“And you understand that we’ll do this again whenever you don’t?’
“Yes ma’am.”
“All right, then up you go.”
He stood up slowly, every motion bringing a fresh round of hot pain below. He put his boxers and pants back on, another painful process. Roya allowed him so time in silence to clean his face in the sink of her small washroom. When he had finished they left the office together. She headed off in her BMW to dinner with one companion or another, while he took his less impressive Beretta back to an apartment where he could hastily assemble a much-needed icepack. If this kind of motivation couldn’t get him to change, he thought, then he really had problems.