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The Day Before Christos’s Wedding

SOMEWHERE IN CENTRAL AMERICA

“Why don’t you just fucking kill me?” he shouts.

There is no longer any dignity in what is left of him. There is not a single vestige of the arrogant, wife-beater professor.

“So rude, doctor. Your former students would be shocked by that language. Not all, of course. Those you fucked are probably used to it.”

“What the fuck did I ever do to you?”

“To me? Nothing. But last time, you got the victim wrong, Mike. Unfortunately for you, you messed with the girl of a good friend of mine.”

“Who? Why don’t you at least tell me what I’m being accused of?”

“Because it wouldn’t be as much fun,” I reply indifferently.

Howard doesn’t know it yet, but today is his last day on this planet. I let my men take care of him for months, but I came personally to finish the job.

“Ahhhhhhhh!” he screams in desperation, and I fold my arms, leaning against a wall.

“What? Not so cool when you’re the victim and not a helpless old couple, is it? Or your ex-wife . . . oops, wait. She was never your wife. I just remembered. Neither on paper nor biblically.”

“Am I here because of that bitch? I never wanted her; I was only interested in her money,” he lies because I doubt any man alive could be indifferent to the beauty of Lykaios’s bride.

“I don’t believe you. However, that doesn’t matter anymore, my friend. She’s fine. Her parents, too. Macy recovered from cancer. Scott is healthy as a bull, and you, you are here, stuck in a basement in the middle of nowhere, being tortured for months. Was it worth it?”

A glimmer of hope appears in his eyes. “No. I’m sorry.”

I take the blade I like to work with, and in a single blow, I end his life.

“It was a rhetorical question, Mike. By the time you got in my friend’s way, you were already dead. You just didn’t know it yet.”