Hello everyone and welcome back. I apologize to any of you that are overly anxious to get this story in its entirety, as I'm doing my best to publish this series as fast as I can. In the meantime, please expect new installments every Friday from now on. I will put forth my best effort to make sure I carry out this pledge to you, my readers. I hope that you enjoy this story just as much as I enjoy writing it. Again, thank you for devoting your time to reading my work. It's an absolute honor.

-ODP

P.S. If you have not read the preceding chapters of Revenge, Inc. please click on the corresponding link(s) to do so:

Revenge, Inc. Part 1

Revenge, Inc. Part 2

Revenge, Inc. Part 3

Revenge, Inc. Part 4

Darkness closes in all around me. There is no light as there is just too much darkness for there to be any. I have bouts of absolute rage in which I want to break, destroy, and make suffer everything around me—so much so that upon waking, I cannot be contained or controlled. Felix finds it in his heart to let me stay with him—that is in his jail cell at the station downtown. My cell is nine-by-five, has black iron bars, and no window unless of course you count the one my captors use to slide my three-squares through. They all seemed pretty pissed when I wake up out of my spell.

“I don’t know why it is we should feed you, jerk off! Look what you did to my nose!” Yeah, his nose was completely covered in gauze. It was that cowboy Randy—the one that picked me up and drove me to Haley. Maybe when the bandage comes off, he’ll find that it was an improvement, I thought. I guessed that it was my way of giving back to the police force.

“I did that?” I said to him, trying my best not to laugh.

“What? You telling me you don’t remember?” I shook my head.

“No.”

“Oh, so you don’t remember breaking Dave’s arm or punching Jimbo in the eye? It took six of us to hold you long enough so the captain could use a Taser on you!”

And I really didn’t recollect any of that as I only remember the darkness and waking up with a goddamn migraine. The newbie wasn’t finished apparently, because he continued on: “Oh, let me catch you outside the station one of these days! I’ll take you on my DAMN SELF!” I smiled.

“You know, it’s easy to talk shit on the other side of these bars, partner.”

“All right, cut the shit!” A familiar voice this time and there was no mistaking it: It was Felix. “Randy? If you had a second nose, Cody would break that one too. You are one pain in the ass, Cody. Where the hell did you learn how to fight like that?”

“The Valhalla Public Library.” I then turned to the newbie cop as I just couldn’t help myself. “You’d be amazed at what you can learn if you just picked up a book once in a while.” I got him, as the idiot ran right up to my cell.

“I’ll kick your ass!” Randy yelled.

“Not a chance in hell, Randy. Now get the out of here before I tell Shari you were over at Mister Happy’s after patrol last night.” So just like that, Randy disappears like a warranty on a used car. Felix then turns back and looks at me. “So you mean to tell me that you learned all of that from reading books?” I nodded my head.

“That’s right.”

“Well…Any of these books teach you how to control that temper of yours?”

“Those books must have been loaned out at the time.”

“Yeah, and more than likely they’re long overdue.” Felix smiled. “Your friend Peter is here waiting for you. Now, are you going to let forensics investigate Haley or are you going to let her abductor get away?” That temper of mine was trying to consume me—I could feel it. I had to fight the urge to react; I rolled my hands into fists

“I don’t have much of a choice now do I, Felix?”

“We all have a choice, Cody. The sooner people realize this, the sooner the world becomes a better place to live. Don’t you agree?”

“I don’t want to do that.”

“Do what? Make a choice?”

“No, Felix. I don’t want to live.”

It was quiet for most of the ride with Peter. He kept his eyes on the road and his thoughts inside his head…Typical Pete. I learned over the years that he wanted me to speak, that he wanted me to say something, anything, just to break the silence.

“What day is it, Pete?” He shook his head and didn’t bother to look at me when he responded.

“Friday.”

“You tellin’ me I was locked down for three days?”

“It would’ve been for more were it not for me.”

“Wow. My hero. What did you do? Put all their kids through college?” He turned and gave me the most sourpuss face and then back to the road ahead.

“Let’s just say that Felix and his precinct won’t be pressing charges against you.”

“Why not?” I was almost hurt that they weren’t.

“Under the circumstances, Cody, Felix didn’t want you in his cell anymore than you wanted to be there. Broken noses and broken arms heal. On the other hand, reputations and bad press aren’t as easy to fix. The last thing Felix wants is word spreading about how a one-hundred and eighty pound guy single-handedly beat the living piss out of half his precinct, especially when he’s trying to get bumped to commissioner. So, just keep it hush, all right? I made a deal with Freddy."

If you know that TV show, “Home Is Where the Heart Is,” then you might remember Billingsley Estates as being a featured home—all 20,000 or so square feet of Venetian monstrosity made up of Italian marble, chiseled stone, and mortar parked right smack in the middle of 250 acres in the suburbs of the suburbs of Valhalla. To call it a house was absurd. The damn thing was a castle. All of it, including the Billingsley fortune was left to Peter just as soon as his parents’ Skyliner SS80’s twin-jet engines failed and took The Plunge. All of this happened when Peter was only fourteen. He was the only kid that I knew, whether on TV or real life, with his own full basketball-court inside his house. He and I used to shoot hoops there after school.

Just as soon as we pulled up to the front of his castle, his two Saint Bernards and his plump maid, Roberta, came out after them to greet us before Peter’s Lotus could come to a complete stop. It was all routine. The words, “Welcome home, Master Peter!” was very familiar. But as soon as Roberta saw me, she got all misty-eyed and gave me a hug.

“My Goodness, Cody! My condolences to you!” Not knowing what to say, I thanked her and ended it there. And for just a fleeting moment for the few minutes while riding with Peter, I didn’t once think about Haley until then. “Could I entice you with some coffee or tea?”

“No thank you, Roberta. Not right now.”

“But of course, should you change your mind…”

“Yes, I will, you know that.” Roberta then gave me a slight bow and then turned to Peter.

“And for you, Master Peter?”

“Just a Scotch, Roberta. We’ll be up in the archives.”

“Very good, sir.” When Roberta left, I turned to Peter.

“She never changes, does she?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“And your wife?”

“Probably out shopping.”

When we got to the upstairs, to the archives, the two of us sat down and went over everything that occurred from the night Haley didn’t come home. I told him the entire story about how the two of us got into an argument over Adrianna and about how I slapped Haley to end the argument. I felt sick to the core just talking about it. I went on about how I check with Charlie and Charlie’s parents and about how she was fine after their date and how Charlie was a gentleman walking her back and how Haley had given him a peck on the cheek for doing so…But then she just vanished and somehow never made it back home.

“And no one saw anything?” Peter asked, amazed.

“Not a single person.”

A silence between Peter and I and then my eyes fell on something that I must have seen about a hundred times but never really took any real interest in until then.

“Peter?”

“What?”

“Can I borrow your katana?”

“What? Sure, but why?”

“I also need you to do me a huge favor, as a friend.”

“Yeah, anything. Just say the word.”

I got up and went on over to the glass case that held the nineteenth century Japanese masterpiece that was flawless in its craftsmanship and the very last of its kind before the industrial revolution expelled the Samurai populace in Japan for good.

“I want you to kill me.”

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