“Of course, there’s a price for every blessing we receive in life,” he continued as he pulled out a long butcher knife already caked in blood and swung it casually at her mid-section, slicing into her side. “This is yours.”

She gasped at this new unexpected pain. She knew the cut wasn’t very deep but that didn’t make it hurt any less. It felt like someone was pressing a hot pan against the left side of her stomach. Despite that, she refused to scream. Instead she inhaled deeply and then tried to breathe the agony out with the carbon dioxide.

“I have to say,” she muttered when she was sure she could get out a sentence without crying, “I thought our reunion days were over. I was getting all geared up to mourn you.”

Jessie waited for his response, hoping desperately that his vanity would at least temporarily take precedence over his thirst for vengeance. If she could get him to talk about how he’d survived what everyone assumed was his death, he might delay whatever awful plan he had in store her.

“You did jump the gun on that one,” he said, taking the bait. “I thought if anyone would figure out my little subterfuge, it would be you, Junebug. But, as ever, my own daughter disappoints.”

He took another casual swipe with the knife, this time getting her in the right thigh. The material of her pants was thicker than her shirt so the cut didn’t go quite as deep. But it still required enormous effort for her to stay quiet and deny him the satisfaction of seeing her suffer.

She tried to focus her attention on something other than his contorted smirk. Looking down, she noticed that his left hand, the one not holding the knife, was bandaged up. Specifically, his middle and pinkie fingers were tightly wrapped in gauze. She nodded at them.

“I guess that explains how they found your fingers at the scene.”

He smiled proudly.

“I had to make it believable,” he said. “Sometimes that requires a bit of personal sacrifice.”

“But it wasn’t just the fingers, Xander,” she reminded him through gritted teeth. “They found your DNA in the blood in the courtyard. I don’t think it was crazy to assume those chunks of flesh were yours.”

“Of course it might have looked that way to the untrained eye,” he conceded. “But all it took was little creative thinking to uncover the truth.”

“Humor me, Pa,” she said sarcastically. “You know you want to tell me how you did it. And I’m really the only one who would appreciate it. So you may as well just spit it out.”

She glanced over at the teenage girl tied up in the chair across from her, whose expression was one of bewilderment at this crazy woman baiting the man with the knife. Jessie smiled to herself. At least that meant she was doing a solid job of it.

“I’ll make you a deal,” Thurman said devilishly. “I’ll tell you how I did it if you promise to keep it a secret. Oh wait, what am I saying? You’ll be keeping everything a secret soon enough.”