At least I was pretending to be dead because it seemed the smartest thing to do, given the current circumstances.
Turned out that learning how to slow my heart rate and become unmoveable like a corpse had way more uses that just being good for a sniper. It could make melookdead and it could convince my best friend that I was a goner. Enough so that the devastation on his face before he had no choice but to escape themess of his car and attempt to rescue our girl almost broke my fucking heart.
My playing pretend was enough that it could make the maniacal gang leader I had seen through the window presume me dead too, just so he would leave me alone and not shoot me in the head for fun. It was enough to make it so that I was the only one of my friends left in Linc’s car – the only one deemed a non-threat and left behind after the devastation of watching a man I considered a second father die in a way that nobody deserved. By being blown to pieces by a piece of shit gangster taking the coward’s way out.
Death being slaughtered by a psychopath playing games, as though that was the kind of way out a man like Malone deserved.
It was bullshit. It was more than bullshit. But as much as I wanted to sit and wallow in my fear, anger, and heartbreak, there was no time. My friends were being loaded into a van that was turning its engine back on, the Vice King scum behind the wheel, readying themselves to drive away to places unknown and continue their train of devastation, not a care for what they left in their wake. Andmyfucking girl was gone.
She was gone, and she was in danger and nothing else would be as important as a rescue of the ones I loved.
My hand wrapped around the glass buried in my chest, hurting like a motherfucker, but once more, not an issue for the moment when there were more important things going on. I yanked it free, cutting into my palm and letting out a roar of pain a moment before I unhooked my belt and fell down, attempting to cushion the blow with my arms. I failed and all but face planted the ground, only adding to my pain - but it was fucking worth it because I was free.
I was one step down in my rescue plan.
A face appeared in the open door before I could hit step two, a loaded and cocked gun with it, inches from touching me.
Widow Smyth had never once appeared scary to me. He was a good few years younger than me and held an air of lighthearted humour and innocence that reminded me of both Misha and Price. Yet now, now that we were in the midst of a battle and had begun to lose soldiers, I was not seeing two of my friends in Widow’s stare.
I was seeing Sapphire.
I was seeing the stone cold gangster’s child’s gaze that promised all amounts of violence and bloodshed were moments out from being delivered.
I was seeing someone who was willing to do what it took to win.
A man who held a monster in his soul and a thousand secrets in his eyes that would never see the light of day, because even an ounce of the truth he held was enough to kill for.
“Fucking hell,” Widow’s gun lowered from my face, his bloody and bruised skin dampened with sweat and blood. “I thought there was a zombie in here or something!”
“Just faking.” My voice was rough. But considering I had no choice but to crawl out of the car as I spoke and was seconds out from passing out, it made sense. “I saw John coming and figured he’d kill us all, so tried to do something.”
Sure, my intention had been to get a gun and shoot someone. But I hadn’t been able to get free whilst John played his sadistic games and my ideas of helping had been thoroughly pointless. The only bonus was that I wasn’t currently in a van with a bomb around my neck too, but that didn’t make me feel any better. I’d have rather been with my friends, in the shit together.
As I grumbled my complaints, Widow helped hoist me out of the car as best as he could, holding up most of my weight. Each movement made my head pound and the minute I got tomy feet, something inside me felt off. Like my brain was shaken or something in my soul had been the slightest bit broken.
I tried to make sense of what I was seeing and work out a plan despite the fact I was sure I was minutes away from passing out at best, but that didn’t help the way I felt. There was an odd emptiness inside of me that had nothing to do with the pain and death that lingered in the air. It was like I somehow knew that I was injured more than anyone should be.
That I needed help before things became too much for me to handle.
“We need to get back to the house and-” Widow started talking, but I could barely listen to a damn word.
As I tried to stand on my own, the air left my lungs with the ferocity of a tidal wave, and I felt my chest tighten enough to make me suck in a pained gasp. My lips parted and my eyes were drawn down to the mess on the floor. I didn’t want to look at it, but I couldn’t stop myself. It was like my brain lost all sense for a moment and thought, what the hell, what’s a little bit of trauma to a man bleeding out?
Malone dying was one thing, but his desecrated body, pieces of it floating about the floor, was another.
It was… God, I could barely think of words to describe it.
Blood coated the road beneath my feet, guts, bits of organs, and even a limb or two followed suit. His death had painted the road like a fucked up canvas and honestly, I had no idea how I wasn’t heaving and sobbing at the sight of it.
Kellan was – at least he wasn’t feeling great. He was throwing up on the other side of the road, blood on his head but otherwise looking alright, as Angel stood near him, trying to multitask. And surprisingly, not dead, much to my delight. Though that delight was short-lived when Angel span to me, dark eyes wide and anger flared, and announced a horrid fact to add to even more fucked up stuff.
He looked terrified, and I had no idea what sort of darkness could cause him to appear that way when the monsters chasing us had gone.
“Raya comes for us.” His words were rushed out. “Diamond tell me; there is danger. There is men at the house.” He flipped his phone around when he marched over to us, showing a blurry photo that contained a bunch of unknown men in black outfits holding guns.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, there was one man I did recognize in the center. A man I ought to have killed the moment he kept looking at my fucking woman with that predatory gaze, as though he had the right to check her out and leer at a goddess like Sapphire.
As though he had a right to even breathe when he’d been happily engaged to a fifteen-year-old girl.
