Page 142 of If I Could

“Touch him again and I’ll shoot higher,” I say, my hand trembling. I just shot my father. I know it was just his foot, but still. I’ve never shot anyone before and it’s a strange feeling.

He leans against the side of the chair and reaches his hand out. “Give me the gun.”

“And have you shoot me?” I aim at his chest. “Don’t move or I swear I’ll shoot again.”

“So how exactly does this end?” he asks in a smart-ass tone. He still thinks he’s in charge, even with a gun pointed at him. “If you kill me, my men will come after you. You don’t shoot me but turn me in? My men will still come after you.”

“Not if they’ve already been caught.”

His brows furrow. “Meaning what?”

“I wrote it all down.”

“Wrote WHAT down?” He cringes from the pain in his foot, which is oddly satisfying to me. I feel no regrets about shooting him. He’s lucky I didn’t aim higher.

“I wrote down what I knew about you and your little side business. I may not know everything but I know the men you brought to the house and met with privately in your office. I overheard the phone calls. Saw the packages they left you. Saw the men who held a gun to my head. I wrote down as much detail as I could, and anything I saw or overheard that seemed strange? I wrote that down too.”

“So you kept a diary,” he says, mocking me. “Good for you.”

“It IS good because I gave it to someone before I left.”

His eyes narrow. “You said you hadn’t told anyone.”

“Yeah. About that. I lied.”

“It doesn’t matter. You have no proof of anything. It’s your word against mine.”

“And if you’re dead, then it’s justmyword. And Cain’s.”

I grip the gun. I want to do it. I want to shoot him and end this. But I don’t know if I can.

I hear Cain’s shaky breaths from behind me. He’s scared. Afraid of what I might do. After witnessing this, he knows his father is evil, but seeing him get shot? Or killed? It’s too much. I can’t do that to him.

“I knew you were too much of a coward,” my father says. “You couldn’t shoot that gun if your life depended on it. That’s proof you’re not my son. I’m not even your real father and you still can’t shoot me.”

“You’re wrong.” I set my eyes on his.

“And yet you haven’t pulled the trigger.”

“Don’t!” Cain says from behind me. “Don’t do it! Please don’t!”

Ignoring Cain, I say to my father, “I’m not wrong. If I wanted to pull the trigger I could. But I don’t want to, and that doesn’t make me a coward. The coward is the person who shoots someone to get rid of their problems.”

“You really don’t understand how the world works, do you?” he asks.

I step closer to him, the gun still aimed at his chest. “Your world is not mine. Never was. I always knew there was something not right with you. Now I know why Mom never liked you.”

“Your mother was a whore,” he spits out. “She deserved what happened to her.”

His words kick whatever self-control I had straight out the window. I cock the gun, holding it steady as I prepare to shoot.

“Kyle, put the gun down,” someone says from behind me.

I glance back and see a dark shadow in the hallway. I can’t tell who it is but the voice sounds familiar.

“Hank?” I ask, but there’s no way it could be him.

“Put the gun down.” He steps out from the hall into the light of the living room. It IS Hank.

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