Page 44 of Vengeance

I open the door and slip inside. Phae doesn’t even look back toward the door from where she’s curled up in a seat near the window with a cup of coffee and a book. I silently walk over to her, taking the time to observe her. Her hair has grown out in the last nine months or so since I’ve seen her. Dark brown and curly again with most of the black from before cut out, and hanging in a short bob around her neck.

She looks… content. Not at peace. I doubt she’ll ever be able to find that. But okay with her lot in life nonetheless. Settled. I try to imagine what that would be like. To be forced to be around people I ran from because I’m different from them. To have everything I’ve ever worked for taken from me. For your life to end up totally different than what you thought it would be and not being able to do a damn thing about it. But I don’t have to imagine. I know what that’s like. And knowing that allows me to feel some empathy for her.

Some.

She still tried to take the life I rebuilt from me.

“So Viper really didn’t kill you,” I begin.

Phae startles and jumps around to look at me.

I ignore her shock and sit on the opposite side of her couch.

“I wasn’t sure he hadn’t gone behind my back and did it anyway. I can never know about those kinds of things with him.”

Phae recovers, and sits up straight to look directly at me before saying in an even tone, “That’s one thing we agree on.”

There are a lot of mind and power games I could play here, but I don’t need to. Phae knows who I am and what I stand for and knows all that she’s lost to me. No need to rub it in her face. Despite everything, I have a lot of respect for her.

So I reach into my pocket and toss a micro-sd card across the couch to her. She looks at it but doesn’t pick it up.

“What’s that?” she asks.

“The means to Stephen Pray’s downfall.”

Her eyes narrow. “I thought you and Viper made clear that you didn’t want any part in that.”

“We didn’t want any part in the downfall of his empire. Not him. Well… not his entire empire. There is part of it that’s disconnected enough from everything else we want that taking it down will take down Pray while keeping what we want out the radius of the blowback.”

“What is it exactly?”

“Delilah has been cataloging all the players and the logistics of Pray’s human trafficking ring. I might be a ruthless drug dealer, racketeer, and a killer when I have to be, but this is a type of evil I don’t want anything to do with and neither does Viper. We planned on dismantling that side of the business once everything was said and done anyway, but I think you can make much more use of it.”

“What do you mean? What do you want me to do with it?”

“Do what you do best. Write it all down. Tell a story. I’ve got an in with the New York Times. They’re ready whenever you are. Which is in about three weeks.”

Phae takes the micro sd card and tosses it back across the couch to me.

“You think this is supposed to be some kind of… consolation prize for destroying my life? For ruining my life’s work. For taking my husband and children from me?”

“I didn’t take your husband from you. The reason you kept him as long as you did is that I always ran him back to you before we could ever do anything to hurt you.”

I expect her to call me a liar for that seeing as she didn’t believe Viper when he told her he never cheated. But she doesn’t. Whether because she believes that now or it just doesn’t matter anymore, I’m not sure. I don’t care to wonder.

I continue, “You died. And then your husband moved on. That simple.”

It’s not that simple. While Viper never cheated and I never asked him too (except once when I wasn’t in my right mind, and he turned me down), in a way, I am a homewrecker. Whether I did it on purpose or not. Whether Phae enabled me or not. But we’re not rehashing that again. And I certainly don’t feel guilty about it anymore. Everyone is the villain in someone else’s story, and it just turned out that I happened to end up being Phae’s.

“And I didn’t take your children from you. They’re here. At the villa. You’re free to see them whenever you want.”

“You know I’m not going to do that. And you know why. It’s like you said. It was always supposed to be your life.”

There’s nothing to say to that so I toss the SD card back to her side.

“It’s not a consolation prize. The article revealing to the public of Stephen Pray’s atrocious human trafficking ring and the crimes attached to it are going to be in all the biggest newspapers in the world and going to be breaking news with or without you having a hand in it. But I thought I’d offer it to someone I once considered a friend and still have a lot of respect for. I thought I’d give you the tools to enable you to fight again since I took it away from you, after all.”

“So it’s absolution you seek from me.”

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