Her hands didn’t tremble.
And that scream after her calm? She was fading fast.
"Who taught you how to hold a gun, honey?" I rasped, trying to distract her.
She blinked, but didn’t take her eyes off Kendra who, ironically enough, looked scared.
Fucking typical.
Maybe she saw what I saw—that my baby was a lot more damaged than we’d realized. Maybe she saw that Cyan, for all she looked like a skinny kid, was holding that weapon with more confidence than Kendra herself had.
"Lodestar," Cyan said, her voice sweet and so incongruous by comparison to her stance. "Every woman should know how to defend herself," she murmured. "That’s what Star says."
I was gonna kill that motherfucking psycho.
Who taught an eleven-year-old how to hold a gun?
And that was pure Lodestar. I could almost hear her voice as she taught my kid how to ‘defend’ herself.
I gritted my teeth and rumbled, "Kendra will die, baby. But I don’t want her blood on your hands."
"She killed Fraction," Cyan said, an odd hollowness to the words this time. "She didn’t have to do that. He wasn’t going to hurt her. He was a puppy. He was little. He peed himself when they came in. He was so scared." Out of nowhere, she screamed, "SHE DIDN’T HAVE TO DO THAT!"
"He was a pitbull," Kendra whimpered.
"He was a puppy," she growled. "A baby. Why do people think they can hurt babies? Why?"
"Ladybug, maybe Fraction’s still alive," I attempted to soothe. "If you put the gun down, we can check on him. Get him to the vet."
She finally looked away from Kendra. "I called the vet. He’s on his way."
Her rationale had me tensing up. It was so discordant with the sheer madness of her holding a weapon.
"Put the gun down, baby," I repeated, unsure of how to appeal to her.
"You don’t need to do this," Keira whispered softly. "You don’t need to—"
Cyan’s arms wobbled, but not because she was putting them down. No, she moved them to the side, pointing at Sticky. "He used words that Martin used. I heard him. He was going to hurt Mommy, and Kendra laughed." Her eyes turned rounder, so wide that she looked like they were going to pop out. "She laughed," Cy repeated, then I saw her hands tighten around the gun, just as I heard the sound of sirens in the background.
Kendra sobbed, "Please, don’t—"
And that was when Cyan pulled the trigger.
Forty
Keira
PRESENT
It seemed incredible to me that the entire episode took less than ninety minutes from beginning to end.
It felt like a lifetime as I endured it.
As I was pistol-whipped, tied up, felt up. As I was hauled into my room, all the while praying that Cyan had hidden in the safe room like she’d done the night these bastards had barged their way into our lives the first time.
As Storm negotiated with Kendra, revealing his hatred of her. As men were shot in front of me, killed by my husband. As my kid held a gun on us all…
With the silver foil blanket wrapped around my body and Cyan’s, I held her close.
Cyan’s fragility was… as expected as it was unexpected.
I pressed a kiss to her temple, and murmured, "He’s still alive, baby."
Fraction had bled out a lot. Whether he survived the night was another matter entirely.
Storm dropped down to a crouch in front of her. "The vet says we should go home, ladybug." He reached for her hands which stopped her from rocking herself back and forth.
"I can’t leave him," she denied. "You wouldn’t leave me."
I winced because she had a point.
"We need to get you to bed, honey," I said instead. "You’ve had a… difficult day." I almost choked on the words.
She turned her face into my throat. "Am I going to get in trouble?"
"No, ladybug. It’s all been sorted with the sheriff."
I pressed a kiss to her hair, reveling in that sweet, sweaty smell. The fear was… well, it was strong in me.
Strong because I’d thought Cyan was doing okay, had thought she was dealing well with all the changes, and then I’d seen my little girl holding a gun with the confidence of someone who knew what they were doing.
When she was running around the clubhouse in West Orange, I’d just been grateful that she was keeping herself out of trouble and not giving me sass. Never thinking she’d been hovering around Giulia and Lodestar, two of the most volatile women I’d ever met.
Cyan whispered, "She deserved it."
"She did," Storm agreed, his hand tangling with hers, before he reached for mine, forging a small triangle between us. "But I’m still glad you missed anyway."
Not that it had done Kendra any good.
They said that when you took a life, it changed you.
I agreed.
I felt different. Just not in a bad way, like they made out on TV.
I knew cops who’d only had to fire their weapons needed counseling, but me? Taking out the trash was cathartic.
Better than eight months of therapy with Dr. Janowicz that was for damn sure.
Things had blurred after Cyan’s bullet went wide, grazing that whore’s arm, and my side, but I’d taken advantage of the chaos to snatch Sticky’s gun, to shove it under Kendra’s chin, and to let that bitch’s brain blow.
Her lies, her malice had devastated our family, had led to the worst things imaginable happening to us.
She deserved my wrath.
She deserved for it to end like that.
Just as another person has received injury from him, so it will be given unto him.
Dad would be proud that I hadn’t forgotten my scripture.
"I’m sorry I hurt you, Mommy."
Her words took a while to penetrate, and I knew I’d spaced out a little. "I’m sorry you had to see what happened," I told her softly, regret filtering through me.
My baby had seen too many people die in front of her.
God, she was going to be in therapy until she was a hundred.
Guilt and shame at what she’d witnessed tangled with the pride I felt in ending that bitch, in finally releasing us from her toxicity, and I pressed another kiss to her forehead, aware I had to cauterize the situation and fast.
"I need you to promise me something, Cyan." At her fervent nod, I murmured, "I need you to promise that—" I heaved a sigh. Needed her to promise what? That she wouldn’t defend herself? When twice in the last twelve months that had been imperative?
Storm cleared his throat. "What your mom wants you to promise, Cy, is that you won’t use a gun unless it’s in a situation like today, where you had to defend yourself. But, and this is a big but, when you’ve got two people there who are in control of things, you don’t arm yourself with a gun you don’t know how to use."
"But I do know how to use it!"
"If you knew how to use it, ladybug, you wouldn’t have missed."
Her shoulders hunched. "She moved."
"She didn’t," he said dryly, and I shot him a glare. Nothing about this was funny.