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He really loved Claire in every sense of the word, and now he was deriving pleasure from hurting her, both physically and emotionally. He knew he had to stop it, but how? It was as if he had become addicted to the practices that had crept into their relationship, those very practices that had replaced the love in that relationship with an uncontrollable urge to dominate and humiliate her in every way. There must be a way to stop it, he thought. There must be. But how?

All of a sudden the solution was clear to him. Of course, why hadn't he thought of it before? Now that he had the answer, he felt calm.

He went into the house and gathered up the originals and all the copies of the pornographic video tapes he had made of Claire: the one at the motel with Dawn, the one at the bachelor party, and the one showing her with all those soldiers at the motel near Fort Monmouth. Then he destroyed each and every one of them, smashing their cases and cutting the tapes up into unusable bits. He disposed of the remnants of the video tapes in his neighbors' trash can, thereby reducing the possibility that they would be found.

Then Tony went back inside and found some writing paper.

"My Dearest Claire," he wrote. "Please forgive me for what I have done, and what I am about to do. I have allowed our mutual devotion to become subjugated to my desire to dominate you. By that action, I have killed the feelings of love which existed between us and replaced them with nothing but hurt and pain. It must stop, and it must stop now.

"By the time you read this, it will all be irrevocably ended. In time, your wounds will heal, and all will be as if our twisted relationship never happened. I give you your freedom, the freedom to laugh, to be happy and to love. The freedom to be yourself once again. If you can find it in your heart, please forgive me, and think kindly of me from time to time.

"You don't have to worry about the videos I made falling into someone's hands. They no longer exist.

"They say that a person's last thoughts on this earth live on long after his death. I hope that is the case, because my last thoughts will be of my love for you."

He ended the letter, "With All My Love, Tony." Then he sealed it in an envelope, drove over to Claire's condominium, and dropped it in her mailbox. He felt good.

When he returned home, he went up to the attic and retrieved a small carton which he had brought home with him after his military service. He hadn't looked inside the box in years. From it, he withdrew a large caliber, miliary issue automatic pistol along with some ammunition.

As he loaded the pistol, the idea struck him that the ammunition might not work after all those years in storage. That would certainly

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