Page 22 of Beautiful Revenge

I know she wanted to torture him a lot more, but the show of emotion she just made is proof that she’s had enough. I know her well enough to know she’ll work out the aggression she’s feeling with her knife, but the taunting and mentally fucking with his head part of the night is over.

“You’re going to regret ever touching me, Daddy,” she sneers, getting into his face.

Devon and I stand back and watch as she sinks the knife into his gut, and he screams behind the gag. His eyes are bloodshot and glossy, so he’s definitely high off the fumes of the bleach, but it’s also slowly poisoning him as it absorbs into his system through his saliva. It’s both genius and terrifying that Briar came up with it as a form of torture.

“Does that hurt, Daddy? Oops,” she says with a smile, before twisting the knife and ripping it back out with force. “You never taught me to be gentle.” She shrugs, dragging her finger through his blood on the knife.

“What’s she doing?” Dev whispers to me, staring at our girl.

“How the fuck should I know?” I whisper back, my eyes never leaving her as we watch her take the bloody finger and drag his blood across his lips.

“Ah, fuck!” Devon groans, palming his dick. “Baby, that’s so hot,” he says, and she giggles.

“Thanks, Dev.” She turns to wink before her eyes meet mine.

I give her a gentle smile to show her my support, silently conveying to her that what she’s doing now will not affect how I see her, and she smiles back at me. I can see the tears glossing her eyes, and all I want to do is pull her into my arms right now.

“You know, Daddy,” she says, turning back to the sick fucker that thought hurting a child was acceptable. “I really should thank you,” she repeats her earlier line from when she was taunting the other three pricks.

The tip of her knife moves over his groin, dragging it lower down his thigh and continuing to move down his leg. We watch as she drags it down the final part of his leg that’s now swollen from where Devon snapped it below his knee, smiling when he flinches from the slight pressure.

“This looks painful,” she says, taunting him by squeezing the swollen limb until he’s screaming behind the gag. “Sucks to be you.”

Devon barks out a laugh beside me as Briar slices his lower leg open, leaving a gaping wound down to the bone, and I actually feel a little nauseous. Blood and torture seem to be her and Dev’s thing, but nope. Gross. I’ll stick to computers after tonight.

“You are a pathetic excuse for a human being!” Brie yells, stabbing her knife into his other leg, ripping it downward to leave a matching wound. “You took my choice from me when I was too little to stop you!”

I share a look with Devon, worried with how upset she’s getting as she starts stabbing the knife into his thigh repeatedly in anger. Between the bleach, his broken legs, and her stabbings, the man is barely breathing as his eyes close.

“You forced yourself on a little girl you were supposed to protect,” she seethes in anger as tears run down her face.

“Brie,” I say quietly, hoping it’s enough.

She stands up, sniffling and giving me a nod of thanks before leaning into her father’s face and moving the knife to hover over his heart. Killing him this way is definitely not a part of the plan, and my nerves hitch a little.

“He can’t die that way, princess,” Dev reminds her, moving to gently pull the knife out of her hands. “Scream at him. Confess your hatred if you have to, but he needs to have smoke in his lungs, baby. Just like the others.”

She exhales on a sob, hissing at her father with the hatred of a betrayed child. A hatred that grew from him doing horrible and unspeakable things to her, and my heart breaks at the sight.

“You’re not worth it. You took my freedom from me for long enough. Now it’s my turn. Goodbye, Daddy. I hope you rot in Hell.” She pulls her hand back before slapping him across the face and walking toward me.

“Hey, you good?” I whisper, holding her tightly in my arms.

I’m not worried about blood. We’re wearing all black clothing, and our shoes are outside, so we don’t track blood anywhere as evidence. The goal is to make it look like we were never here, so they don’t have a reason to dive into questioning her, or us, too deeply.

With our parents on vacation right now, we have the house to ourselves long enough to lose any trace of his blood and their DNA, from our clothes without a problem.

The location of their house is oddly perfect to hide our ever being here, too. When we’d first met Briar, she sank into our hearts with ease, and we wanted to check on her from time to time, so we went exploring. It didn’t take us long to figure out how to get to her yard by way of the woods behind her house, and we used it to our advantage. Just like we will tonight.

It still saddens me to know that, before us, she barely left the house unless it was to run away and think. Just like she had the night we met her. After that, we became her safe place, and I’m so thankful every damn day we met her. I’m not sure what would have happened if we’d never met, but I have some ideas. All of which end with her not being here and alive, and that’s a reality I refuse to think about.

“I will be. Let’s just go burn this shit to the ground,” she whispers, and I kiss her head as Devon wraps his arms around her waist from behind.

“Let’s light this bitch up, princess.”

It doesn’t takeus long to get out into the backwoods where we’ll be safe from the fire and prying eyes.

This is the part I’m most excited about. Dev and Brie may love to kill and torture, but I like to destroy shit.

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