Page 100 of Wicked Ends
I stared at Dale in horror, my vision clearing.
“You,” I started, the horrible accident that had claimed my beloved grandparents returning to me in a sickening slideshow of bent metal and identifying bodies in a small, cold room. “You hurt them?” I couldn’t process it. Despite knowing how awful Dale was. Despite knowing how he was capable of violence, I’d never suspected him.
“Hurt them? I killed them. It was my time to get what I was owed, and those stupid fucks just wouldn’t die.”
Tears fell from my eyes, blurring my vision.
I could hear Claire moving around. Through the swimming tears, I caught a glimpse of her rushing over the carpet toward Dale holding a heavy lamp in her unbroken arm.
She swung it at him, but he easily dodged it and knocked her to the floor.
Then, he was on her, straddling her waist, his meaty hands finding her neck and pressing.
Claire coughed, her breath cutting off.
“Mommy!” Lulu screamed.
“You should just die, bitch, all of you should, and I can finally live happily ever after with my inheritance.” Dale’s hands were like iron around Claire’s neck.
Dale killed my grandparents, the only family I’d ever known. He’d taken everything from me.
Stars and black spots danced in front of my vision. I had so many regrets at that moment. I had barely lived in his shadow. I’d let fear of him control me for so long, I had nothing to call my own. No boyfriend, no friends anymore, no job… nothing. I should have run away as soon as I was old enough, but I’d stayed, for Claire and Lulu… I’d stayed too long, and now, we would all pay the price.
Claire’s knitting needles were lying on the bedside table. I didn’t think. My mind was empty. One second I was watching Dale strangle his wife, their child screaming herself to hysteria in the corner. The next I had a knitting needle in my hand and I was driving it into Dale’s back.
Dale grunted in surprise, and his hands loosened. Claire desperately dragged air into her lungs. Coughing, she rolled away. Dale slumped to the side, trying to pull the knitting needle free from his back.
“You—you think you can kill me?” He laughed.
But he’d forgotten that I had the other needle. The other one went in his neck. I stabbed him as hard as I could.
Lulu screamed, the sound breaking through the fog in my head.
“Take my hand,” a voice said. Claire.
Everything was swimming still, and I was dizzy. She’d recovered enough to stand. Her throat was bruised, her armhung limply at her side, and she looked half dead. But she held her good hand out to me.
“We’re leaving.”
Dale was rolling around on the floor with a spreading pool of blood under him. It was soaking into the carpet. Was he going to die? How long did he have?
“Arianna, it was him or us. You saved us,” Claire said, her voice stronger than anything I’d ever heard before.
I swallowed a knot of fear and pain and nodded.
Lulu was lingering at the door, crying softly. Claire pushed her hair back and wiped her bloody hands on her slacks. Her arm hung strangely at her side. She had to be in a lot of pain, but she was so strong, standing there over the body of her abusive husband, finally back in control. She turned to the doorway and pulled Lulu into a hug.
“What do we do now?” Lulu asked in a muffled voice that sounded so young, it broke my heart.
“We leave, honey. We’re already gone,” her mother said, and she was finally right.
We were already gone.
Marcus
Practice that dayfelt like it would never fucking end. By the time I got back to my room, Ari was gone, of course, leaving only the scent of her skin and rumpled sheets. I wanted to strip naked and climb in and fuck the mattress with her smell stuck in my nose; that’s how intoxicating her scent was to me.
I was absolutely fucked in the head over a woman who could take me or leave me. It was a disconcerting and pretty fucking annoying fact… she had all the power and held all the cards… it was a position I’d never let myself be in before.
