Page 80 of The Vow

Carmelo’s shoulder seemed to have a hole in it. Carmelo almost thought it was funny. And then he felt faint, and it wasn’t so funny anymore.

Lena screamed. He looked up as she stood there, all dolled up in a giant white dress, off the rack to her mother’s horror because she and Carmelo had burned her custom made dress in Vegas. She was clasping her flowers and her hair fell so prettily in loose, wavy tendrils around her face. But she was screaming, her face screwed up with anger and shock and hate for everything she was seeing.

Carmelo felt things slip sideways as he heard Colt bark orders. “Lyle, get everyone out!”

Lyle, the Vice President, immediately whipped his own gun out from his waistline, pointed it in the air and fired twice. “Right, fuckers, everyone out, we aren’t having any more collateral at this wedding, that’s it, no need to run, just walk calmly-”

Jared, Ash and Nix stood to help herd people out. “That’s it, leave the fucking hymn book lady, out you go-”

Phantom stood and merely glowered at people and they hurried out under his fiery stare.

“Greta!” Colt yelled, but the resident MC medic and former sweetbutt was already there hovering with the MC’s medical kit that they took with them whenever they went en masse anywhere. She sank down to the floor on her knees and looked at Carmelo, her eyes darting all over his body.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, Colt, I don’t think I can fix this,” she said with a pale face.

Colt frowned. “What do you mean?”

“This is a through and through shot, this is… he’s losing too much blood… I can’t-”

Lena howled now. The scream had turned into a banshee-like unearthly howl.

Kavan was still standing, gun pointed at where Carmelo had been standing. He started cackling manically. Jovan stood now, ice in his eyes. “Ardian, end this,” he commanded, simply.

Kavan’s younger brother didn’t blink. Didn’t hesitate. He pulled his gun from his waistband, pointed it directly between the eyes of his older brother, and pulled the trigger.

Bang.

Blood splattered everywhere.

Carmelo blinked his eyes as Kavan’s hot blood sprayed his face.

Kavan stood for an eerie few seconds, staring at them all, shocked, a small bullet-sized hole right in the middle of his forehead.

Then dropped to his knees. Then to the floor, front facing down.

April and Penny were there, at Lena’s side, clasping her arms, faces pale but determined. “Come on, sweetie, we need to give them space.”

“Let’s get outside into the fresh air-”

Lena wrenched herself free from their grasp, snatched the gun out of Ardian’s hand, spun in a delicate pirouette, and fired at Kavan’s dead body.

Again.

And again and again. Blood was spurting everywhere, the dead body jolting and thudding strangely with each impact.She screamed with rage and hate and anger. Everyone looked on, giving her that moment to express it, to let it out. Everyone in that room knew what it felt to have been fucked over by someone to the point you just want to shoot them. Again and again, even if they are already dead. Everyone was taken to their own dark places, watching Lena with funeral-like, grim empathy.

Rita then folded their hands around the hilt of the gun, and gentlypried it out of Lena’s hands. She let go, and with the gun leaving her hands, she sank down to the floor, the skirt of her dress dipping in Carmelo’s blood.

“Let’s go,” Rita said, gently.

She held up one hand. “No, I’m staying with my husband,” she said simply but firmly. “I meant the vows I said, til death do us part, and death isn’t showing up today.”

The women of the MC knew better than to argue with that.

Carmelo

“It hasn’t hit an artery but he’s bleeding massively. He needs blood, I need to sew up the wound, I don’t think there is even time to get him to the hospital, Colt, he’s literally got minutes-”

“Greta, take a breath, tell me what you need.”

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