Vendetta(100)

“Jack,” my mother tried again. “We need to help him.”

I could hear his knees crack as he hunkered down beside me. “Don’t be ridiculous, Celine.”

I held on tighter.

“Come on, Soph.” He grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me away from Luca’s body in one stiff yank. “Turn away.”

I clawed forward, but he pushed me back, sliding me across the ground until my bare legs were stained with Luca’s blood and I was too far away to stop him. I screamed as he cocked the gun at his head.

There was an almighty pop. It was louder this time, and it seemed to change the particles in the air around me, pushing them against each other in small vibrations. My mother and I screamed, but Luca, who was barely Luca now, remained intact.

Instead, the gun flew out of Jack’s hand, and skidded along the floor past me.

“Son of a bitch!” he cursed. His head was lolling, his expression dazed. The bullet had gone right through his hand, and now the tear was pumping blood down his arm. Jack shrank to the floor, gasping and clutching his crimson fingers. I kicked his gun away. It slid across the floor, coming to a stop between two bullet-riddled crates, far away from his reach.

At the back of the warehouse, Nic was sprinting toward us, his face spattered with dirt, his clothes soaked with what must have been someone else’s blood. The gun was still in his hand, half-raised at my uncle, like he was planning to shoot at him again. I guess he wasn’t kidding about that perfect aim.

“Both your friends are dead!” he shouted.

Jack started scrabbling backward toward the entrance, pulling himself across the floor with his uninjured hand. “Sophie!” he shouted, but he wasn’t focusing; he couldn’t see me. But I could see him; his pale face was awash with terror and his blood was mixing with Luca’s as he dragged himself through it.

Nic stopped running and raised his gun again. “Stop!” he commanded.

“Nic, don’t!” I yelled. “He’s not armed. Just let him go!”

Nic’s head twitched like there was something buzzing around it. He hesitated. Jack was at the door now; he stuck his good hand through and tried to pull himself up. He was almost there.

And then Nic shot him.

My mother and I screamed. Jack slumped against the doorway, and a blood-red star started to swell across the left side of his shirt.

Nic skidded to a stop beside Luca. He didn’t even look at Jack. He stowed his gun and crouched down beside his brother, checking the pulse in his neck. “We need to get him to the hospital,” he said to my mother. She was visibly shaking, but she was still plugging the wound.

I was too numb to move. I was still staring at my uncle and the new, terrified expression in his eyes. He was still alive, and he was looking at me, his body slumped half in and half out of the warehouse. I scanned the entry wound — it was just below his left shoulder. Not quite his heart, although it could easily have been. By all appearances, from where my mother and Nic were huddled, my uncle seemed very much dead, but I could see the alertness in his expression, and the fear in his eyes. Had Nic shot to kill or to wound Jack? And if he knew what I knew then — that the bullet had missed my uncle’s heart — would he finish the job?

“Sophie,” my mother said, her voice heaving. She and Nic had started to hoist Luca between them. “Can you help us? We need you to plug the wound while we move him.”

Did Jack deserve my forgiveness? No. Did he deserve to die? That wasn’t my decision to make; it wasn’t anyone’s. I didn’t have any time to think. I stood up without saying anything, sticking my hand out to help, and blocking their view of my uncle’s body as I came toward them. Then we moved quickly, all three of us in tandem, toward the back of the warehouse, away from all the blood. I didn’t turn around to see if Jack was still there.

My mother and Nic carried Luca into the remaining SUV, while I stumbled along beside them, clutching my ribs with one hand and plugging his wound with the other. And then we took off, Luca and I lying side by side in the backseat, my hand pressed tight against his torso as our labored breathing mingled in the air between us.

As Nic sped through the darkness, lost in hurried conversation with my mother, I drifted away from the pain inside me, and into the darkness that had been creeping up on me all evening.





For the second time this summer, I awoke in a hospital room. Everything around me was strange and discolored. Cartoonish images danced back and forth in my brain as I lay still, feeling a million miles above the earth. I pulled my hand up around my chest and felt a subtle pinch as my eyes rolled back in my head.