“Chester,” the boy taunted, “in three years of marriage, she never bore you a child, but she let me get her pregnant. Don’t you get it? What’s the point of clinging on? Listen, if you don’t back off, I’ll move right into your house. Let’s see then who Faye will stand beside, you or me?”
I thought back over the last year, the months she spent away from home. A bitter smile tugged at my lips.
When Faye returned and saw the chat logs, she saw the shards of shattered glass and jade littering the floor, and she only arched a brow slightly.
“You have nothing you want to explain?” I asked, my voice ragged, mixing with the acrid smoke of her cigarette.
She gave a soft laugh, exhaled a ring of smoke, and sighed. “He’s just a kid. Why bother stooping to his level?”
Faye's tone was airy, like all those years of bloodshed and power struggles in the capital’s ruthless circles hadn’t fallen on us but on her and that boy instead.
“Yes, a boy like him doesn’t understand.”
I tossed a pathology report onto the table—genital organ, surgically removed.
She straightened instantly.
My words fell softly, almost carelessly. “So I taught your lover how to be a man.”
“Chester!”
Her sharp, manicured nails bit into my shoulders, leaving marks. I leaned against the wall, my back against it, as I slowly curved my lips into a satisfied smile, taking in the sight of her eyes, now red with anger.
She had only wept twice in her life.
One time, in our third year of high school, when she saw my skin split open, my mom pulled me by the hair to the side of the road, ready to throw me into the Yellow River. She stabbed my mom eighteen times.
And now, with this boy’s manhood crushed, her fingers gripped my shoulders, demanding answers for my cruelty.
“How rare,” I murmured, “to see the great Faye Ellison panic.”
I laughed without the slightest hint of remorse.
“You’re a man too, Chester! How could you do something like that to him?” Faye demanded, her voice slicing through the tension in the room.
“You said it yourself, Faye. There’s no divorce between us. Only death can separate us,” I said.
I closed the distance between us and then taunted, “If you can’t kill me, then I’ll have to kill both of you.”
For a moment, the only sound was the soft drip of blood.
It hit the floor, sharp and steady, echoing in the stillness.
Only then did she notice my hand, cut from when I had been smashing things.