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1
When I was a little girl, my understanding of revenge was a simplest Sunday school proverb that hid behind neat, little morality slogans like “Do unto others” and “Two wrongs don’t make a right”. But two wrongs can never make a right because two wrongs can never equal each other. For the truly wronged, real satisfaction can only be found in one of two places: absolute forgiveness or mortal vindication.
When deception cuts this deep, someone has to pay.
They say vengeance is a dish best served cold. But sometimes it’s as warm as a bowl of soup.
When everything you love has been stolen from you, sometimes all you have left is revenge.

2
Sometimes the innocent get hurt, but one by one the guilty will pay. Nothing ever goes exactly as you expect, and mistakes are life and death. Collateral damage is inescapable.

3
For the innocent, the past may hold a reward. But for the treacherous, it’s only a matter of time before the past delivers what they truly deserve.

4
The greatest weapon anyone can use against us is our own mind, by playing on the doubts and uncertainties that already lurk there. Are we true to ourselves? Or do we live for the expectations of others? And if we are open and honest, can we ever truly be loved? Can find the courage to release our deepest secrets? Or in the end, are we all unknowable, even to ourselves?

5
In revenge, as in life, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. In the end, the guilty always fall.
Guilt is a powerful affliction. You can try to turn your back on it, but that’s when it sneaks up behind you and eats you alive. Some people struggle to understand their own guilt, unwilling or unable to justify the part they play in it. Others run away from their guilt, shedding their conscience until there’s no conscience left at all. But I run toward my guilt. I feed off of it. I need it. For me, guilt is the few lanterns that still light my way.

6
They say that vengeance taken will tear the heart and torment the conscience. It there’s any truth to it, then I now know with certainty that the path I’m on is the right one.
Like life, revenge can be a messy business, and both would be much simpler if our heads could figure out which way our hearts will go. But the heart has its reasons, of which reason cannot know.

7
As Hamlet said to Aphelia, “God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.” The battle between these two halves of identity- who we are and who we pretend to be is unwinnable.
Just as there are two sides to every story, there are two sides to every person: one that we reveal to the world and another we keep hidden inside, a duality governed by the balance of light and darkness. Within each of us is the capacity for both good and evil, but those who are able to blur the moral dividing line hold the true power.

8
The past is a tricky thing. Sometimes it’s etched in stone, and other times it’s rendered in soft memories, but if you meddle too long in deep dark things, who knows what monsters you’ll awaken.

9
It’s been written that a lover is apt to be as full of secrets from himself as is the object of his love from him.
We all have secrets we keep locked from the rest of the world- friendships we pretend, relationships we hide, but worst of all, is the love we never let show. The most dangerous secret a person can bury are those we keep from ourselves.

10
Always question where your loyalties lie. The people you trust will expect it; your greatest enemies will desire it, and those you treasure the most, will, without fail, abuse it. Some say loyalty inspires boundless hope, and while that, maybe, there is a catch. True loyalty takes years to build and only seconds to destroy.

11
Defense lawyers use the term ‘duress’ to describe the use of force, coercion or psychological pressure exerted on a client in the commission of a crime. When duress is applied to the emotionally instable, the result can be as violent as it is unpredictable.
Duress impacts relationships in one of two ways. It either tears people apart, or strengthens their connection, binding them tightly in a common objective.

12
For the average person leading an ordinary life, fame holds hypnotic attraction. Many would sooner perish than exist in anonymity, but for the unlucky few who’ve had notoriety forced upon them, infamy can be a sentence more damning than any prison term.
People are fond of saying that you can unring a bell, and while that may be true you can certainly smother its ring under the dull roar of conjecture and lies. But some words ring like church bells, rising above the din, calling us to the truth.
Some words are immortal. Long-buried or even burned, they are destined to be reborn, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, and when they do, it can literally take your breath away.

13
Some say that our lives are defined by the sum of our choices. But it isn’t really our choices that distinguish who we are. It’s our commitment to them.
For some commitment is like faith, a chosen devotion to another person of an intangible ideal. But for me, commitment has a shadow side, a darker drive that constantly asks the question: How far am I willing to go?

14
William Blake writes, “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything will appear to man as it is- infinite.” But in reality our perception is often clouded by expectations, by experiences.
Truth is a battle of perceptions. People only see what they are prepared to confront. It’s not what you look at that matters, but what you see, and when different perceptions battle against one another, the truth has a way of getting lost, and the monsters find a way of getting out.

15
There comes a moment in each of our lives when the control that keeps us sane slips through our fingers. Most of us aim to seize it back. The best way to fight chaos is with chaos.
Chaos by its very definition cannot be controlled. Once introduced, all order and intention is rendered useless. The outcome of chaos can never be predicted. The only certainty it brings is the devastation that leaves in its wake.

16
In a crisis, you quickly find out who your true friends are. Tragedy and scandal, it seems, have a unique way of clarifying people’s priorities.
Adversity creates unexpected alliances. But treaties of this nature seldom form with an equality of power. Loyalties forged in apprehension and mistrust are tenuous at best, easily broken when held up to the unforgiving light of the truth. But in the darkness of our most desperate hours, it’s often these loyalties that lend us the strength to do what we know must be done.
A conflicted heart feeds on doubt and confusion. It will make you question your path, your tactics, your motives. When you stare ahead and darkness is all you see, only reason and determination can pull you back from the abyss.

17
Doubt is a disease. It infects the mind, creating a mistrust of people’s motives and one’s own perceptions. Doubt has the ability to call into question everything you’ve ever believed about someone, and reinforce the darkest suspicions of our inner circles.
Nature can be cruel. Predators are everywhere. Those who don’t need to be protected from outside forces often need to be protected from themselves. In society women are referred to as “the fairer sex”. But in the wild, the female species can be far more ferocious than their male counterparts. Defending the nest is both our oldest and strongest instinct, and sometimes it can also be the most gratifying.

18
Clarence Darrow, one of history’s greatest lawyers once noted, “There is no such thing as justice, in or out of court.” Perhaps because justice is a flawed concept that ultimately comes down to the decision of twelve people, people with their own experiences, prejudices, feelings about what defines right or wrong, which is why when the system fails us, we must go out and seek our own justice.
Justice like beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Some see an innocent victim. Others see evil incarnate getting exactly what’s deserved.

19
Absolution is the most powerful form of forgiveness, a full pardon from suspicion and accountability. It’s the liberation of a stolen future, a future my father never lived to see. Absolution is a mercy that people who killed him will never know.
Absolution is the washing away of sin, the promise of rebirth and the chance to escape the transgression of those who came before us. The best among us will learn from the mistakes of the past, while the rest seem doomed to repeat them. And then there are those who operate on the fringes of society unburdened by the confines of morality and conscience, a ruthless breed of monsters whose deadliest abilities are to hide in plain sight. If the people who I came to bring justice to cannot be bound by the quest of absolution, then neither will I.

20
They say grief occur in five stages. First there’s denial, followed by anger, then comes bargaining, and depression. For most, the final step of grief is acceptance, but for some, grief is a life sentence without clemency. They will never forget, and they will never forgive.
They say grief occur in five stages. First there’s denial, followed by anger, then comes bargaining, depression and acceptance. But grief is a merciless master. Just when you think you’re free, you realize, you never stood a chance.

21
In every life there comes a day of reckoning, a time when unsettled scores demand their retribution, and our own lies and transgressions are finally laid bare.