What A Beautiful Wedding: A Short Story

The Hit-Man

"Please, please stay," I had asked her that night, desperation seeping into my voice.
"I don't know what to say to you." Her voice had started to crack.
"No, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it."
"Then why would you say something like that to me? Why now? Why when I've found a man that isn't afraid to be with me? A man who has proposed to me and wants to be with me for real?"
There were tears rolling down her face. I was the one who put them there.
My throat felt like fire.
How could I have done that to her? How could I have said all those things so close to her wedding day? I was supposed to be her friend, her best friend.
Instead, I may have lost her and it's all my fault. What kind of a man declares his love for a woman a month before her wedding day? A cowardly one, that's what.
And now I have to kill her fiancé.
Not because I want to, of course. I already killed whatever relationship I had with her, I wouldn't want to kill the man that was about to commit himself to her for the rest of his life.
Or maybe I wouldn't, if I didn't know what he did. She wouldn't believe me if I told her. She'd think it were a lie, a ploy to get her to leave him so I could be with her.
"I tried to move on, I really did. But nobody is like you, I need you," I said.
"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"
"No. I'm sorry. So, so sorry."
"We had our chance, a long time ago. Don't you remember? You told me you 'missed having me as a friend' and that it was 'too complicated being with me as more than that.' Come to find out, you just wanted to be 'more than friends' with someone else."
That was one of the biggest mistakes I've ever made.
Right next to becoming a hit-man.
Now I'm sitting here, in the empty loft of this church, in my all black suit, sweating. She always wanted a summer wedding.
I see him. That despicable man standing there, in his sleek tuxedo, waiting for her to come down the aisle. He looks happy, innocent. He looks as if he doesn't regret what he did all those years ago, or maybe he doesn't remember. Maybe he really was too drunk to know what he was doing that night.
    It doesn't matter. The woman who hired me was still raped.
    I don't usually want to know what my targets did to warrant someone to hate them so much that they pay to have them killed. She told me anyway, she thought it would make it easier for me to go through with it. Little did she know, I've been sent to kill much worse people without explanations.
    She told me how weak she felt, powerless. She told me how she stopped struggling halfway through, and just laid there hoping that it would be over soon. She told me how she had never told anyone else. How, despite having to see him everyday in her Theoretical Algebra class, she graduated with a mathematical degree. How she promised herself that she would one day find him and have him punished for what he did to her, no matter how drunk he was.
    I may have killed much worse people, but I have never heard the kind of story she told me about that night all those years ago.
    The way she talked about him, with such an overwhelming feeling of rage, and tears in her sad eyes. I couldn't say no to her. I couldn't tell her I wouldn't do what she was willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to have done just because I'm in love with his fiancée.
    He deserves to be shot in the head for all the pain he caused her, and could potentially do to his future wife.
    Or at least, that's what I've been telling myself. It's what I always tell myself when I do a job, that they deserve it.
    It's not like I'm trying to play God or anything, but people do very bad things sometimes and there's no way to predict the future when we give them second chances.
    "Tell me to leave him."
    "W-what?"
    "Tell me to leave him and I will. I'll call off the wedding, and we'll be together just like you want."
    "You know I can't do that. That's not how the story goes."