Page 119 of His Wicked Revenge

“Having sex in a church is fun,” he states playfully. “I’ve done it once or twice.”

“You’ve been to church?” I walk further down the sidewalk until I’m secluded.

“Back when my parents thought God was going to save me,” he says with disgust and then turns his tone lighter. “All it did was bring me to the woman my age who had dirty minds and thought praying the filthy thoughts away would cure them.”

Shaking my head, I chuckle to myself. “As much as I would love to hear about you defying the church, I needed to ask you something.”

“A therapist coming to a convicted felon for advice,” he jokes. “What did you get yourself into now?”

“If you had to get revenge on someone, how would you do it?” I glance at my surroundings. Luckily, we are in a smaller area of town where there aren’t many people.

“Murder,” he responds without thinking.

I roll my eyes. “Let me rephrase that. What should I do if I want to get revenge?”

“Murder,” he answers again without hesitation.

“Reed…” I sigh. “Killing someone isn’t the answer to everything.”

“It should be. If someone does something terrible to you, you should be able to kill them without any repercussions.”

His words remind me of one of the sessions I had with Veronica. We had been talking about her killing her sister’s boyfriend. She had told me, If a person does an awful, unspeakable thing, I believe they deserve to be punished, and if that punishment happens to be death, then so be it.

I blink hard, not wanting to think about her words and how similar they are to Reed.

Inhaling a deep breath, I smugly say, “Says the convicted felon who killed someone and got sent to prison.”

“Yeah, yeah. Rookie mistake.” He huffs. “Like I said, I have people on the out—Walt! I have Leo on the phone, and he needs advice.” Reed’s voice gets a bit quieter the further away he gets from the phone. “Want to help him out?”

A shifting noise comes from the other end, and then silence. I almost think I’ve been hung up on, but I can faintly hear other inmates in the background.

“Walt?”

Conversing with him is pointless because no one has ever heard him speak. What help does Reed possibly think Walter can be if he doesn’t—“Leo.”

My body freezes at his voice, and I hear Reed gasp somewhere behind the old man. When I finally got over the shock that he had said my name, I finally spoke. “Of course, you have an accent. Russian?”

“Da,” he responds. Why doesn’t it surprise me that the man is from Russia? Which makes me wonder if he really was in a mob. “Reed says you need advice. You in trouble?”

“Oh my god!” Reed squeals in the distance. “Leo! He is speaking! He said my name!”

Walt grunts at Reed’s disbelief. “Tell me.”

“Revenge. I need to get revenge on someone that ruined my life,” I inform him without too much detail since these calls are timed.

“The reason you were sent to prison?”

“Yes. Reed thinks the answer to everything is murder. A second opinion would be helpful.”

“Reed thinks everything should end in violence,” Walt tells me. “This person. Did they hurt you?”

I nod even though he can’t see me. “The reason I was sent to the hospital with a knife wound.”

“Oko za oko,” Walt says with his thick accent.

“Uh, Walt. I’m American. I have no idea what that means,” the robotic lady interrupts us. The call is almost over.

“An eye for an eye.” He translates the Russian for me once the silence ends and brings us back together. “Delat' to, chto nuzhno sdelat'. For your American brain, that means do what needs to be done.”