Sweet Revenge

“No,” I said. “You aren’t getting out of this. But it is touching… it is. You know you are about to die, but you are still worried about the kids. Well, I’ll tell them their nanny had to go home and won’t be back, but she loves them dearly. I’ll make sure they know that you didn’t just abandon them.”

“Just let me go,” Leia said. She was crying uncontrollably now. It was almost sad.

“Just shut up and take your punishment with some dignity,” I said.

Without waiting another second for her to say a word I pointed the gun and fired two shots right at her chest.

Leia fell to the floor hunched over. She barely even groaned.

I was still laughing, the smell of gun powder thick in the air. My ears were ringing loudly from the explosive blast bouncing off the walls. It had been a long time since I’d fired a gun inside. I’d actually forgotten what a bad idea it is without ear protection.

“Well, that was unfortunate,” I said walking over to Leia’s body. “I hope you stay dead this time.”

Laughing I bent down to look at her. She was face down and crumbled into a tight ball. It was a very strange way to fall…

Suddenly, Leia flipped over and she was smiling at me.

“I hope you enjoy prison,” Leia said.

“What—?” I started.

“FREEZE! Drop the weapon and keep your hands in the air!”

A loud, commanding voice entered the room.

I looked up to see three large uniformed police officers standing there with their guns drawn on me. There was nothing I could do. If I twitched a little bit wrong or even felt a sneeze coming on I was going to be filled full of holes.

I sat the gun down and held my hands in the air.

“Get down on your knees!” The cop yelled.

I followed the orders until they had me handcuffed with both hands behind my back. The other officer read me my Miranda Rights. I was almost in too much of a daze to verbally accept that I understood them.

I was done. I was finished. Leia had outsmarted me.

She was standing now with her arms wrapped around some other man. He was in his mid-thirties, handsome, and clean cut looking. I could tell immediately that he and Leia were intimate. I wondered if he might have been the one who did the surgery. I couldn’t think who else she would have told about this.

Leia looked at me just then with the happiest look on her face I’d ever seen. She’d been wearing a wire after all. It was a setup. They’d heard every word I’d said.

I chose to exercise my right not to say a word. It was better than possibly incriminating myself farther. They had me on audio saying everything. My lawyer looked so despondent when he saw all of the evidence against me. He was the best money could buy, but even he couldn’t work actual miracles.

It was the fact that I’d actually tried to murder Leia right then and there. I’d taken my gun after admitting it was my gun and I’d known it was loaded and I’d proceeded to shoot her twice in the chest with it.

What I didn’t know at that time was that Leia had set that up as all part of her plan. Her whole plan was to get me to try to murder her while the cops were listening. So, she replaced the bullets in the gun with blanks.

This not only gave the cops a new crime to charge me with—one with indisputable evidence—but it lent credibility to the crimes of my past that I had also admitted to. I was beyond screwed. My life was over.

As I sat there in the interrogation room talking to my lawyer who was telling me exactly how over my life was, I began to think about the time I’d spent with Leia and how much I missed the beginning part of our relationship. We were actually pretty good together and our marriage could have been something special for both of us, but I was not wired that way. My greed had eventually won out. And in the end my greed had cost me everything.

I should have hated Leia, but I didn’t. She was just playing the cards she was dealt. I was angrier with myself for reacting hastily and setting the fire. I thought it would take care of everything nice and neatly, but in the end it had left too many loose ends. Now, I was going to have to face the penalties.

My lawyer told me I was looking at life in prison as a max sentence, but a minimum of twenty-five years before I was even eligible for parole. People who were convicted of attempted murder, especially of doing it more than once—they could never expect to be let out of prison ever again.