The next day, Canaan bid farewell to Benjo and a few other inmates and guards who’d been kind to him.

“Stay safe, brother,” Canaan said to Benjo as he left his side for what he assumed would be the last time.

“Don’t worry about me, my friend. I can’t be killed, remember? Now go and kill a mamba for me.”

Canaan was whisked away to the Ritz-Carlton Astana, and set up in the finest suite in the hotel. Emerson and Odin would arrive the next day, and in the meantime Canaan availed himself of a haircut, shave, and scalding hot shower that lasted ninety minutes.

He had internet access for the first time since before he left Uzbekistan with Aidana, and he found that his release was international news, not only for the socio-political aspect, but also on the sports pages and in the entertainment world.

One article he skimmed even mentioned casting a potential movie based on Canaan’s time in prison. Canaan had to look up Nick Jonas to decide whether he should be flattered by the singer playing him in a movie, and he had to admit that it wasn’t a bad choice.

To Canaan’s surprise, the writer of the article even knew about Benjo, although she referred to him as “Banjo,” as if he were nicknamed for the musical instrument. Canaan knew Benjo would be pleased to be played by Idris Elba.

The rest of the casting seemed pretty accurate, and Canaan laughed out loud when he reached the line that “Canaan’s brother, Navy SEAL Atlas Titan, could be played by any number of muscle-bound professional wrestlers.” He knew the last thing Atlas would want would be the attention being cast in a movie would bring, and that he’d be angry to have his muscles, earned by pumping endless tons of iron, replicated on the big screen by an artificially-enhanced steroid freak.

Canaan ate a large dinner on his balcony overlooking the Kazakh capital city of Astana, looking down at the Ishim River and the blue and gold dome of the Ak Orda Presidential Palace. When he set his fork down after the last delicious bite of lamb and leaned back in his chair, he was asleep within moments. Only a cold, blustery, midnight win caused him retreat inside his room and climb into a proper bed for the first time in over three years.

After ten hours of dreamless, near-catatonic sleep, he woke up feeling better than he had in quite some time. He took a walk around downtown Astana, impressed by the modernity of the city. He noticed people staring at him, and schoolgirls giggling as he passed by, and he realized he was possibly the most famous foreigner in the country at the moment.

Eschewing the attention, he returned to his hotel and hit the gym, his body having gotten used to extreme daily workouts as part of his incarceration.

After completing a set of military presses, he wiped his brow with a towel and heard a familiar voice behind him.

“Easy, big fella. It’s bad enough Atlas makes me feel so puny. Take it easy on the weights already.”

Canaan turned to see Odin standing in the doorway, grinning.

The brothers hugged, the longest one they’d ever enjoyed, squeezing tightly despite Canaan wearing a sweaty t-shit and Odin a $5,000 suit.

“Sorry, bro, hopefully that’ll come out,” Canaan said as they separated and he noticed the stains he’d left on Odin’s clothes.

“Eh,” Odin waved him off. “It’s not like I don’t have half a dozen just like it. If it had been one of my good suits, maybe I’d be mad at you. But hey, it’s just so good to finally see you.”

“You should have seen me yesterday,” Canaan replied. “Before I got a shave. The beard was pretty serious. ZZ Top-style.”

“Dad would have flipped his shit,” Odin said. “Remember when Achilles grew that Fu Manchu, and Dad saw it?”

Canaan laughed. “Yeah, of course. ‘You’re a Titan! You’re expected to carry yourself with a certain dignity!’”

The brothers felt like little kids again, and they retired to Canaan’s suite to reminisce and catch up.

As their conversation turned to Aidana, Odin suggested a piece of poetry to his brother.

“It’s by Pablo Neruda, he was a Chilean poet. He wrote love poems, sonnets, to his wife, every day for years.

“He numbered them with roman numerals. Number ninety-three or ninety-four seems apropos here. I can never keep them all straight, so many of them are so good. The one I’m referring to, I don’t have memorized, but I can paraphrase it. Anyway, I’ll send it to you. In the sonnet, he tells his wife that if he dies, he wants her to survive him, to live her life with such a fury that even the dead sit up and take notice. At the end he writes that if he looks down on her after he dies and sees that she’s suffering, that he’ll die again.

“He says all those things much more eloquently than I can, but you get the point. If what you and Aidana shared was real, and I don’t doubt it for a second, then she would want you to live a life that would make her proud.”

“Thanks, Odin,” Canaan responded. “For everything. I know you couldn’t have understood, but I had to stay. I had to try. And you helped me to have the visits I had, to get to see Aidana when I did. I can never—”

Odin cut him off. “You’re my brother. I don’t ever need to know the whys and wherefores; all I needed to know was that you needed help.”

Just then, the booming voice of the patriarch of the Titan clan resounded through the suite.

“Canaan!”

Emerson Titan picked Canaan up off the floor in a bear hug, swinging him around as he hadn’t since Canaan was a youngster.

“I’m here too, you know,” Odin deadpanned.

Emerson put a hand to his lower back in mock agony. “I’ve only got so many lifts left in this old back. Besides, your brother’s obviously been working out. Canaan, pick your big brother up and throw him up in the air for me!”

Canaan approached Odin menacingly, and Odin put his hands up in surrender.

“I’m good. I feel all the love I need already, thanks.”

The Titan reunion lasted into the evening, and the three men shared dinner, drinks, and updated one another on their plans.

Odin would return to Las Vegas to oversee Titan Holdings operations, stateside, while also prepping for the 2016 Rio Olympics. Emerson’s never-ending jaunt around Asia would continue, and Canaan planned to do some traveling in order to make up for lost time before setting foot back into the USA Fencing training center to make an attempt at competing alongside his brother in Rio.

Canaan’s first order of business was a trip to South Africa to see how his skills with a blade fared against the deadliest snake on the continent.