I really don't know how it all started.

Let's start from the beginning. Or a beginning. That's about as good a place as any, I suppose.

I met Peko during my first job. Commercial litigation and investigations, if you're curious. She was Miss Pekoyama at the time, a temp assistant for the firm I worked at.

It wasn't love at first sight; I can say that for certain. I don't think either of us believe in that sort of thing. We're firm believers in good old-fashioned hard work, the two of us, and you better believe we worked hard to get where we are today, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Peko was quiet, attentive. Serious, I guess. She kept to herself, mostly, focused on her work, and I wasn't exactly the chatty type either. Our paths didn't cross very often. Hell, I reckon I never would have had the guts to talk to her at all if the elevator hadn't broken down with the two of us in it. Can you believe it? A goddamn elevator. Like something straight from a movie, right?

It wasn't real appropriate to be alone with a woman in an enclosed space, but the maintenance guys said it'd be an hour before they could get us out of there.

We stood there for a while, silent. It was getting awkward. I looked over at her and… It's just that it didn't look like it'd be comfortable for her to stand for that whole hour, so I suggested we both sit and take a load off, at least until they got the damn thing fixed.

Eventually we got to talking. Introductions, first of all, and then what we did at the firm. And when we wore all that stuff down, we started sharing things about each other. Turned out Peko was way more interesting than she let on. She had petitioned her local university to attend some of their classes. She wanted to learn things, math and literature and sciences. A scholarly woman. I mean, you can't help but be impressed by that kind of determination, y'know?

My life wasn't half as interesting as hers, but she still listened anyway, with the same sort of focus she had at work. Maybe more, actually. I told her some stupid things my baby sister said, and she laughed. I had never seen her laugh before that day, but it suited her in a way that made all the sense in the world.

After that, it was like something opened up in the two of us. I mean, it was nice to have someone to help waste away the work day. She'd say hello to me in the elevator. She started sitting with me in the break room for lunch. She'd stop by my desk while making a coffee run for the floor. We became good friends.

It continued on like that. Friendly, but not unprofessional. Lunch breaks and coffee breaks.

At the time, she was dating a guy named Tatsuya Kubota. He was the alpha type, know what I mean? Real aggressive, star of the volleyball team in high school. She'd talk about him, sometimes, in passing, just his name here or there. I don't know if you could say she seemed happy with him. In any case, it wasn't any of my business.

There was one night I was stuck on the phone for a… let's just call it an unpleasant dispute. I don't care to remember the details. I do remember how it gave me a splitting headache. Our floor could get pretty noisy, but I must've been particularly loud, because in the middle of the phone call, Peko came over and just… placed a cup of tea on my desk. Not a word. Just left the cup of tea, smiled, and left.

That's when the feelings really started for me.

You'd agree with me if you saw her. She's gorgeous. It's hard to believe anyone wouldn't fall head-over-heels in love with her like I did, but she's more than beautiful. She's smart, which you already know, and she's kind; not in the way that's just for show. In the way that makes you realize she put serious thought into it. A little understated, I guess, but no less meaningful.

Sometimes I'd catch myself staring at her from across the room. We had one of those open office spaces, and if I peeked past the wall of my cubicle, I could see her there, working away at her desk. Her eyes get really intense when she's focused. Sometimes I'd catch her smiling too. Peko is the type of person who smiles subtly, gently, but when she does, she lights up the whole room. It knocks me down a peg every damn time I see it.

A man knows where to draw the line, though. She was, of course, a taken woman. Can't mess with those bonds, no matter how unpleasant her partner is.

I'm getting ahead of myself again.

Peko reached the end of her contract and was off to another job by the end of the summer. I won't lie. I was pretty devastated to see her go. But, miracle of all miracles, she asked if we could stay in touch, and, hey, you don't say no to an offer like that.

We'd meet for coffee a lot, mostly during our lunch breaks, at this quaint little diner. We talked about everything. She'd tell me all about her new job, her plans over the holidays, the latest book she was reading. It was nice. Easy. Maybe not the smartest or… the most appropriate choice for a man who was hopelessly in love with a taken woman, but I valued her friendship above all else. It felt like we could go on forever, just like that.

That would've been fine with me… but one day, I noticed she seemed more distracted than usual. She ended up adding two sugars to her coffee—two—when she normally takes it black. I asked her if anything was wrong. You know, she never talked about her boyfriend that much, but her expression became real serious, and she told me she was having some relationship trouble.

Apparently, her boyfriend wasn't happy about having a working woman for a girlfriend. He'd say to her, when they got married (yes, when), she'd have to get rid of her silly little hobbies to focus on keeping up the house.

I'd met Mr. Tatsuya Kubota, of course. Met might be a strong word for it though. He had come to the firm once, when Peko was still working there. They were going out for dinner together, but Peko was trying to get some papers filed before she punched out. It was an important account, and the boss wouldn't have been happy if she left before taking care of it, but Kubota kept trying to hurry her along. She seemed stressed out, but she never said anything about it. I didn't say anything either. At the time, I thought maybe I was overreacting. Maybe he was hungrier than usual, I don't know, but something was decidedly… off about that guy.

Listen. My feelings aside, I did the best I could. I suggested talking to him, letting him know how much she liked working. It was sound advice. I wasn't working with ulterior motives here. She's the one who told me Kubota couldn't be swayed.

So I was honest with her. I told her, if she liked what she was doing so much, then she shouldn't let anything get in the way of her happiness.

She said to me, "What if he makes me happy?" and god, all those shitty metaphors about how heartache feels like you're being stabbed in the chest are true.

I said, "Then maybe you'll have to choose what makes you happiest."

She asked me, "Is it really that simple?"

I said, "No. Probably not. But you're smart. You'll figure out what you need, all on your own, and it'll be the right choice. You'll be happy."

Eventually she took the advice to heart, I think. She broke up with Kubota the following week.

Now, with her "newly available" state, you might be thinking I would've taken the opportunity to ask her out. I didn't. Are you kidding me? What kind of man would I have been to take advantage of her vulnerability? No, I gave her space. I gave her time. Whatever she needed. She stopped worrying so much about whether this was the right choice or not, and went back to doing things she loved: going to the library and movies and shopping, sometimes with me, mostly on her own. That was fine, as long as she was happy. Soon she started to forget all about Kubota.

That wasn't the end of our troubles. That was just the beginning.

Kubota would harass her every chance he got. Sometimes he'd wait outside her workplace just to scream at her, and sometimes he'd beg her to take him back. It was every bit as pathetic as you'd imagine, but it all amounted to the same thing: Peko was a wreck.

She felt safest with me at the diner, but she'd show up looking like she hadn't slept in days. It was affecting her work. It was affecting her sleep schedule. She just wanted to be left alone. I felt like an idiot, but I didn't know what to do. I looked at her sitting there, looking so small in that diner booth, and I wanted to reach out and just… mold the world into something new that would treat her with the happiness and respect she deserved.

I couldn't really say something like that to her though. Her hands were shaking. She looked at me, and said in a very small voice, "I wish he were gone. Really, really gone."

Looking back, maybe I should have been frightened.

It continued on like that for… weeks, probably. The police never did anything about it, useless pricks. She didn't feel safe, even in her own home. Kubota knew where she lived. She was afraid she'd leave her apartment one day and he'd be there, waiting outside the door.

Somehow Kubota found out about me too. I guess he got it into his head that there was something going on between me and Peko. He tried to get the jump on me while I was on my way to work. He grabbed me by my shirt, like an asshole, told me to stay away from Peko. I told him he was crazy, to get out of my face before I made him get out of my face. Luckily it was a busy street. Fucker couldn't do anything without at least ten other witnesses.

Peko was even worse off when I told her about it. She tried to apologize to me a hundred times, but I never accepted any of them. It wasn't her fault her ex-boyfriend was an insufferable ass.

I'm a reasonable man though. I was happy to let bygones be bygones.

I was.

Peko suddenly stopped showing up to the diner. First it was a day, and I thought that maybe she had other plans. Then it was two days, and I thought she had taken a short vacation. Then it was three, and I ran out of excuses.

You have to understand: I was very worried about her—after everything she told me about Kubota—so perhaps you'll forgive me when I say I went to visit her at her apartment alone. I know it's not the appropriate thing to do. I was very worried.

She was alive, thank god. She showed up to the door with her hair styled differently. I don't know a lot about women's hairstyles, but it didn't take a genius to notice how suspicious that was. She was real dodgy about the whole thing, tried to play it off like it was nothing and she was tired and she wanted to stay home for a few days. It took some coaxing, but eventually she let me push her hair away from her face.

She had been hiding a bruise, just along her cheek. It was a nasty piece of business, looked maybe a few days old. She told me what happened. She'd gone to tell Kubota to leave her alone, things got messy, and, well. I'll let you piece together the rest yourself.

You don't mind if I smoke, do you?

It was clear to me Tatsuya Kubota needed to learn a thing or two about respect. I did what I could to comfort Peko, and then I was off to work.

You see, you learn a few things as a consultant. The most important thing to keep in mind is to never leave a trail. Paper is tricky business. Found in the wrong hands and that's a death sentence right there. It's best to do these things verbally, without any witnesses.

I cased out this shoreline on the outskirts of town. The tide goes in and out of there throughout the day; it would wash away any trace evidence left behind. I clocked how long it would take me to get to there from town and back again.

I won't bore you too much with the details. I called up Kubota, told him if he wanted me to stay away from Peko, then he should meet me at the shoreline that evening and we could settle things for good. I want to say I'd been planning a gentleman's agreement, but we both know I'd be lying. Jail was too good for a son of a bitch like him.

Peko would always go grocery shopping Friday evenings. I double-checked with her beforehand, just to be sure. She'd have a receipt. There would be witnesses who'd be able to account for her alibi. If, for whatever reason, it all went south, they'd never be able to blame it on her.

He arrived right on time. I was already there waiting for him. I had a knife ready in my pocket. Kubota was at least a head taller than me, but I wasn't going to back down.

He said to me, "She left me for a mutt like you?"

I said, "She left you for herself. Didn't have anything to do with me."

Smug fuckin' asshole.

I said, "You always get off on smacking around ladies?"

He said, "I could've done much worse to that whore."

Nothing else mattered. I ran up and sucker punched him right in his stupid mouth.

I underestimated him, I think. I was too angry to think clearly. Mr. Tatsuya Kubota wasn't the star volleyball player for nothing. Out in the real world, old high school stories like that fade fast, but the muscles still count for something.

He struck back, popped me right in the jaw, and I swear he knocked a few screws loose in my head. I was working off adrenaline and instinct. I had to fight back, but I think he knew all along that I was planning to kill him, because he wasn't pulling any punches. I pulled out the knife, I had to. I managed to get a few cuts in, but they weren't enough. I'm so embarrassed, but I was unskilled and clumsy back then. I couldn't even hold the damn thing steady.

It's hard to remember what happened exactly. It was dark, and we were both fighting for our lives, and— goddammit, I wanted to kill him so bad. I wanted to carve that smug look right off his face. I wanted him to be fuckin' sorry for ever laying a hand on her—

Kubota managed to disarm me. He had me pinned down in the sand, the knife raised—my own goddamn knife—and at the end of it, I remember thinking this was it: I was going to die, at the hands of this motherfucker, and Peko was going to be left alone with this monster prowling the streets, and please, please god, please, please.

It was a visceral thought. As soon as it crossed my mind, I could hear Peko scream, like something straight from a nightmare. It felt real, loud and shrill in the night. But it wasn't until I heard Kubota screaming too that I realized it wasn't just my imagination. It was real.

It was dark, but I knew Peko was there. There wasn't any time to wonder what she was doing there or how she had managed to find me. She had tackled Kubota off of me, and then they were the ones fighting on the sand.

I could catch glimpses of it in the moonlight. Mr. Tatsuya Kubota, star player on his volleyball team, taken down by a woman wearing a cherry print dress and no shoes. Peko was wild, terrifying. Somewhere I knew I had to help her, because Kubota was dangerous and he had a knife, but I remember thinking, She doesn't need it. All those weeks and weeks of terror and fear and humiliation; she had taken it all and unleashed it like a ball of fury.

She overpowered him, somehow, wrestled the knife away from him and dropped him to the ground, and then she sat above him and, with both hands, plunged the knife straight down into his chest. No hesitation. Not even a little bit. I watched the whole goddamn thing: Peko and the knife, stabbing over and over again, blood splashing, spraying, flying, long after Kubota fell limp.

Looking back, maybe I should've been frightened. I don't know why I wasn't. I do know, in that moment, with the blood dripping off her dress and the moonlight in her hair, she was the most beautiful person I'd ever seen in my life.

We dumped Kubota's body under a bridge a few miles out of town. We got rid of the knife and burned all our clothes. A few days later, the police came. When he never showed up for work, and his mail started piling up, Kubota was reported missing, and they had to question everyone he spoke to last. That included Peko, and me by extension.

We had time to get our stories straight. We could hide the bruises. Surprisingly enough, there weren't any nerves going in. Especially when they couldn't label it as a murder case just yet. She lied for me. We lied for each other. The police let us go and we were on our merry way.

We left the station together. I remember feeling like an awkward teenager standing beside her. This may be silly, but even after everything, I didn't know where we stood. Yeah, we murdered a guy together; that didn't mean anything. It wasn't the same thing as asking her to go steady with me. But Peko took the confusion away from me too. In broad daylight, she threw her arms around me and kissed me on the mouth.

We were married the following winter. Miss Pekoyama became Mrs. Kuzuryuu. Peko looked beautiful in her wedding gown, rosy-cheeked and everything, but I'll never forget the look on her face, just when I leaned in to kiss her, because the both of us knew we were bonded together by something stronger than normal. It was a promise made in blood. It doesn't get any deeper than that.

We eventually moved out of that town, said goodbye to our past. A fresh start, as they call it.

You see, the thing about that is… All these towns? They amount to the same thing, just about, doesn't matter where we go.

Just when we finished unpacking the last of the boxes, we started hearing talk about this butcher down the block who liked to meet girls in bars and drag them home with him, one way or another.

Yeah. Every town, it's the same damn thing.

As unpleasant as Kubota was, he taught us a valuable lesson: when you see something wrong with the world, you can't just sit there and do nothing about it. You gotta find a way to fix it, and we both knew how easy it was to get away with murder.

And, well. Everyone needs a hobby.

So I guess that's how it all started. The more we did it, the better we got. The stronger our marriage became too. We've learned a lot together. My wife is a scholarly woman, after-all! You'd be surprised at how much you can hide in plain sight: gardening tools, or golf clubs for the country club, or a sharpened set of kitchen knives. There's something very riveting about slicing clean through someone's jugular, and watching the spray of blood it unleashes, like a fountain, but it's so much better when you're doing it side-by-side with someone you love.

Don't get me wrong. We're not taken with the idea of murder, exactly. Hah, no… There would be something very wrong with us, if that were the case! It's the principle of the thing.

I'll admit, it's not always easy. I don't mean Peko, she's an angel, but it's the complexity of the matter, see. We want what every couple wants: good careers, food on the table, a nice house with a white-picket fence. It's just hard to factor in all the risks too. The nature of our, hm, nightly activities means we have to stay on the move, every so often. Sometimes we have to lay low for a bit too, take a nice vacation to the beach or the mountains; someplace secluded, usually, where neither of us will be tempted to do more work during our break. It's fine, though. It's all worth it in the end.

My wife is everything I could ever want. She keeps up a beautiful garden, and reads with me by the fireside, and makes the most delicious sweet strawberry pies. I'm one lucky son of a bitch.

So you have to understand why you're here, and why we can't let you leave. We really— really— have no tolerance for criminals.

Now don't go begging for a fair trial or some shit like that. You've made your bed. Far as I see it, if you were bold enough to skirt around the law, then you've given us the right to take matters into our own hands.

I have to thank you, though. It's not often I get to tell that story, or have the time to tell it, but the missus will be back soon, and she'd be real upset if I started without her.

So I'll tell you what. We have the perfect spot for you in the backyard, when it's all said and done. Peko has her sights set on planting just the loveliest rose bush, right next to the begonias. Some good fertilizer ought to make those roses bloom beautifully; the more natural, the better. You'll be way more useful dead than you ever were in life, that's for sure.

Ah! I think that's her now!

Sit tight, pal. We'll make this quick, of course. We haven't had dinner yet, and it's pot roast night.

Can't be late for that.