* * *

She never mentioned the trial or anything about me in all those years. Just went along with life as usual while I rotted away in this hellhole. Can you say nuclear fucking retribution? I did learn some shit about her though that made me wonder, why she’d done what the fuck she had.

There was nothing in her background that pointed to her being a manipulative she-hag, and enough time hadn’t gone by for her to have made such a drastic change. Unless she was a very good actress, there was some fuck wrong with this girl that just wasn’t adding up for me.

On the screen she came across as a well-rounded fun loving kid, who loved and was loved by everyone. I read every comment and not one person ever had a bad thing to say about her, well except for a few females who were obviously jealous of some accomplishment or other. But nowhere did I see the girl who’d hounded me that summer.

There were no wild parties, no interchangeable boyfriends leaving a trail of broken hearts at her feet. The girl was fucking vanilla. In fact, had I not been the one at the end of her shit I would never have believed her capable of this cluster fuck.

But the fact that I was locked away behind bars was more than enough to remind me that no matter what face she showed others, I’d seen the real her; beneath that girl next-door bullshit.

I knew everything about her by the time my release date came up. They don’t do good behavior in this shithole, so though I’d been a model prisoner as far as they knew, I had to do the full stint. Her life had moved on while mine stood still. I’d seen most of it online since people posted every fucking thing there. If they ever knew how dangerous that shit was they’d go into hiding.

She’d grown into a beautiful young woman, but I guess I was the only one on earth who saw beyond that angelic face and kickass body to the viper that lived beneath. She’d destroyed a man’s life and hadn’t ever looked back. Not even on the anniversary of the day she’d fucked my life. Not one mention of the guy she’d condemned with her lies. I know, I checked. Sure I’d beaten the rap for that one, but everyone knows that’s a taint that will follow you the rest of your life.

So while my life was double fucked with a buzz saw, she went and got engaged by the time I came out. The fuck if I was gonna let that stop me from the course I’d set in my head. That shit didn’t have any bearing on what the fuck I had planned for her. As far as I’m concerned, I own her ass for the foreseeable future.

She maliciously took a part of my life, now I was coming for hers. Those are my motherfucking rules. Only two people know the truth behind what went down between us, and unless she’s a total nut-bag, she knows she owes me big time.

Then again she may not know it. For all I know I might be nothing more than a blip of a distant memory in her past. The way she’d moved on so blithely with never a mention of what had passed between us, I could almost believe that she’d erased it from memory.

That would mean that to her I was nothing more than something to be cast aside like trash. I mean, what kind of human being would just move the fuck on after doing something like that? Maybe her daddy had taught her that she was better than everyone else. That it was perfectly fine to destroy a man’s life because he had the nerve to tell her spoilt ass no. But she was about to learn different.

She was twenty-one now, more than old enough. I’m about to teach her ass what happens when you cross a man like Todd Rogers. It’s a lesson her ass will never forget. I was sure I was gonna move on after this, after I was done exacting vengeance. But my aim was to see that she didn’t.

Bleeding and broken, that’s what she gets, it’s what she deserves. Only I meant to make her bleed in a way that never ends. On the inside where no one else can see, but you feel it every second of every day. It’s the feeling of life seeping out of you as you die a slow cold death. Dead man walking.

I have to say she’s been on her best behavior, these last few years though and a better man might’ve taken that shit into consideration and written it off as the vagaries of youth. From following her shit online there was never so much as a hint of anything hinky. It was hard to reconcile the two sides to her, they were so vastly different.

I guess she thinks if she lives her life on the straight and narrow from here on out that it would absolve her of the guilt of the shit storm she’d turned my life into. Like murdering a few people and then saying ten hail Marys to buy your way into heaven. Too bad for her ass that’s now how this shit works in the real world.

I counted down the last few days until my release with nothing more on my mind than the vengeance I’d honed into an art. It’s funny what you can do with five years of free time and a gut full of hate. If she only knew what was headed her way she’d hop on a plane and find her ass in the middle of the Sahara. I’m pretty sure I’d find her there too. There wasn’t anywhere she could go to escape me. The beauty of it is, she doesn’t have a clue.

I learned a lot from my time inside. Learned just how easy it is to infiltrate another human’s life and fuck shit up. There were many times that I could’ve used my skills to bring her down. I could’ve planted false information, could’ve broken into her school’s database and fucked up her grades. But I wanted this shit to be up close and personal.

I wanted to watch the life and light go out of her eyes as I’m sure it had out of mine. My only sustaining thoughts coming onto the end of my sentence with the absolute mayhem I was about to unleash on her fucking head. That shit was like food for my wounded soul.

As much as I learned about her, I learned about me. My life was never going to be the same. I mourned that shit for one day at most and put it behind me. The well brought up kid whose mother still brushed his hair back with her palm and kissed her cheek just for the hell of it even at twenty something, was no more. That guy died the day the prison doors closed behind me.

I could’ve fought to hang onto him, but he would never have been capable of the shit I had in mind for the ones who fucked me. No, he had to go. I learned not to dismiss females. They’re a worthy opponent and every last one of those fucks fight dirty and they fight to win.

The path I’d been on was closed to me now, so I had no dig another one. I wasn’t always clear on that, but I knew in my gut that no one would ever have control over my life again. I had to be clever to pull off what I had planned. It would take patience and discipline, but I had no doubt I could do it.

Fuck for five years all I had was patience and discipline, it’s the only way to survive this hell and come out looking anything approaching subhuman. Only criminals go in and out of jail without learning life lessons. I’m no criminal, just a man who got caught in someone else’s web.

I stopped trying to figure out the whys and concentrated on the how. Like how I was going to get to her without anyone knowing. How I was going to pull this shit off without burning my ass again? I came up with my own version of double jeopardy. You can’t convict a man for the same crime twice.

My biggest worry had been not to let it eat away at me. I needed to be sure that after I broke every rule I ever had when it came to the opposite sex, that I would be able to face myself in the mirror. It took a long fucking time to get there. But the fact that I even had the presence of mind to think about that shit gave me hope that all was not lost. That I had not become like the others around me who had already given up on themselves.

My life inside had been pretty much routine. I pretended to myself that this was no different than going away to college. There was no family around, my time was not my own, but in the end I would’ve learned something. That something for me was revenge and how to carry it out without getting caught.

The shit worked too, almost every day. Until the door clinked shut behind me at night and I was reminded that my freedom had been taken. Squandered at the whim of some girl I didn’t even know. That was my darkest hour. That’s when the battle for my soul was fought. When I had to harness the anger lest it overpower me and turn me into something I never want to be.

That was also when the new me was forged. I’d thought myself a man before. I’d served in the marines, fought in wars, seen death and made it out alive. But nothing makes you more of a man than when you face the worst that you can be and defeat it.

That came when I overcame the hate and settled on just plain old vengeance. Hate only defeats the hater, not the hated. It also weakens and leave you vulnerable. If I had any give in me before the number she did on me, it was gone, but I was the one in control.

Vengeance is a whole different animal. Vengeance comes and goes, it has an end. Hate tends to linger and gives you tunnel vision. Once I said fuck off to hate and focused solely on revenge, I was able to see beyond just her destruction, to the life I was going to have after the deed was done.

My plans may not be the same as I’d had before, but there was life after this. That shell that I’d built around myself in the past five years would never be broken. No one would ever get close enough to pierce that shit again.

It was a force field of pure survival instinct mixed with a healthy dose of fuck you to everyone and everything except the two people I’d always held dear in my life; mom and dad. Maybe it was their influence and constant support that had held the beast in check. Kept him from going total berserker, who knows. Whatever it was, I owed whatever humanity I had left to them. Everyone else was fucked. Especially Mallory Ashton.

She may have moved on with her neat little life, put me out of her mind for necessity’s sake or whatever the fuck it took to let her sleep at night, but I’ll never forget it. Not until I’ve gotten my pound of flesh. She was the only thing standing between me, and complete sanity.

The only thing in my life that needed to be eviscerated so that I could put this all behind me and move the fuck on. I’ll never be able to put the stink of prison behind me, there will always be a black mark on my soul because of her, but so long as I got some of my own back I could move on. That little girl owes me and I aim to collect.