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This ends now.
Quick as a flash, I pull something out of my pocket and fling it at him, thunking into his arm.
It’s one of my hunting knives, and I always carry it on me. I don’t hang about waiting to see how Chris reacts to the sensation of a blade puncturing his forearm.
I make the most of this element of surprise, and I step forward, grab his gun, then punch him clean in the jaw.
Instantly, he falls to the floor, unconscious.
‘Oh my god,’ says Addison, eyes wide with fright. ‘Will he be alright?’
‘He’ll only be out a few minutes, I reckon. Areyoualright?’
I uncock both our guns, and then take them over to my gun cabinet for safekeeping. Going to keep these fucking things under lock and key, out of harm’s way.
When I get back to Addison, she’s pouring out two glasses of water, her fingers trembling. She hands one to me, and I gulp it down in one.
Then I slam my glass down on the counter and pull Addison close to me.
‘You need to believe me, darlin’,’ I say. ‘That money Violet’s been paying me. It’s not the reason I agreed to all this.’
‘Whydidyou agree to it then, Finn?’ asks Addison, struggling out of my grip. ‘Why did you really marry me?’
I look down at the crumpled mess on the floor that’s Chris, thinking about how easily I could have ended up like that, if I hadn’t drawn a line under my old life and started a new one. ‘The truthful answer is that I had shit I had to put right. You know, karma. Do a bad thing, then do a good thing, to put it right.’
‘Does this have something to do with that woman you married?’
‘It has to do with all sorts of things. That woman I married is one of them.’
‘What happened? You cheat on her or something?’
I raise my hands. ‘Hell, no. Me and that woman, Bonnie, we weren’t even together. Not properly. It was one night in Vegas.’
‘One passionate night?’ Addison’s cheeks burn red, betraying her cool exterior.
‘Nothing like that,’ I say, taking her hand. ‘I was in a bad way after I came back from Afghanistan. Drinking and gambling. That’s why I was able to empathize with Chris like that, to an extent.’
‘Did you take drugs too?’
‘No,’ I say firmly. ‘Never drugs. But, you know, if I’d kept going down the path that I was on, then who knows what coulda happened… eventually.’ I shudder. ‘Anyway, this one night, in Vegas, I’d just got my final check through from the military. I decided to put the whole lot on red, and I got lucky. I won big. Bonnie was at the roulette wheel with me, and she liked what she saw. Turned out she was a lady with great inherited wealth, who’d drunk and gambled the whole lot away. There were a lot of people like that in Vegas. Addicts of one type or another. I wasn’t in one of the fun, touristy casinos either. This place was for the real hardcore fanatics.’
‘So, what?’ asks Addison. ‘You got married that night, there and then?’
‘Yeah, but not immediately. First, I bought champagne. And not just for her, for anyone who damn wanted it. She stuck around, though. Got me to buy another bottle. And another. Next thing I knew, we were waking up together, with no memory of what had happened other than a marriage certificate and two extremely sore heads.’
‘Oh my god, Finn, that’s awful.’
‘One of the biggest mistakes I ever made. Got the damn thing annulled shortly after. She was only too happy to oblige when she found out I’d spent most of my winnings on champagne and slot machines the night before. But she insisted that the annulment was done under seal — that means it was done off the public records. She was ironically the patron of some anti-alcohol charity, and if word got out, it could have destroyed the good work done by the charity all over the United States.’
‘She’s not still a patron, is she? They should know about her, shouldn’t they? The charity, I mean?’
‘Last I heard, she’d been dropped by the charity and gone into rehab. An embarrassment that might just save her life.’
‘As for me, that marriage in Vegas probably saved my life too. It was a wake-up call. I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol since then. Not to this day. And I started getting tattoos as well. As a reminder — not to drink, not to fuck up.’ I smile and point to a tattoo on my bicep that Addison might not have noticed before.
‘Don’t Fuck Up,’ she reads. ‘Simple.’
‘But effective. That’s the first one I got. Can’t say I haven’t fucked up since I got it done. But I’m trying.’
