Prologue

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Jealousy, jealousy was one thing I never understood. I could have everything I have ever wanted but still get jealous over th girl next door. I used to be the least jealous person ever to wander this Earth but ever since that one girl who took my heart and played it on repeat I have lost trust and jealousy is second nature to me. I never let it show, or at least I hope I never let it show. It is hard to see your inner-beauty when in reality you are a beast. Most people think I am the cool kid in school, the jock or whatever but I am just another teenage boy. They don't see my pain, they don't see my longing for real friends, they don't see my need for trust. They think I am tough, that I can deal with pain and their right but only on the outside. On the inside I am a mess of emotions. When I was younger I thought I was gay for having all these emotions but now I realise I am human.

I have never felt love for anyone, not my parents, grandparents or even my "friends". You see my parents abused me as a child with words, their hands and feet, the belt and anything they could find. My brother used to watch but never did anything, I don't blame him though, if he interfered he would have got it twice as bad. They would call my dad's work friends and ask them if they wanted to come round for some "fun". They always agreed for some bizarre and sick reason. After beating my brother, Louis and I they would rape my little sister. They didn't care that she was only 5 they thought it was great. The first time they did it I tried to stop it but ended up being knocked unconscious and having knife wounds. I still don't know what they did to me but I still have the scars.

Emily has been scared of men her whole life. It has been ten years and my parents are in prison but she still cant even look at a man. Emily and Louis are the only people in my life who I have ever cared about. Nobody will ever touch them again.

Louis is going away to university soon but our foster parents are worried about him as he has a violent streak, I wonder who he got that from. Louis is two years older than me but we are closer to each other than I have ever been with anyone from school. Emily has always been our most prized possession we guard her with our life. Louis once completely destroyed a mans face for even looking at her. That was last year, Emily was 14 and my foster dad... He almost had a heart attack when Louis came home covered in the other man's blood. Meanwhile I thought it was amazing.

My name is Aspen. I am 17 and I was born and raised in Florida. My life goal is to see my biological mother and father pay for their crimes. And I don't mean by just going to prison, I mean, I want to see them "swing".

I used to think everyone lived this way. That everyone's parents beat the shit out of them, but no that was just my fucked up family. The girl next door was the girl I shared everything with she was my beat friend. That was until I was taken away to my foster parents house five years ago. I still remember everything about her. Its only now I realise just how jealous I was of her life. She had loving parents, caring grandparents and she had close friends whom she could trust. Nikita Strong, she was pretty, her parents were Greek and she was all I had ever wanted. I thought that I had seen the last of her but i couldn't have been more wrong. When the world fell to ashes, blood and death I would be thrown back into her life. I didn't know it yet but there was still worse to come.

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