Page 112 of Possessive Mafia Vows

I drag myself onto my feet slowly. I find the gun that I dropped when Sienna disappeared and pick it up, surprised when the cold metal sends a shiver through me. I can still feel then. How is it possible when there’s nothing left inside me?

Taking careful measured steps, I walk over to Nick Morris.

His breathing is labored. Blood trickles from the corner of his lips which are turning blue. His chest is concaved. But he’s still alive.

Nick’s eyes are like black holes in his ashen face. “I… What are you… Help me…”

I raise the gun and press the barrel against his temple the way he did to Sienna. There’s so much that I want to say to him, but he doesn’t deserve my words. He doesn’t deserve a quick and painless death. But I’m not doing this for him.

I’m doing it for me.

I pull the trigger.

I barely notice the blood and gore that splatters my face to be washed away by the torrential rain.

“Kyle.” I didn’t even see my mom crawl away from the edge. But she’s here now, and her hand is on my arm, and she’s trying to tell me something. “She’s alive. Sienna is alive, Kyle. She’s alive.”

27

SIENNA

Pain.

Flashing lights behind my eyes.

Something sharp digging into my cheek.

The wind venting its anger on the world, and the rain trying to rinse away all that has happened, to cleanse me of the vile memories.

I must fade in and out of consciousness. I don’t know how much time passes before the pain returns with a vengeance, shooting through my arm, my spine, my face, my skull.

And with the blinding greedy pain comes the flashbacks.

Nick.

The gun pressed to my temple.

Kyle relinquishing his own weapon, promising Nick the Titan to let me go.

Nick was never going to let me go; Kyle knew this. He was trying to tell me something. A warning. He had a plan, a trick up his sleeve like a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat.

Another memory pops into my head. A childhood friend’s birthday party. Cone-shaped hats, streamers, balloons, and a magician who could produce chocolate from behind the kids’ ears. He hid playing cards inside his sleeves and guessed the card I chose as if he could read my mind. But there was something odd about him…

The memory fades as quickly as it appeared, morphing into Moira emerging from the woods like a ghostly apparition with a pistol in her hand. In the shock of the moment, I wondered if she was a figment of my imagination, conjured up by fear and dread and despair.

Kyle was unarmed.

We were too close to the edge of the cliff.

Nick’s gun had already left an imprint on my skull that I would never be able to erase.

But they hadn’t seen her.

I was the only one who knew that she was there, and suddenly I knew what to do. I knew how to get away from Nick and save Kyle.

In the moment, with my dice rolled in favor of the man I love, I was calm. Sinking onto my knees was the hardest part, the rest was simply the universe offering me a helping hand. I rolled towards the edge of the cliff. I heard the gunshot. I saw Nick lunging towards me, and then I was falling.

Falling.

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