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1
REBEL
“Don’t shoot! Oh God, please. Don’t shoot.”
Adrenaline shook me from head to toe. My finger on the trigger trembled. I forced my outstretched arms to remain steady, though they tried so hard to wobble.
I held a gun on my sister.
But the bullet in the chamber was meant for the man she was protecting.
“Move, Kara!” I screamed again. “This needs to end. He needs to die!”
Caleb’s laughter echoed back from behind his human shield. “She’s not going to do that. I’ve got your niece and I’m the only one who knows where she is.” His eyes glinted with the evil that came straight from his soul. “You kill me, her baby is dead too.”
One quick glance at Kara’s expression, and the desperate pleading in her eyes told me everything Caleb had said was true. She was broken. A shell of a woman. Torn apart with grief for the baby he’d taken from her.
He was a monster, responsible for all her pain. For mine. For Bliss’s.
I wanted to pull the trigger. I craved the crack of the gun and the noise he’d make when the bullet hit him right in the chest.
Watching him slump down into the dirt, gasping and pleading for his life, would be the only thing that satisfied the anger inside me.
I couldn’t do it.
I couldn’t leave an innocent child to die.
My wrists went limp, the gun pointing harmlessly at the ground.
“That’s what I thought.” Caleb gave a smug smile, backing away to a car parked at the edge of the graveyard, dragging Kara with him by the scruff of her neck.
Tears poured down her cheeks, her eyes silently begging me to let her go.
Caleb reached the driver’s-side door and got it open, his gaze only leaving mine to flick to Bliss’s, his ex-fiancée. He eyed her swollen belly, and his lip curled. “My, my, my. Quite the whore you’ve been, haven’t you?”
Behind me, Bliss’s guys were held back only by her putting one hand up, signaling them to stay put. Vibrating anger rippled between them, their desperate need to launch across space and put their hands around Caleb’s throat palpable.
But she was their queen, and they followed her lead without question.
“What happened to you, Caleb? Who hurt you enough to turn you into…” She looked him up and down with pity in her eye. “…this?” She took a step forward, her eyes blazing. “Did your mom not love you? Did she see through your fake smiles to the pathetic little boy you are at your core?”
Caleb’s eyes narrowed at the woman who had once loved him. The full brunt of his hate focused on Bliss, but it was only Kara he could physically hurt. He yanked her hair so viciously, a wound tore open in her scalp. She let out a scream of pain, her head jerking.
Blood coated Caleb’s fist.
Bliss cringed at the sight, but she didn’t stop. “You don’t have to be like this. Whatever your anger at me, or Rebel, it has nothing to do with her. Let her go. Give her back her baby and let her go.”
Caleb laughed darkly. “I hear you talking, Bethany-Melissa. So. Much. Talk. All the fucking time. Do you not learn? You don’t call the shots. You never did.”
He shoved Kara away with a vicious push that sent the woman to the ground. She hit it hard, crying out in pain, clutching her head.
Caleb slammed his door shut. The engine kicked over with a deafening roar.
Despite her injury, Kara’s eyes widened, and she shot to her feet, throwing herself toward the car. “No! No! Take me with you!” She pummeled the driver’s-side window, leaving a bloody smear behind. “Caleb, please! Take me too!”
Caleb gunned the engine without glancing at her. He put his foot down on the accelerator, and the car sped away, rounding a corner to disappear out of sight.
For the longest moment, silence descended over all of us. Birds didn’t chirp. Nobody breathed.
