Page 58 of Redeem

“But that didn’t stop you, did it?”

“No. I still had to make money, but mostly I just went through the motions, confronting whatever came across me.”

“That doesn’t make sense. How could you collect debts, do any of that stuff, if you were so shutdown?” she asked.

“I couldn’t so I started fighting for money,” I said.

She looked at me quizzically. “People wanted to fight you?”

That pulled a reluctant smile from me. “Yeah. They paid for it too.”

“Paid how?”

“Money. Blood. Their lives. Whatever they had to offer,” I said.

She didn’t look surprised, and I didn’t know how I felt about that. Saying it out loud gave the entire process a different feeling, one that I had managed to push down, but that again came back full force. But her reaction was more muted. I had confessed to her what I was, so I supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised by it, but for her to have no discernible reaction was something I didn’t understand.

“What are you thinking right now?” I asked, not sure that I wanted to know but unwilling to leave the topic alone.

“Do you want to know?” She glared at me, her eyes sharp, her expression foreboding, but I didn’t care because I did want to know.

“Yes, I do,” I said.

“I don’t know if I want to tell you,” she replied.

Apparently it was my turn to look at her quizzically. I frowned, wondering what she was getting at. “What does that mean?” I asked.

“Exactly as it sounds. I don’t know if I want to tell you,” she said as though it was the most sensible thing.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because you’re such a fucking asshole.”

“Perhaps. Why?” I said.

She looked at me riotously, but then started speaking. “Because, I’m supposed to be thinking about how horrible you are, what horrible things you did,” she said.

“Supposed to be. Which means you’re not?” I asked.

She looked at me like she wanted to throttle me, and for a moment I wondered if she would. “No,” she said grudgingly. “I’m not thinking that. I’m relieved. Can you fucking believe that? I’m relieved.”

“Relieved? Why?” I asked.

She shook her head, her expression now one of disgust. “Because. At the very least, you were going around hurting whoever crossed your path. For some fucked-up reason that counts for something to me.”

She said the words grudgingly, seeming to resent every syllable that she bit out between her clenched teeth. But the message reached me all the same, put some things in a new light, too.

“You know, I never considered it that way, but maybe that was it,” I said.

She frowned, shook her head at me. “Go on.”

I heard her, but was also preoccupied with my own thoughts. I hadn’t considered it much, the change that had happened, but her words gave me a new perspective. “There was a woman, at the end,” I said.

“Wait, you’re supposed to have some kind of code, right? Isn’t killing women and children against it?” she asked.

“Yes, it’s supposed to be, but like I said, I’d lost it. Didn’t care about anything, anyone. Wasn’t really there,” I said.

“This woman? She changed that?”