“Why did you do it?” Karla’s voice shook.

“What I did, had to be done. There was no hard feelings, we weren’t targeting your family, it was just politics.” Russel replied.

Karla seethed. It was not just politics to her. It was her baby girl, Jenessa. Her thirteen year old, who lay in the hospital, wrapped up in tubes for breathing, eating, for life. Her hair was gone and her smile would never be the same with teeth that had cracked and crumbled away.

Slowly, Karla raised the barrel of her ex-husband’s gun and brought it in line with Russel’s head.

“Are you sorry now?” she whispered.

“I’m sorry you don’t understand-”

Rage filled her, but Karla felt something else too. She felt sorry for this sad sack of a politician who refused to see the consequences of his actions. She tried to hold in the anger, hold on to the pain, but it was elusive and flowed out of her, leaving a simple plan in its wake- to show him what he’d done.

“I forgive you, but you’re going to have to come with me if you want to live.”