“I tried to talk to you! You just wouldn’t listen when I told you that you were mine!” she screams.
“Do you think that threatening me with a gun, and holding my mother hostage, will end the way you want it to?” I ask while raising an eyebrow at her.
She laughs maniacally. “It’s going to end the way I want. I already know that I won’t walk out of here alive. I have accepted my end.”
“What the fuck? You said you had a plan!” Krista shouts, loosening her hold on my mother.
“I do,” Lydia says in an eerily calm tone.
“What’s your plan here, Lydia?” I ask, not taking my eyes off of her.
A sense of dread fills me when a look of peace comes over her eyes.
“I’ve decided that if I can’t have you, nobody can,” she says calmly before she fires the gun.
The sound is loud and is followed by another.
I wait for the pain to hit me, but all I feel is weight being pushed into me as I fall back.
There is a bunch of shouts in the club, but I feel something wet hit my fingers as I look at who pushed me.
I see my brother’s face staring at me with pain in his eyes.
“Zeke! Fuck man!” I shout, pushing him off me so I can see the damage.
“The ambulance is on their way,” a voice says, but I can’t focus on anyone else but my brother.
“Zeke. Hang on, brother,” I choke out.
He gets more pale as the seconds pass on. I feel Dani rush beside me.
“Zeke! Oh my god! What happened?” she cries out.
“Lydia tried to shoot me, and he jumped in front of the bullet,” I tell her with my voice cracking.
“What the fuck? Where is she?” Dani says with anger in her tone.
“I’d do anything for my brother,” Zeke says with a weak voice.
The ambulance EMTs rush in, and I’m pulled out of the way. As much as I don’t want to let my brother go, I know he needs to be taken care of.
“He has to be okay,” Dani says with a sob.
“He will be,” I say, but I don’t voice the doubt I feel.
I just got my brother back. I can’t lose him.
I don’t know what I would do if I did. It’s a possibility I don’t even want to think about.
Dani
I can’t stop crying. Throughout the ride to the hospital, followed by sitting in the waiting room, I haven’t stopped crying.
Zeke is my best friend. He’s practically a brother to me. There is no way I would be able to handle losing him.
Seeing both Zane and Zeke covered in blood is something I won’t be able to erase from my mind.
I didn’t get to find out what happened to Lydia or Krista before the ambulance arrived, but their bodies weren’t there when they arrived.