Spoiler
Show
Theo shrugs. “You are still missing another piece, one which I have kept for a long time. You know, when we first met, I thought about just tearing you down then, but I decided to do this right. You’re my abschluss, my conclusion. Sure, the prison term is short, but pick the right place and even the toughest men can be broken.”
“Your first assumption is that I was ever friends with her. I was not. I pitied her, for you were too stupid to see what was in front of you, and I disliked your constant attempts to manipulate us into a relationship. You always thought you could change the people around you, make them dance to your strings. You were wrong. If you had cut the crap for one moment and sincerely asked her like a man, she would have said yes.” He glowers at Gary.
He doesn’t seem to notice the recorder. “Your second assumption is that this city knows justice. It doesn’t. Justice has been broken, and here there is only the rule of the strong, like myself. And the rule of the strong means the strong makes the rules.” He chuckles at the lame joke. “No, anything you can put up to save yourself I can match to crush you. My resources are just that much greater.”
He gestures towards the couple. “They were happy to help me bring you down. You do have a reputation you know. Did you think you didn’t have enemies here? At any rate, I care little what you do to them.”
Theo squats in front of Gary, idly picking at grass. “The missing piece? You assumed I was just some transfer student. Theodore Silbern doesn’t mean much here, but that is because my father, Gregori, paid a lot of people a lot of money to make it so. My father is one of the men who runs this city, and back in Germany the people who offend and displease him have a nasty habit of disappearing.”
He stands. “I am heir to the Silbern name, and as such the power I wield even now is delightful. So that is what you face, Gary Jesmond. I hold no mercy for you, the courts will not help you, the police are corrupt, even the woman who loves you has run away.”
He smiles. “What more do you have?”
Gary’s eyes suddenly sting, and the feeling of cold thick liquid invades his skull.
“Yes, what more do you have?” joins another voice, the one from vision, with a self-satisfied snigger. “Oh, I remember: Everything.”