The Six: Genesis | A Reverse Harem Novel

Forty

"Engage self-destruct."

The three words I've been wanting to say since starting my business flow out of my mouth like honey. They're sweet on my tongue, coating it with a mixture of vindication and pleasure. I'm sure that Sharife SolJourner wasn't expecting me to say them or to make the command a reality.

Yet, I do.

The vengeance festering inside of me threatens to swallow everything I am. I want that man's head on a pike, sitting outside on the front stoop of my family's mansion. Sadly, it won't bring them back.

Killing Janus' son will bring no rest to my mother and father. I'm sure, in death, they have found a unique type of sleeping. Would she care about my actions now? Would she think them wrong?

My father, rest his soul, was a vindictive man when provoked. I wonder if that's how he and Ryker met. They'd been friends long before I was born, and before he even met my mother.

It came as no surprise, when things shook out and the funerals were over, how I ended up in his care. I have little family left to speak of. A far-off aged aunt and I believe a few cousins. From what Ryker has told me, they wanted the money—not me.

He wouldn't let them take me, wouldn't let them use me. I'd be a cash cow and nothing more. A brain used to fill the world with tech and a constant stream of income to allow them to buy whatever they liked.

To think nothing of ruining a young girl for gain, how could they sleep at night? How could they live with themselves? I had no one.

Their funeral, despite the overwhelming amount of attendees, was a drab affair and left me despondent and wretched inside. The dress and shoes I wore are at my family's estate, tucked away in my childhood room. I haven't been back since that day.

I couldn't.

How could I when my mother and father were brutalized in the formal dining room? Our ancestral dining room table was a broken mess of wood and splinters covered in blood and entrails. And the floor... the polished stone I'd grown up running and sliding across was utterly red and haunting.

Sure, after the police left and the investigators closed their case, the place was given a deep clean by the maids. Yet, every time I walked down the stairs, I couldn't shake the dread pooling in the pit of my stomach. To this day, I cannot escape the desperate pleas my mother let out or their screams of horror.

He enjoyed their pain—reveled in it. And before he took finished, he looked at me like a father does a child with a smile on his face. "Don't worry, little duck. Go upstairs. I'll take care of your mother, now."

I'd barely made it to the second landing when the shot rang out. His men simply left me there with them. They didn't call the police, call for backup—nothing.

They left me there. Alone. Me.

An eight-year-old child.

They accepted his fate. As though they knew what path Janus SolJourner was on when he made the original plan. Had he warned them? Had he told them of the horridness he planned to do when he got his hands on my mother?

I wanted his son to pay the price. I wanted him to feel the same fear, isolation and sheer wall of conflated emotions I hadn't been able to shake. Therapy can only do so much.

More time passes than I'd prefer before I can locate his personal stock. The designs he keeps send raging heat through my spine. He's done more than I thought.

He'd stolen my tech—at least some of it. Enough to make similar designs with what I can only guess are inferior products at a discounted price. He'd been planning this for a while. I can tell.