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Keep him talking.
Give him his moment of triumph.
Then take it away. Take everything.
For Jamison and Colette. For Madeleine. For Hank Lee and a hundred other people he’s wronged.
“How come you never told my father it was me who threw the bottle?” I ask Anton.
“What?”
“Your family disappeared. You never fought back. If you’d come to my father a week later and told him I did it, he would have believed you.”
Anton sneers.
“Did you not think to try?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer.
Just keep talking. Stall him. Tire him out.
“You were afraid of him. Just like me. You couldn’t even stand up to your own father; how could you stand up to mine?”
“Shut the fuck up, Ingram.”
“Alcoholism didn’t ruin Joseph Wilson. He didn’t beat you because he was a drunk. He was a weak man.”
“You didn’t know him,” Anton snarls.
I stare into his furious gaze. There’s no need to watch his trigger finger; if he’s going to fire, I’ll see it in his eyes first.
“Your father accepted being a loser,” I continue. “He accepted his demons. He destroyed his life, and your mother’s, and yours. You’ve lived your whole life blaming me instead of him.”
“No, my father was a good man. He became what he did because of you.”
Now it’s my turn to laugh.
“You took the blame for the bottle, Anton. It was noble of you to protect me from my father, but if you hadn’t said anything, your father never would have lost his job. You did more to hurt him than anyone else. Maybe that’s why he turned to drinking: to forget being betrayed by his own son.”
Anton lifts the gun higher, firming up his grip but the barrel still drifts.
“You need to shut the fuck up right now, motherfucker,” he says. “This is why you’re such a fucking piece of shit. You’ve never taken responsibility for anything you’ve done. You think you’re better than people like Hardt, or Traves, or Victor? You’re not. To them, you were just a hired gun — someone who could take out their trash. You think Hardt was really going to put you in charge?”
He’s trying to throw me off, to exploit emotional weaknesses. Hardt’s death is raw — a smart tactic, but it’s not going to work.
“Do you really think Jamison would have let you into the Masters on your own?” I ask. “The only power you ever had came from those implants. Without them, we never would have let you in. You think you’re hot shit because you’re rich? A real Master wouldn’t waste half his life on revenge. When one of us had a personal vendetta, we dealt with it — quickly. We didn’t turn it into our life’s purpose. We wanted to enjoy life.”
Anton’s lips rise in a severe smirk.
“I’ve enjoyed the last nine months a great deal. Watching Kate suffer because of you was a constant source of pleasure.”
“Ingram’s wrong about you,” Kate says, blinking away a tear. “You never would have had a normal life. You’re a psychopath. Nothing would have made you truly happy. Even if you’d gotten revenge, in the end you’d still be empty inside.”
Anton chuckles.
“I found my revenge very fulfilling. I just wish more of it had gone according to plan.”
“What about after?” Kate asks. Does she realize I’m trying to stall? If so, good for her. She adds, “If you’d beaten us and killed off all the Masters and were in full control, what would you have done then? What would have made you happy?”
