I saw it.
In the middle of the street, right across from us, a white envelope lay face down. I hurried over, grabbed it, and brought it back to Satan.
“You wanna give me anthrax?” Satan said.
“There’s nothing inside; I can feel it,” I said.
“Anthrax is powder, you idiot.”
But I felt confident enough that I could open the envelope without any issues. I nevertheless moved to the side, slid my finger underneath, and ripped it open. And sure enough, all that was inside was a single sheet of paper. I turned it around and unfolded it until I could read the message.
“You thought your secret was safe. Don’t worry. He’ll know soon enough.”
I felt a pit in my stomach. I didn’t need to worry about Brock saying anything. But I sure as shit needed to worry about the King’s Men saying something.
“The fuck is on there?” Satan said.
I handed him the letter. He read it and looked at me with an arched eyebrow.
“It means Mason will soon learn I was once a Bandit.”
“And?”
“Not all of us can forget the past like you can, Satan.”
Satan bit his lip and let out a sigh. I hadn’t meant to insult him, but it had apparently hit harder than I had anticipated.
“They’re trying to rip us apart from the inside,” I said. “This is some art of war shit. Why attack an enemy when you can just let them destroy themselves?”
Satan shook his head.
“Some smart fuckers over there,” he said. “But we can’t let ourselves act stupid because of a fucking letter or something from fifteen years ago. This shit’s fucking stupid. If Mason finds out, and he does shit, I’m telling Brock and Lane to control their dogs, or I’m not doing a fucking thing.”
There’s no if in that. It’s really a matter of when.
“You really fucking think Mason would give two shits that you were once a Bandit?”
“The Bandits gangraped his current girlfriend when I was a member.”
“And were you fucking there?”
“No.”
“So what’s the fucking problem?”
Satan understood the fucking problem. But the frustration was reaching a boiling point. We were trying to negotiate terms and we couldn’t even come to a goddamn agreement over how badly one of the existing Black Reapers would take it.
“The fucking problem is people aren’t as good at letting go of shit like that as we’d like them to be,” I said. “If you found out someone had raped Hailey ten years ago, and you came face to face—”
“I fucking get it, Spawn!” Satan growled. “God fucking damnit!”
He tore the letter with his hands, threw the debris to the ground, and stormed back inside, slamming the door shut. I sincerely hoped that there were no spies nearby for the King’s Men. Not so much because they could take easy potshots.
But because if they witnessed what had just happened, they could go back to King and gleefully say whatever he was trying to do was working so well, he might not even need to fire another bullet.
