Genesis's POV 

Six months.

It had been six months since my best friends took their last painful breath.

Six months since I found their bodies violated and their blood staining my carpet.

Six months since my world was torn apart.

Six months. Three hours. Forty-six minutes and Twelve seconds since I made it my mission to destroy each and every person who ripped away two innocent girls lives.

It took me two months just to track the guys down. The bastards were good. They knew how to cover their tracks which gave me reason enough to believe that Crystal and Sapphire weren't there first people they'd tortured, raped and killed.

Something within me twinged. God even their names hurt to even think about. I guess it was better than nothing. I hadn't been feeling much of anything since I found them. Not since I picked myself up of the floor, moved to close each of my best friends eyes and said my final goodbyes.

It was like a void inside me. A dark void. A never-ending dark void that consumed everything, so I'm left feeling nothing. 

Empty. 

Nothing to subside my hollow soul that crept in the shadows, away from any other human life because it's emptiness is so consuming I cannot bare to pretend that everything is okay.

 But nothing is okay.

 I'm just a hollow plastic doll with a painted happy face revealing no guilt, sadness, emptiness - emotion.

Someone called it grief. That hollowness.

I've never grieved anyone before. Sure I'd killed people more than I could count but I never mourned them. Same with my parents, I barely had any memories of them and my baby sister but I never truly grieved them because I could manage to distance myself from that. However, I couldn't do that with my two best friends. Everywhere I looked there was something that would trigger a memory.

Walking into a kitchen triggered a memory of all the days Crys and I would laugh at Sapphires inability to make anything even remotely edible. Seeing a school would remind me of the days when the twins were so happy to be schooled and happy to drag me with them. Simply seeing two blonde girls together made my heart hurt and cause pain to almost make me drop to my knees.

Grief. It felt like emptiness in your heart, a shear of nothingness that somehow takes over and holds your soul and threatens to kill you entirely. It gives you this heavy feeling that's like the weight of the world is resting on your shoulders and there is nothing you can do to get out from under it. It's like this hole in your heart that is the shape of the people you lost and that makes you feel the need to wipe away any non-existent tears that you want to form but can't.

The girls should be alive and happy and not six feet under. They should have been there to laugh with me, or at me, or just near me. Crystal should be making her latte's in that damn expensive machine and complaining about the unfairness of society. Sapphire should be filling out college applications and whining about how much school sucks. They should both be gossiping about the entitled kids at school and discussing the people they had crushes on. But most of all they should be here, to hug and hold and criticize me about my own life choices. I missed all that. Now there was just a graveyard, a stone that bore their names and their cold bones beneath the soil.

They were both dead and all I could now do was avenge their lives. Appease all the crimes committed against them.

So that's what I've been doing. Ever since I made arrangements for their bodies to be buried together and my house to be demolished. I didn't even say goodbye to Axel or Thorn before I dropped off the grid. Alex had Prince so I knew he'd take good care of him for me. I didn't even stick around long enough to see if Thorn even survived.

I was too lost in my own grief and heartache to do much more than get into my car and plot my revenge. I took out five of the six men that tortured the girls. Four men and two women. Six of Caspian's most trusted allies. Five of them met similar ends to how my best friends did. Two women and a man dedicated their time to torturing Crystal from what I'd learned.

Each taking enjoyment in cutting her open and ripping out her organs and ribs one by one.

I returned the favor. Inverting each of their rib cages and pulling out their own organs in front of their eyes. It was my own twist of one of the Vikings torture methods. The blood eagle ritual as they called it.

The first two people I tried it on died before I could even get to the good bits but for the last one I had figured out a way to keep them alive for the duration of their well-deserved punishment.

They all screamed and cried and begged for their lives but each tiny whimper that left their mouths was like music to my ears. They deserved every little slice and I made sure to prolong the inevitable for them.

The other pair. The two men were a couple apparently. Married four years. Hobbies included murder, torture, and rape. Not sure if they put that on their tinder profile but they were a perfect match.

I found both of them in the at the beginning of raping another young couple. The kids were scared for their lives but I got them out of there before any physical harm could be done. I'm sure they would be feeling the psychological after effects for a while yet though.

I had to admit the only thing I had felt over the last few months was the thrill and satisfaction when I returned everything they did to my best friends.

The men that raped and hurt Sapphire received extra special treatment.

First of all, I cut both their dicks off and castrated them with a hot metal wire. I then made sure to peel their skin off in front of their eyes, inch by inch. I was more generous than they had been to Saph. I didn't use a blow torch to fry their skin off them. I used a blade that did hurt a lot more and did take much longer but I learned in my immense research one of them was a pyrophobe so I at least took that into account.

There was just one more I had left. Stanly Moor. The final basard that was the leader of sorts, he presided over the group. I couldn't find much about him. At all really. It took me months to even find his name. I figured that after he found out his friends had been killed he knew he was going to be next so he went underground.

However not even the devil could hide from me if I was hunting for him.

I finally tracked him after months of hard work. I pushed him out of his little hiding place and got him to meet me. I didn't hide who I was. I didn't see the need. I did everything in my power to get him out of hiding. I threatened, I bribed and I scared but he remained unaffected. In fact he said he'd meet me regardless.  

We decided to meet on this little private beach I owned. He didn't know that of course, Stanly believed it was public; a safe place for him to meet his end. 

A ragged sigh left me as I stood on the shoreline and waited for the man himself to arrive.

 The ocean breeze whispered like a lover, placing salty kisses on my cheek and tousling my long dark hair. On days like this it playfully filled the sails of the harbor boats, fluttered their flags and pushed along the clouds. I stretched out my bare hand like a starfish to feel it wrap around my fingers. But I never forget that this breeze is just a mere hint of its power, that when roused it could toss whole ships like toys to smash on the rocks. Sometimes I came here when the wind is driving the waves to crash as far as the road, sending white spray high in the air. Then it coats my eyelashes in salt and roars so loud no other sound can penetrate. But today the breeze told of only sweetness and joy.

It felt almost wrong to be ending a life on such a beautiful day. Maybe it was the calm before the storm. That's what people called it right? The last drop of peace before a war breaks out.

My eyes drifted from sand to stone, from rock pools to breaking waves. In the gentle sunshine, I felt as if I were swimming in the briny aroma as if the new rays of the day brought a frisson of energy to my fingertips. It was a day for letting my eyes stay open, as if I were an old fashioned camera, remaining still while the image developed. The gulls brought their high notes to the percussion of pebbles at the shoreline.

"This place is beautiful, is it not?"

I didn't even shift my gaze from the vast ocean in front of me as I spoke. "Yes, it is."

We remained silent for a moment, just taking in the view before business really started.

"I'm sorry,"

The words came as a surprise to me. I wasn't expecting them, not because he didn't have a reason to say them but because this man wasn't supposed to have a conscience.

"They were young. Had their whole life ahead of them. They shouldn't have died like they did."

That's when I was irked into action. I spun quickly, dragging out one of my crescent moon blades and pressed it to Stanley's neck.

Although I don't show it I was surprised at the appearance of the man who was currently at my mercy.

His dark weathered skin was dashed in dirty grey hairs that weren't either long enough or shaped enough to be an intentional beard. He had the look of a man who once had muscles, broad over the back and thick in the neck. To me, he was just another old man, albeit one with some extra poundage to carry around now that those once honed limbs are mostly fat. The suit he wore was fresh and immaculate and held a crispness about it that made my brows furrow.

This wasn't the man I was expecting at all. Stanly Moor's eyes locked with mine catching the expression that I only wore for a fraction of a second.

Despite the fact that I had a knife to his throat the elder man smiled softly. "Not what you were expecting in the least was I?"

He took the words right out of my mouth.

"You killed my best friends." I pressed the blade further against his throat making a slim trickle of blood trail down his neck.

Stanly didn't even flinch. "Technically I never laid a hand on them," There must have been something in my eyes that terrified him because his own eyes widened and he looked down shamefully. "But I guess I did have a hand in it. I have no excuse for what I did to your friends. They didn't deserve it but I was just doing as I was ordered."

"Caspian," I spat.

"Yes," He said mournfully. "He has us all in his grasp, my dear. You know this. Whatever he says goes. If he asked us to blow up Jupiter we would have to find a way to do it."

I shoved him, he stumbled backward his legs failing as he tripped in the sand. Towering above him I pointed my knife at him.

"That's no excuse to murder innocents!" I yelled. "They were practically children and you stole everything from them. Everything! They had their lives to live, they had to find love and go through heartbreak and just have a fucking future. Now they're just skin and bone buried in the dirt. They were everything and now they're nothing."

Emotion washed over me in a fitful rage as I roared at the older man beneath me. This man and those people had taken everything. Not just from those two girls but from me too. My family had been left lifeless and grey. After six months I could still smell them rotting and the taste of vomit was never far from my mouth. Every time I closed my eyes I could still remember how I'd gazed around the vile scene in my living room with eyes barely more alive than my best friends and could feel no life within myself.

A jolt of pain sliced through me, dragging me back to the present. I looked down at my palm to find that I had been squeezing my knife tight enough to cut open my hand. Still, I barely felt anything more of a sting as my cold dead eyes met the man's who had helped destroy my world.

"I know," Stanly said making me look back at him. "And I shall repent for my sins for the rest of my life,"

A dark, rueful sound left my throat. I couldn't call them but I couldn't call it a laugh either.

Striding forward I gripped the man by the lapels on his jacket and hauled him onto his knees so our faces were mere inches from each other. A tremor wracked through his body when I grinned maliciously at him.

"Your life ends now. On this beach. Your blood will mark the sand you seem to enjoy so much and the sea will swallow up your body."

Stanly blinked rapidly a few times. There were no tears in his eyes, in fact, all I saw in them was understanding. Not fear, not anxiety, not desperation just pure unyielding acceptance. He already knew he was going to die. I didn't have to tell him that.

He swallowed. Once. Twice. Three times before he found his voice again. "They said they were sorry. Each of them. Just before they died they said they were sorry."

And with that, I plunged my blade into his throat.

At once a fountain of red came from the wound, the ebb and flow spraying me with a force, killing the man all the faster. His wrinkled eyes widened and his weathered hands came up to cover mine.

 I felt the blood move over our joint hands, the thick fluid no warmer or cooler than my own skin. After a few moments more the blood was still leaving his rapidly paling flesh, but the pulses were slower, weaker.

Finally, Stanley's hands fell away, hanging limply by his sides, his skin no longer deep brown but grey, fingers sticky with congealing blood.

When his pained eyes drooped close I dragged the knife from his jugular, and with it came a satisfying squelch as well as the delightful sound of the ripping of flesh.

The older man's body fell sideways, landing like a sack of potatoes into the sand with a heavy thud. Blood still trickled from his neck creating a heavy trail of red into the blue sea. Slowly, the water lapped at his body washing away all evidence of our conversation today.

I made no move to leave as the sea gradually pulled the body into its murky depths. I simply stood there with blood staining my clothes, hair, and face and watched as my last reason to live was swallowed whole. 

---

Okay don't attack me. 

I honestly didn't mean to leave that chapter as a cliffhanger for that long. My laptop crashed a few days after and it deleted this chapter along with it so I had to rewrite it and if I'm honest I think this one turned out better than the one I wrote previously sooo I hope you enjoy it. Well I don't know if you can enjoy a chapter like this but you get what I mean. 

This chapter was mainly to express some of Genesis grief. I personally have only experienced grief once and it wasn't with someone as close to me as Sapphire and Crystal where to Genesis so I hope that I've described that feeling well enough if not that my fault but let me know your opinions please. 

Also we reached 90K reads! 

I honestly can't thank you all enough. All your comments and support means so much to m. I never even expected this story to get a hundred reads but we've far surpassed that all thanks to you guys. Thank you so freaking much! 

I appreciate every single one of you guys. 

So until next time my lovelies 

-Em xxxx

Words: 2835