Page 20 of Healed

The gunshot cracked through the basement with a violence that seemed to shake the walls.

Hidden within that bang was everything that had led up to this moment. From the two little kids in the park, defying fate by striking up a friendship, to the idiotic teenagers sneaking around with stolen kisses and emotions they couldn’t decipher. To the forced abortion, the heartbreak, and the years alone, and everything in between.

All leading to now.

The empty silence.

And in the end, all that silence represented was Gabriella’s heart breaking when she inevitably learned what I had done.

The silence of finality. That signalled something irreversible had happened. When it seemed even the air understood there was nothing left to say.

And as I pulled away from Michelle, noticing the tears on her cheeks, I gently reached out to close her eyes and straightened to my feet, her blood still dripping down my cut.

Now she was free.

“Did I—”

The gun was ripped from my hands before I had the chance to finish my sentence, and the fucking brute animal beast I called my brother brandished it at me, smacking it around the back of my head and jabbing it into my shoulder.

Pain exploded behind my eyes with the first whack. The second almost made me cry as it hit against the shoulder I was positive was dislocated.

“What the fuck!” I hissed at him, dodging the next blow.

The next second I was pulled into an embrace so fierce I was surprised it didn’t crack the remainder of my ribs Nico and his men had managed to spare.

“Do that to me again, man, and I swear—”

“I won’t, brother,” I replied, feeling a shudder run through my best friend.

He squeezed me tighter for one brief moment, and then he was clapping my back, pulling away from me, and shaking his head with a sniff, clearing the tears.

That was it. That was all that needed to be said.

“I’m telling Rachel you hit me with a gun.”

Dante chuckled. “You think you’re going to be able to get a word in when Rachel sees you? You’ll be lucky if she doesn’t gut you where you stand. I can already hear her.”

“If you want to die so badly, Vienna, be my guest,” I said, mimicking her voice.

“Here, I’ll even do it for you,” Dante mimicked back.

I paused for a moment and then said, “She’s not going to care that you hit me, is she?”

Dante gave me a tight grin that let me know smacking me with a gun was a generous move, all things considered.

And then our gazes drifted back to Michelle.

“You did the right thing,” Dante said quietly, and I released a relieved breath.

I knew that, but hearing it from someone else, someone like Dante, just gave it more weight.

I knew I had saved her from a life she had long since given up on. Now that she was still, unable to hide anything, more and more evidence was showing—evidence of Nico’s cruelty, of her starvation, of everything she had suffered and lived through. Even if she hadn’t wanted to.

I knew I had saved her from a far more painful death.

But knowing something and accepting something were two very different things.

“You did, Vienna. It might not feel like it right now. But you did the right thing. She was dead anyway.”