Victor reads the name twice before he lets himself believe it.
It is written in another man's handwriting, on the back of an envelope that has already been opened by someone else, resealed, passed along a chain of hands he will never be able to name. Only the name inside matters. A town he has never heard of. A different first name, a different life stitched on top of the old one like a patch over a bullet hole — but the same man. He would know that face anywhere, even ten years older, even hiding behind someone else's name.
Ten years. He has kept the ring in a drawer for ten years, has not been able to sell it, has not been able to look at it either, not since the trial that wasn't a trial, the testimony that put one man in a new life and left Victor's brother in the ground with no one ever made to answer for it.
He does not tell himself this is justice. He has never believed in that word, not since he watched it fail to mean anything, watched a man walk free into a government car with a new name in his pocket like a receipt.
He only knows the drawer, and the ring, and now the name, and that some debts do not go away just because the man who owes them changes his address.
He folds the envelope and puts it in his coat.
Victor: An Early Serial — Part IV of V. ← Previous: Victor(3) · Series index
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