He shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
“I was stupid. I won’t do it again. I’ll leave town. I’ll disappear. Just let me go.”
I stepped closer and crouched down. “My mother asked too. You didn’t spare her.”
“I’m not sparing you.” Then I got to work. Methodical. No rush.
First I broke his fingers, one by one. Wade screamed, but nobody was going to hear him down there. Thick walls, house set back from the road.
He could scream all night. Then the ribs. I kicked with precision, right where I meant to.
I heard them crack. Wade blacked out, came to, blacked out again. I waited for him to wake up.
I wanted him to feel every blow. When I was done, he was lying on the floor broken, bloody, barely breathing. I sat beside him and wiped my hands on his shirt.
Looked at him. “You’re going to die here. In your own basement.”
“Surrounded by everything you stole. Nobody will find you for days. And by then it won’t matter.”
Wade was trying to say something. I leaned in to hear it. He whispered, “Why…?”
I gave him a thin smile. “For my mother. For every bruise on her face.”
“For every tear. For every day of fear you put into her.” He closed his eyes.
His breathing got weaker. I stood up and headed for the stairs. Looked back once.
Wade was lying still. Maybe already dead. Maybe not yet.
It didn’t matter to me. I went upstairs. Closed the basement door.
Wiped down anything I’d touched. Took the tape with me. Walked out of the house.
Locked the door behind me. Threw the gun and magazine into the brush. Started home.
The night was quiet. I walked through the empty streets of town and felt nothing inside but emptiness. No joy. No satisfaction.
Just emptiness. The revenge was done. All three had paid.
But there was no happiness in it. Mom was waiting when I got home. She saw me and understood.
“Is it over?” I nodded. “It’s over, Mom.”
“They’ll never touch you again. Not ever.” She came over, hugged me, and cried.
I stood there holding her and felt hollowed out. I’d done what I believed I had to do. Protected my mother. Punished the men who hurt her.
But there was no peace in me. Because I understood something then: revenge doesn’t heal wounds. It just leaves new ones.
Now there was blood on my hands, and it would never wash off. No matter how I explained it to myself, I had killed one man and crippled two others. Yes, they deserved it, but that didn’t change the fact.
I had become what they were in one terrible way. Judge. Executioner.
Killer. I lay down on my cot and closed my eyes. Sleep didn’t come.
I kept seeing Wade’s face. Hearing his screams, the crack of bone, seeing blood. And I understood this was only the beginning.
The beginning of living with what I’d done. With that weight, which would stay with me the rest of my life. But I didn’t regret it.
Because my mother was safe. And that mattered most. They found Wade Crispin’s body four days later.
A neighbor smelled something and called the sheriff. When they opened the basement, there wasn’t much left worth seeing. Summer heat had done its work. Flies everywhere.
Deputy Peters threw up right there on the porch. I heard about it from our neighbor, Mrs. Clayton. She came running over that morning, pale and rattled.
“Alex! Alex, did you hear? They found Wade Crispin dead in the basement of his own house!”
“They say he was beaten to death!” Mom went pale and looked at me. I was sitting at the table drinking tea.
I nodded calmly. “Yeah, I heard. Terrible thing.” Mrs. Clayton sat down with us and threw up her hands.
“It’s awful. Who could’ve done it?
