Ford owed me to get him to safety.”

Should I have felt anything other than apathy at her explanation? I had no idea.

I had siblings at one point in time. A sister and a brother. Older sister. Little brother. Were they my siblings? They were potentially dead or made from monsters. Did I even care?

“So you made me. You made me as leverage for your son… for my brother.”Again, my brain seemed to latch onto the fact that I had siblings.

A brother, for definite seeing as The Company had probably already wound up killing Silver.

A brother made from the man who had killed my mama. From the woman who had raped my bio daddy and harmed my men.Did I even want to know him, or would he be just as tainted as his parents? Would I only see his parents when I looked at him?

I knew instantly what the truth was, even if it hurt a little.

Iwas nothing like Elaina. I was nothing like my parent. Why would this Steel be any different with his stupid metal name? Our names had alliteration. I wondered if it was on purpose? Did it mean something? Or was it coincidence… I wondered if he had brown eyes like my mama, his aunt, and tanned brown skin and a penchant for violence.

I wondered if he was a monster like his daddy or if he had managed to escape the DNA that plagued him.

I wondered if –

“Are you going to stand there and talk to yourself, or let me go?”Elaina snapped at me as she once more tried her best to crawl, despite the bone sticking out of her flesh. “I told you what you wanted – I even have a car over there with the keys in the mirror. It won’t take you five minutes to drive home if you go right at the edge of the street, so just let me go.”

Yumi poked me in the arm, reminding me of her presence and making me flinch a bit. “What are we doing, Sapphire?” She asked softly. “This lady is mean – I know her. I don’t want her left to be here another day.”

I froze. “She hurt you?”

“No, but she let men do it. She did not care when I cried or asked her help.” The disgust in Yumi’s tone was clear – her words were just another long line of confessions to add to my birth mother’s sins.

Elaina tried to say something, but I wasn’t listening. I couldn’t hear anything over my heartbeat and the wind.

She wanted mercy? She wanted a quick death or a release?

She shouldn’t have touched what was mine. She shouldn’t have made me in the first place.

“Sapphire.”Elaina gurgled out my name like a prayer as blood seeped from her wounds. Her eyes darted between me and Yumi, as though seeking out which one of us would go easy on her. “Please. I’m begging you.”

Unlucky for my mother, I was not a God.

I did not listen to prayers or begging, especially from sinners.

I just made them repent.