My name is Robert, I’m sixty-four years old, and the day my son Michael handed me a cruise as a gift to “help me relax,” I should have known there was something terrible hiding behind that smile. I live alone in a small brick house on the southwest side of Chicago, a quiet street where you can hear the distant hum of the L and the constant whisper of Lake Michigan’s wind when the nights get cold. That morning, the sky over the city was the color of steel, and the air coming in through the kitchen window smelled like fresh coffee and exhaust from Western Avenue.
When I came back home to grab my blood pressure medication that I’d forgotten in the bathroom cabinet, I heard Michael talking on the phone with his wife, Clare. I stopped just inside the doorway, hidden behind it like a stranger in my own house, and the words coming out of his mouth froze my blood. “Don’t worry, honey.
It’s a one-way ticket. When he’s out at sea, it’ll be easy to make it look like an accident. Nobody will suspect an old man who simply fell overboard.”
At that moment, standing behind the door of my own home in Chicago, I took a deep breath and thought, If that’s how you want it, my dear son, have it your way.
But you’re going to regret it three times over.
Because my only son—the boy I’d raised with so much love, the boy whose sneakers I’d tied before school, whose feverish forehead I’d cooled with wet cloths—had just made the worst mistake of his life. If Michael thought his father was a helpless old man, he was about to find out just how wrong he was. A man my age who’s worked his whole life, raised a child alone, buried a wife, survived betrayals and disappointments, doesn’t give up easily.
If my son wanted to play dirty, I was going to show him how it’s really done. But first, I needed to understand why my own flesh and blood wanted to see me dead. Everything had started three days earlier.
Michael had shown up at my house with a radiant smile I hadn’t seen in years, carrying a golden envelope like the kind fancy travel agencies in downtown Chicago use to impress clients with money. He smelled like expensive cologne and city office air-conditioning. “Dad,” he said, hugging me with a strange, forced euphoria.
“I have a wonderful surprise for you. You’ve worked so hard your whole life, sacrificed so much for us, that Clare and I decided to give you a special gift.”
When I opened the envelope and saw the cruise tickets, my eyes filled with tears. A Caribbean cruise.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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