When the hunter falls

He didn’t scream.

They never do, not at first. Not when I speak so gently. Not when I cut so clean.

But they all cry eventually.

He was on his knees, hands tied behind his back with his own silk tie. Armani. Ivory white. Still smelled like his last board meeting.

I stood in front of him, quiet, patient, as he trembled in the center of that polished hardwood floor. There were still wine stains on the counter. The kind of red that doesn’t come from grapes.

“You recognize me?” I asked.

His eyes darted up. Bloodshot. Glossy. “What do you want?” he whispered.

I knelt down, level with him. “Truth.”

He blinked. Confused. “Money?”

I laughed once, softly. “Do you think you can buy your way out of this too?”

He shook his head. “Look, I—I don’t know what you’ve heard—”

“Oh, I’ve heard it all,” I said. “The payoffs. The threats. The sealed court records. The girls you took in ‘for interviews’ who never came back the same.”

“No. No, you don’t understand—”

I pressed two fingers to his lips. He flinched like I’d burned him. “I understand perfectly. You’re just upset the devil finally came to collect.”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a coin — dull silver, scratched by years of blood and bone. I held it up in the faint light.

“Do you know what this is?”

He just stared.

“It’s a coin for the dead. Payment for the ferryman. Charon. You remember your mythology, don’t you? I figured someone like you… might.”

I forced the coin between his lips. “Now you’re ready.”

Then I pressed gently on his shoulders. He folded under my hands, still shaking, head bowed. I tucked his hands beneath his chin like a child at bedside prayer.

“It’s not forgiveness you’re getting,” I murmured near his ear. “Just the illusion of it.”

He started to cry.

I circled him. Slow. Measured.

The knife came next — black-handled, silver-lined. Ritual, not rage.

“You hurt them,” I said, stepping behind him. “You told yourself they wanted it. That they were just girls. That money makes it okay. That fear makes it love. You ever say that to them?”

He didn’t answer. He couldn’t.

So I carved the word instead — letter by letter into the meat of his back. Deep enough to hurt. Deep enough to bleed.

R-A-P-I-S-T.

He whimpered now. Breath catching. Skin twitching under the blade.

“I want you to remember what you are,” I told him. “Even in death. Even if God turns his face away.”

Then I knelt.

Hands steady.

I sliced into his chest with practiced precision, parting ribs like pages in a book. The sound is always the same — wet, raw, human.

The heart came free in my hands, slick and heavy.

I looked down at him, still posed like he was praying. Mouth stuffed with a coin. A holy man in death, though he’d been anything but in life.

“This is mine now,” I whispered. “You never deserved to keep it.”

I didn’t look back when I left. I never do.

By dawn, someone will find him.

And they’ll realize this city has a new god now.

One that listens.

One that judges.

One that remembers.