In The Best Man, the pro­tag­o­nist finds him­self entan­gled in a hor­ri­fy­ing moment that he can­not escape, a real­i­ty that unfolds too quick­ly for him to con­trol. He kneels beside Will, his hands slick with blood, his breath shal­low as he real­izes the ter­ri­ble mis­take he has just made—pulling the knife from his friend’s chest, think­ing for one brief, des­per­ate moment that it might save him. The sur­round­ing dark­ness seems to close in, press­ing against him as he strug­gles to process what has just hap­pened, but before he can react, the sounds of hur­ried foot­steps and sharp voic­es cut through the night.

Femi, Angus, and Dun­can burst into the scene, their torch­es flash­ing wild­ly as they take in the sight before them—Will col­lapsed, the knife in the pro­tag­o­nist’s trem­bling hands, the stark image of a crime frozen in time. The pan­ic in their eyes turns to some­thing dark­er, some­thing accusato­ry, and their voic­es rise in demand. Drop the knife. Step away. But he can­not move, can­not speak, can­not con­vince them that this moment is not what it seems.

The pro­tag­o­nist wants to explain, to tell them that he had only arrived sec­onds before, that he had tried to help, that pulling the knife free had been instinct, not vio­lence. But their faces are filled with sus­pi­cion, their move­ments sharp and aggres­sive as they advance toward him. In their eyes, he is not a friend who has lost someone—he is a man caught in the act, guilty before he even has the chance to defend him­self.

The weight of what has hap­pened bears down on him, and his mind races, try­ing to make sense of how he got here. He remem­bers the storm, the thick fog of con­fu­sion that had cloud­ed his thoughts after Pete Ram­say hand­ed him some­thing to take, some­thing that left his sens­es dulled. He had stum­bled through the night, the world sway­ing beneath him, and then—blackness. A black­out he can­not account for, a lapse in time that now ter­ri­fies him, because what if he did more than he remem­bers?

And then there was Will. Find­ing him had been a shock, a moment so unre­al that it had tak­en him sev­er­al breaths to even process what he was see­ing. The knife in his chest. The labored breath­ing. The fear in Will’s eyes as he looked up at him, as if he, too, had ques­tions he would nev­er get the chance to ask.

The emo­tions that flood him now are unbear­able, a mix of grief, guilt, and some­thing else—love, raw and unspo­ken, a truth he had only ful­ly real­ized when it was too late. He had held Will in those final moments, cling­ing to him as if it might some­how reverse what had already been set in motion. And now, as the oth­ers force him to the ground, restrain­ing him like a crim­i­nal, that love becomes some­thing weaponized against him—a rea­son they will nev­er believe his inno­cence.

The ush­ers hold him down, their hands firm and unre­lent­ing, their words lost in the over­whelm­ing sound of his own thoughts. He is no longer a friend to them, no longer some­one they know; he is a man they fear, some­one they have already con­vict­ed in their minds. The fight drains from him as the Gar­daí arrive, their uni­forms stark against the chaot­ic back­drop of flash­ing lights and whis­per­ing voic­es, seal­ing his fate before he has a chance to reclaim it.

He real­izes now, with a clar­i­ty that stings, that he has always been on the out­side of this group, nev­er ful­ly accept­ed in the way he had want­ed. He had been tol­er­at­ed, yes, but nev­er tru­ly trust­ed, and now, when he needs them most, that dis­tance becomes an impen­e­tra­ble wall. No one will lis­ten. No one will wait for his expla­na­tion. He is alone in his grief, alone in his truth, and the weight of that lone­li­ness is more crush­ing than the accu­sa­tions them­selves.

The open­ing chap­ter paints a chill­ing por­trait of mis­un­der­stand­ing, loss, and the irre­versible con­se­quences of a sin­gle moment. It immers­es the read­er in a world where fear speaks loud­er than rea­son, where trust is frag­ile and fleet­ing, where love—however real—is not enough to save him. As the pro­tag­o­nist is tak­en away, his future uncer­tain, the read­er is left to ques­tion not only the events of that night but also whether he will ever find a way to prove the truth when the world has already decid­ed his guilt.