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It didn’t change the fact her father had ratted. He was a rat and he had to die.
Fuck, my chest sinks, remembering the old man. Everything was a joke to him. It was never serious but the shit he talked about to whoever would listen… it wasn’t something we could allow.
My father knew he had to go the second he took charge and everyone agreed. They were going to do it in the warehouse, then dump him in the back alley.
Then what would Laura have had? She would have known. Everyone would have known with his body being left there and she would have been the daughter of a rat.
I wanted to hide it from her. I wanted to protect her. Everything inside me needed to protect her.
Then you do it. My father’s voice echoes in my head as I stare straight ahead at the bright lights in Laura’s living room. Her curtains are parted and I can see her silhouette move from one side to the other.
My father put the gun in my hand and I shot her father in the back of the head while he begged for his life. I never wanted to do it. I didn’t want to kill him. I just wanted to protect her. I had to do it alone while they watched. Getting his body to the car, driving it to the top of the cliff, disposing of the gun in the cement pit round the back.
They were going to kill him one way or the other, but I did it.
I didn’t want her to know. It would have killed her. She was already so alone.
“I’m sorry,” I say again in the darkness, all alone where I belong. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
My throat’s raw, my body humming, my emotions thrashed, which is why I hesitate to believe what I see. Two sets of lights are on.
My body’s cold in an instant. Fuck, no. No. It can’t get worse tonight.
She’s visible in her bedroom.
So are three other figures, in her living room.
Laura
I hear the front door open and I know it’s Seth, but I don’t say a damn thing. I don’t even know if I can speak right now without screaming incoherently through the pain.
My father’s been long gone. I have to cover my face with my hands as it crumples and the sadness rips through me… he wasn’t a rat. He wasn’t.
They didn’t have to kill him; he never would have told anyone anything. He wasn’t a rat! My knees are still weak and I sniffle, angrily brushing under my eyes. I can hear Seth in the living room, but I don’t go to him. I want to, I want to scream at him, hit him. I want him to lie to me and tell me he made it up. I want it to be a cruel joke I can beat the shit out of him for and for him to hold me until this shaking and the sobs disappear.
He said we’d be together to make the hurt stop, but it doesn’t. It never stops with us.
A shuddering breath pulls the energy from me and I hear something in the living room. He moved something around.
I want to tell him to get the fuck out. I want to scream at him and shove my fists into his chest. At the same time, I don’t want to see him or be around him. I don’t want his large hands on me, his warm body pulling me in. Why? Because I desperately need someone to hold me right now and I have no one.
It’s hard to inhale; harder to calm my wild heart down. It trips like it’s falling down an endless staircase and it hurts. God it hurts.
“Get out!” I scream and the sound is ragged. My fingers fly into my hair as I hunch my shoulders down and cover my face with my forearms. I grip on for my sanity.
Just breathe.
I’ve been doing it all day, thinking it all day, but at some point, breathing doesn’t help.
The bang sounds again from behind me. He’s still moving shit around in there.
I know that he’s drunk, I know he’s hurting, but right now, I can’t have him here. I can’t allow it to happen. I’m crumbling into nothingness and he doesn’t get to watch that. He doesn’t get to be around me when it happens. I don’t care how badly I need him.
“Laura,” a voice calls out just as I get to my bedroom door and chills flow down my spine, sinking into my blood as I stop with my hand on the knob.
Thud, thud.
That’s not Seth.
“Come out, come out,” the voice sounds, “wherever you are,” dragging out the words like it’s a game. And then I hear another voice. Two men.
My pulse races with a new kind of fear. Whiplash dizzies my mind.
