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“I imagine he does,” Nana Pratt said.
“Gun,” I called. “Would you mind coming upstairs for a quick second?” I darted into my bedroom and stripped off my clothes.
“What are you doing?” Nana Pratt hissed.
“Conflict resolution,” I said, tugging a Villanova T-shirt over my head.
Gun appeared in my doorway, just as I zipped up my jeans. “If it pertains to your outfit, the answer is no,” he said.
“It doesn’t. Nana Pratt is here. She has concerns about your livelihood.”
“I see.” Gun sat on the edge of my bed. “Am I here to defend myself?”
“Not defend. Maybe reach an understanding.”
Gun scratched his cheek. “Let me see if I can reframe this in a way you’ll understand.” He cleared his throat. “Nothing is black and white in the same way no one is truly selfless.”
Nana Pratt sniffed. “I was selfless.”
I relayed her reply.
“Tell me how,” Gun insisted.
“I was a doting wife and mother, a loving neighbor, a churchgoer, and a hard-working member of multiple community-minded organizations.”
I shared her examples.
“And how did it make you feel to do those things?” Gun asked.
She seemed stumped by the question. “How does he think it made me feel? It feels good to do good. Everybody knows that.” She paused. “Everybody with a moral backbone, anyway.”
“So you continued to do good deeds because it made you feel good to do them,” I said.
“That’s right.”
“So helping others helped you,” Gun added. “Do you see how those selfless acts maybe weren’t so selfless after all?”
Her mouth opened and closed in silence.
“I’m not saying you shouldn’t have felt good about your actions. What I mean is that behavior isn’t as easily labeled as you’d like to believe. You did your good deeds and felt good about them. Cam and I consider what we do to be good deeds, and we feel good about them.”
“But only one set of those deeds is legal,” she protested.
“Legality and morality aren’t necessarily the same thing,” I countered. “And who better to keep assassins in check than a reformed prince of hell?”
“I do not kill the innocent,” Gun insisted. “My targets are not anyone the world would mourn.”
“Who decides who’s worth mourning?” Nana Pratt asked. “He’s playing God.”
“She thinks you’re playing God,” I told Gun.
“I see us as doing the Lord’s work,” Gun responded with absolute sincerity.
Nana Pratt seemed to mull over my response. “Well, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
“I’m sure Kane would agree,” I said.
Gunther rubbed his hands along his thighs. “So, are we good now? My coffee is probably cold.”
