As soon as I was finished, I set Moira’s bag outside the door to Michael’s room and stepped inside.

He was asleep on his back when I found him, his arms tucked under the blankets like a child and his face slack with slumber. The look was almost innocent, and it was hard to imagine that the minute he awoke, he’d look like a completely different man.

I stepped up beside him and quickly hopped onto the bed, pinning his arms to his sides with the blanket he’d so kindly wrapped himself in. The moment my weight hit him, his eyes snapped open and it only took seconds before he realized that the blankets and my legs had completely trapped him.

“Ye’ll die for dis, ye fuckin’ bastard,” he said menacingly, trying to work his arms slowly out of the blankets.

I could feel his every move, but I didn’t stop his almost imperceptible struggle. I wanted him to feel it. I wanted him to know that he was trapped.

“Do ye know why I’m here?” I asked, flipping open my blade before resting it on my thigh.

“I’m guessing me whore of a sister somehow got out of her room,” he growled, his legs beginning to kick at the blankets. It was really too bad that he insisted on having such a tightly made bed.

“Ye almost killed me child,” I said quietly.

“Yer bastard, ye mean?”

I clenched my fist around the handle of my blade and reminded myself that I wasn’t finished yet.

“Did ye set up de blast dat killed me da?”

He froze beneath me.

“It wasn’t meant to kill him.”

“I’d come to that conclusion meself.”

“It was just a warnin.’ ”

“A warnin’ dat would have killed me mum.”

“We’re in a war, Trick. Sometimes—”

“Spare me yer rhetoric!” I hissed through my clenched teeth. “Ye killed me da and ye nearly killed me child.”

“Moira is me sister. It’s me job to punish her for wrongdoin’s.”

He believed it. All of it. I could see it in his eyes. He thought that beating a woman almost to death was an acceptable punishment, that it was alright to kill a person’s spouse as an effective way to keep him in line.

He believed that the end justified the means.

“Immanuel Kant was a philosopher,” I began slowly as he watched me in confusion. “He believed dat people should be viewed as de ends, not de means.”

I paused and watched as he tried to understand the conversation’s change in direction. He was nervous and afraid and began to shake beneath me.

“For dat reason alone, I’ll allow ye to pray.”

“What?” he asked in horror.

“Beg forgiveness.”

His eyes widened in fear as he lay frozen for a long moment.

“Our Fadder,” he sobbed, “who art in heaven—”

I cut his words and his neck with a deep slash of my knife from ear to ear. Then I climbed off the bed and wiped my blade down on the corner of his sheets.

For the first time, I didn’t feel an ounce of remorse, and I wondered briefly when I’d become such a monster. Then I made my way back outside, locking the front door and climbing onto my motorcycle so I could go home.

***

I sat alone in the silent house for a long time after I got back. I’d fucked up so badly that I knew any chance of righting my life was completely gone. I’d never again step foot in my own country, I had little money to start a new life, and both my mother and my wife hated me.

I couldn’t blame Amy for her anger. One poor decision, one mistake, and I’d broken all trust between us. It didn’t matter that we hadn’t yet made any promises to each other. I’d known the morning after my night with Moira that I’d made a horrible mistake, but it had been too late then to right it.

I wondered if Amy would have forgiven me if I had told her after it had happened. Perhaps she would have fought me, but eventually forgiven me—I’d never know. But I did know that if I had the chance to go back and tell her, I still wouldn’t have.

She wouldn’t have married me. She would have allowed me to work back into her good graces, but it would have taken time, time we didn’t have. Because Moira showing up at my door, pregnant with my child, was inevitable. And when that happened, I would have lost Amy forever.

I took comfort in the fact that Amy and I had already spoken our vows. I had a hold on her that was unbreakable. It made me a bit nervous that we were headed to the United States, where people seemed to divorce on a whim, but I didn’t think she could get one without my consent, so I tried not to worry.

I had more pressing matters to worry about.

I was leaving the country of my birth to build a life in a place I’d never been, with a woman I barely knew but was carrying my child, and I had to leave my wife and my mother behind. I’d barely slept.

Amy and Mum were sleeping together in my mum’s room and Moira was asleep in the bed I’d only ever shared with my wife. That knowledge made my guts clench in shame.

My wife hadn’t deserved to be pulled into this mess. I’d kept so much from her trying to protect her that she’d unknowingly climbed aboard a sinking ship, and the most horrible part of it was that I wouldn’t have gone back to change it.

I knew she deserved more, but I’d never give her up.

“Mum,” I called, walking slowly into her room. “Wake up, it’s time.”

I made my way to Amy’s side of the bed, and brushed her hair away from her face. Dried tears had made a few strands stick to her cheeks, and as I pulled them away, I leaned down to kiss those spots.