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"Well, luckily for me, I'm not looking for redemption," David snarled, slowly cocking back the hammer with a loud click. "I'm looking for revenge."

"That makes two of us,"a male voice announced seconds before the sound of a gunshot ripped through the air.

My grandfather collapsed in a heap on the floor.

The gun he had been wielding at my mother and I skirted across my freshly polished floorboards, knocking against my shoe.

My mother quickly reached down and retrieved it.

But I couldn’t move.

Because I was staring at a ghost.

****

Chapter Sixty-Seven

Hope

I was hallucinating.

I had to be.

There was no possible way this was happening.

No other logical reason for this…for him…for all of this to be happening.

Or maybe I was dreaming?

Maybe I had dreamt this whole night up.

"Hey, Sweetheart,"hishoarse voice filled my ears.

His voice.

He limped into the kitchen, gun cocked in his hand, still aimed at David who was groaning in agony on the floor.

"This isn’t real," I strangled out, shaking my head.

Staggering backwards, I clutched my swollen stomach and heaved as another contraction battered through my body.

"This isn’t real," I continued to say, groaning in agony, shaking my head, refuting this torturous hallucination. "Wake up."

His long blond hair was gone, shaved tight, but growing out a little, and the unruly beard disguised how gaunt his face had become.

But it washim.

He was here.

He was really here.

Was he?

The circles under his eyes were so dark they were almost black.

He was emaciated.

He looked like the walking dead.

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