Omoko emerged from the shadows, put a fatherly arm around me, walked me back to his office. We had a little chat. He gave me a book, The Count of Monte Cristo, and told me to find him when I finished it.
It took a month and the help of a stolen dictionary, but I did it. When I came back, Mr. Omoko asked what I’d learned. “A lot of big words,” I said. Then, “I’m not sure. The count got revenge, but I don’t know if it made him happy.”
Omoko regarded me thoughtfully. “Happy or sad isn’t the point. People don’t look for revenge to make them happy. They do it because they must. Do you understand?”
I thought about it. I did.
“What I’d hoped you would learn,” Mr. Omoko went on, “is that if you decide to take revenge, you have to think of it as a vocation, a calling. Like a priest is called to serve. It isn’t something you do once. It is something you do every day, like learning a dance. Before you can dance, you must put your time in. You must learn the rules of the dance, its rhythms, and be sure not to step too soon. If you want to master it, you must also put in your blood and your sweat. That is what the count learned, that his calling was revenge, but that to get it he had to have discipline. You have to want it deep in your gut like he did, more than anything.
“You have to be patient. You have to rid yourself of distraction: friends, hobbies, other ambitions. You must be able to wait for the right moment. You will have to starve yourself, to be willing to break your own bones and reshape them to make it happen. It takes sacrifice like you’ve never imagined possible. You practice at it every day, until there is no distinction between you and it. It is you. Do you have that in you?”
“I-I think so.”
He regarded me coolly. “It won’t work if you just think so. You have to be sure,” he said. “You can kill him now. That would be the easy way. But know that if you do, people will mourn. Sure, they’ll remember him as a Big Man and maybe even a businessman of, shall we say, questionable ethics. But around here a Big Man is as good as royalty. He’ll still die revered, feared, and admired. He killed your mother, child. Is that what you want?”
“No.”
Of course it wasn’t.
Mr. Omoko told me to wait, and be patient. To make myself strong in the meantime, to build my own set of rules to live by, to master the practice of revenge. I was small, but I was already on the road to becoming a thief with clever hands and silent feet, and he could work with that. If I was to be a thief, though, I should be a good one.
The best.
“Why are you helping me?” I had asked.
He smiled. “I was young once, and wronged. I see myself in you. You’re smart. I trust your judgment. If you say he needs your vengeance, then I believe you. I expect a cut, of course, when you take his fortunes. If you want my help, that is.”
I did.
“Good.”
One day there would be an opportunity for a thief like me, he told me.
That day was supposed to be today.
? ? ?
Hours tick by, or days. I don’t know. I go through rounds of pacing, then screaming threats and obscenities at the walls and corners, and then silence, and then cycling through the whole routine again.
? ? ?
The master plan is simple. I made it; Omoko helped me refine it.
First I steal the dirt on Mr. Greyhill and give it to Donatien, the reporter my mother knew. Donatien knows everything there is to know about blood gold. He’ll do a good job on the story, and he’s got connections to get it out there into the big papers. And for this story, unlike all the others, there will be proof.
But dragging Mr. G’s name through the dirt isn’t the end of it. What the Goondas are interested in is the next step: money. Greyhill has his loot stashed somewhere; Omoko is sure of it. Offshore bank accounts, most likely. Boyboy thinks the treasure map is on the hard drive. We find the accounts, Boyboy hacks them, then everyone gets a cut and goes home happy.
Except me. I’m not done yet.
While the Goondas enjoy their spoils, I’ll be watching Mr. Greyhill. I want to see his world slowly crumble around him. I want to see his company fire him. I want to see his debts called in. I want the banks to take his home, his cars, all his Big Man toys. Maybe his wife will leave him. His kids will finally understand who he really is.
But it still won’t be enough. He took everything from Kiki and me, and I want him to know who’s taking everything back. So when the time is right, I’ll step out of the shadows. I want to see the understanding dawn in his eyes. He needs to know it was me, Tiny Girl, who brought the Big Man down.
And that’s when I’ll kill him.
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