The Corsican Bride

The Cold Warrior's apartment was large, luxurious, filled to the brim with the very finest foods, drinks, and cigars, and had several rooms occupied solely by beds built for two, yet every night found him alone, on his couch, staring at a picture. HER picture. The only one for him, his darling Tracy, his lovely Corsican bride.

He could remember the very moment he fell for her, with her lovely dark eyes and lustrous brown hair. He had loved her, that was all there was to it, and by loving her, he had killed her. The game of international espionage is all about playing to your opponent's weaknesses, and the reason the Cold Warrior's enemies had never been able to find his was because he didn't have one. He was cold, calculating, cynical, trained solely for infiltration and assassination, and went through women like small arms ammunition, caring for any one woman about as much as he cared for any one bullet, then tossing them aside like a spent shell just as quickly as he had picked them up. Tracy, however, was different. Her charm, her intellect, and her ravishing beauty stirred a strange, alien feeling within the Cold Warrior's heart, something he had never really felt before: love. It was this love that had gotten Tracy killed, as by loving her, the Cold Warrior had allowed her to become his one weakness. His enemies struck at this newfound Achilles Heel with no hesitation, and while, physically, it was only Tracy who died that day in that car in the Swiss Alps, her killers had accomplished their goal. They had killed the Cold Warrior.

The Cold Warrior set the picture down gingerly on the table, and immediately picked up the Colt Police Positive laying next to it. He opened the cylinder, checked that it was loaded, closed the cylinder, and finally cocked the pistol.

"I'm sorry, Tracy." he whispered, placing the gun's barrel in his mouth.

Without so much as a moment's hesitation, he pulled the trigger. There was no pain, no joy, no anything. Nothing but the end of all things. An MI6 operative found the body the following morning, having been dispatched after the Cold Warrior had failed to pick up his phone several times.