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There must be some ungodly fury in my eyes as I step forward and level the gun at his head. His face drops and his mouth hangs open in terror for a moment, but then he tries to mask it with bluster.
“Tell her you’re sorry. Do it now.”
“No way,” Finn says, sounding like an insolent child. “I have nothing to apologize—”
I fire a well placed shot into the ground at his feet, causing him to squeal like a trapped animal and several of his men to flinch despite their injuries.
“Sorry, sorry,” he bleats, bringing his hands to his face in a shivering cry. “Okay, Millie? I’m sorry.”
“I hope you burn in hell, Finn,” Millie calls out, her voice strangled with savage intensity.
I step back, making sure to keep my distance between us at all times. There’s no way I’m going to make the same mistake this asshole did and get close enough for him to get his hands on me, not that I think he’d be able to do much.
The ground he and his men sit on is turning a deep rusty red with the combined outpouring of their injuries.
“Why would you bastards follow this idiot?” I snap, eyes moving over his overinflated goons.
“Why do you think?” Eagle Neck sighs. “Money, just money.”
“Yeah, well we’ll see how that helps you in prison.”
“We can make a deal,” Finn blubbers. “We can—”
I whip another shot just past his head, hitting the ground behind the men.
“It was you, Finn, wasn’t it?” somebody yells behind me.
I realize it’s Jackie, striding from the house with her hands bunched into fists. She stops beside me when I give her a look, silently telling her not to go any further.
“You left the door open so Lava could get out. You threw a brick through my window. You messed with Markus’s car and you wrote Millie’s name in glass outside the diner. I can’t believe you’d do this. I thought we had something … I wish you were dead.”
I let out an icy sigh.
So Finn must’ve been one of Jackie’s dates. That’s how he got his hands on her. He tricked her. The evil bastard.
Sirens lace the air, growing louder, closer, and that’s a damn good thing. My arm injury might not be serious, but it’s starting to ache and twinge again. All that fighting didn’t help.
But even with the injury, I’d stand here for a hundred years – a thousand – if that’s what it took.
For Millie.Chapter Twenty-FourMillie“I’m so sorry,” I tell Jackie, sitting just outside the hospital, Lava at her feet as though daring anybody else to try and touch her.
The sky is still clear, the sun a shiny penny in the sky, and yet it seems off. I feel as though clouds should have moved across the sky and blotted the sun, darkened it like the day’s events. Once the police showed up, everything moved hyper-fast, Finn and his goons being carted away as Markus was brought to the hospital.
We’ve all been questioned, given our statements. They said they might want to talk to us later, but for now, we’re free to just process it all.
Now we sit outside – Lava isn’t allowed inside – waiting to hear that I’m allowed to go in and be with Markus.
“I’ve told you about a billion times, all right?” Jackie says. “You don’t need to be sorry, Millie. You didn’t do anything wrong. It was him, the freaking psycho. I just can’t believe that I fell for his nice guy act for so long, you know? I feel so silly.”
I place my hand on her shoulder, giving it a supportive squeeze. Lava watches us with an unsure smile on his face, waiting for Jackie’s dark mood to lift.
“He’s an expert manipulator,” I say. “He’s been doing this for a long time. Don’t beat yourself up about it.”
We stay like that for a long time, clutching onto each other. Lava finally jumps up into Jackie’s lap, no idea how big he is, that his puppy days are long behind him. Jackie grins and smooths her hands through his golden fur.
“Thanks,” she whispers. “I’m just glad it’s over.”
“Yeah,” I sigh. “Me too.”
I try not to think about what Markus told me about my parents as we sit here, the pain of it moving jaggedly through me, hurting every part of me. But then I think about Markus instead, the furry he flew into as he took on all of those men, bravely spinning between them like a protective predator.
Even if my dad was a lunatic and even if my parents are dead, I have Markus.
I let my hand fall onto my belly, wondering if I can feel any warmth there already or if I’m just imagining it. It’s like there’s something different about me, a fluttering inside of me, almost too subtle for me to sense.
