Page 49 of Jealous Vows

“Don’t get me wrong, that quack doctor was way worth the money,” my stepmother says.

My vision narrows.She slaps me on the cheek just hard enough to sting.

“That’s right, little whore.I paid that doctor knowing he wasn’t a real professional.”

More horrible memories flash through my mind.I was barely fourteen when she marched a bunch of strangers wearing scrubs, face masks, and gloves into my room.

“He agreed to tell everyone you were still a virgin, and I let him jerk off to you.Is that so bad?It got me years of potential prospects for your m—”

Deafening sound blasts through my ears as the pistol kicks in my hands.My stepmother screams and falls to the ground.Blood spurts from her thigh.As she devolves into profanities and racial slurs, I shift my gaze to my father.

The man closest to him tells him I only had one bullet.He laughs and shakes his head at my stepmother’s writhing body.

My stepmother had a gun but she fired several shots already.José lies near me with one gun under his belly and the other down by his hip.

Romeo shouts my name as I lunge forward.

The world erupts in gunfire.

My first two bullets hit the ground near my father’s feet, but I shift my aim and watch in slow motion as first one, then two, then three and four bullets hit his chest and side.I only squeezed the trigger two more times.

As my father falls backward, I squeeze again.A bloody crimson mess replaces half his face.Another bullet rips open his throat.

It came from the wrong angle.

A body drops onto mine.I scream and buck.Familiar fingers wrap around my throat.

“It’s me,bambolina.Only me,” Romeo snarls into my ear.

Terror flips to relief, but nothing seems real and everything is too loud and he’s squishing me against the filthy concrete and—

Two seconds after the last round is fired, Romeo rolls off me and pulls me to my feet.

With bruises all over his face and blood trailing from his eyebrow and lip, he shouldn’t look ruggedly handsome, but he does.

He’s alive.I’m alive.

I grab his nape and initiate my first kiss.I pour all my fear, fury, relief, and hope into his mouth.He responds in kind.

When I finally yank my face away, I grab his ears.

“Don’t do anything like that ever again,” I demand.

“Never,bambolina.I need to spend forever with you first,” he says.

My heart swells.

A man enters our periphery.We both stiffen and turn to see my uncle standing with his arms crossed over his chest.

“Are either of you injured?”

I lean back and check Romeo before shaking my head, but when I open my mouth to confirm, other nonsense spews out.

“I shot my father,” I blurt.

Romeo brushes my hair back from my face before saying, “Three times.I only managed two.”

“And I only managed one,”ZioMario says.