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“Who’s us?”
“Me and your dad.”
My dad?
It’s my turn to stare at Kay.
“Wait…How have you’ve talked to—”
Three sharp cracks break through the air.
My heart leaps into my mouth. Glass shatters. A warm wetness splatters across my face, obscuring half my vision in a dash of red. Vinny collapses behind us. Like someone dropped a doll, all his limbs folding under him. He rattles. I stare, seeing without comprehending, taking it in as if in slow motion.
His head—
I throw myself to the ground, watching my own hands reach out and press against blood, against bone that moves when it shouldn’t.
A shriek brings me back to reality. Ava’s shriek. She’s bolted across the yard, falling across him, just screaming and screaming. She’s not the only one. Tables are turned over in the panic, but Ava’s screams are louder than anything else. Louder than my own thoughts. All that I can hear.
“Tessa!”
The name fills my ears, but it doesn’t land.
I know that voice, but I hardly recognize it saying that name.
“Tessa!”
Suddenly, I am ripped off the ground, away from Vinny and Ava and thrown behind the fountain. Salvatore pins me down behind the base, away from the chaos. He takes my face in his hands, looking me over. I finally see him, hear him, reality clicking into motion as if someone has pressed the fast forward button on my thoughts.
“Vinny—” I gasp, trying to articulate the words, to tell him what I saw. My hands are red and wet. He has to fix it somehow. He has to help Vinny. Gunshots ring out across the estate.
Men’s voices and the barking of dogs overwhelm my senses. “Sal, it’s Vinny, he’s—”
“Follow Marcel,” he orders me, though the words don’t stick. “Do you understand? Follow Marcel!”
He pulls away from me.
“Wait!”
“Watch her!”
I don’t realize who he’s talking to until I see Kay is with us, ducked behind cover, her hand around my arm and holding me back from following him blindly into the firefight.
I peek out from behind the fountain. The unarmed make a break for the house, while those with weapons rush across the yard, exchanging fire. Marcel has Ava around the waist, pulling her away, as she kicks and screams and howls like an animal. He drags her toward the house.
Kay pulls me in the same direction, making a break for it.
In the distance, Salvatore fades from my singular, narrow vision.
In those last moments, I see him with an automatic rifle in his hands, and the furious dogs baying, swirling around his feet. He fades into the glinting light.
Vinny is left on the ground.
The silence of the house makes the chaos of outside feel like a nightmare I’ve woken up from. Marcel barks orders, ushering everyone to a basement, some kind of underground safe room I’ve never seen. It feels like another world. There are mostly women here and a few of the elderly men. Cecilia has been carried down the stairs without her wheelchair and placed on a loveseat.
Marcel bolts the door shut and stands in front of it with his pistol.
Ava has screamed herself silent. Her face stays buried against her knees. I put my hand on her shoulder, but she doesn’t react.
