Violet sees me and blinks a couple times. She looks shellshocked. She looks at me, no, through me, as if I’m not even here. I reach, take the guns out of her hands, whispering, baby, but then she quickly reaches behind herself and pulls out the third gun from her waistband, moves it to the left six or so inches, and fires it.
I frown and look over my shoulder in time to see Trey Ricci falling to the floor face-first, a knife clattering to the floor.
He was about to lunge for me. Violet stopped him.
Abe kicks the knife away and uses his foot to flip Trey to his back. The guy looks at us, blood trickling out his mouth before his eyes blank out.
Dead.
Violet chokes out a sob and shakily sets the gun on the floor. I pull her into my arms and hold her tight.
No more than a minute later, there’s a burst of noise outside. Outside noises are coming inside because of the lack of window in my living room.
I glance at my wrist. The watch Violet bought me for Christmas reads twelve o’clock. We got to ring in the new year together after all.
“It’s midnight. Happy New Year, baby,” I say. And then my mouth touches hers.
58
Violet
January 1
My first thought as I open my eyes is – I killed somebody.
Or kind of, sort of.
Maybe tomorrow, my first thoughts won’t be so dire. No angst. No fear. Maybe peace? I can only hope.
The bad ‘guy’ got hit four times. Twice by me. Once by Wes. Once by Abe. I shot the fourth bullet though, so I kinda think it was me that killed him. Not that he would’ve likely survived, but if I hadn’t fired that gun, he could’ve stabbed Killian. Or me to make Killian hurt. He could’ve killed my husband and the father of my baby after already being shot three times. He had that much hate for him.
Hate that was misplaced, apparently, because Killian didn’t ruin his sister’s life, didn’t get her pregnant, and in fact tried to help her.
I’ve never fired a gun before and yet I pulled the trigger three times tonight and all three bullets hit their targets. Like magic or something because if I had to guess what would happen if I ever fired a gun, I’d have said either I’d miss or wind up with some sort of backfiring fluke and shoot myself.
Killian told me maybe my grandmother and his grandmother were both looking out for us last night from up above.
I shot Heidi, shooting her point blank, I guess it’s called.
She’s not dead.
Heidi was taken in an ambulance with one of the thugs. The other thug died, hit by either Abe or Wesley. I didn’t ask.
Tony has come out of surgery after a bullet wound and his prognosis is good so far.
Killian said that Jessa was there with him, that they’d had some huge argument yesterday and she had tried to break up with him. He refused to allow her to break up with him. And now she’s at the hospital with him so maybe she doesn’t truly want the breakup.
I got her number from Killian and sent her a message telling her we were sending Tony our best and adding that if she needed anything, to let me know.
Killian thinks I’m crazy for reaching out a hand in friendship to her, but if she’s with Tony, since she’s Jag’s sister, and after how she was with me when Killian got drugged, it feels like the right thing to do.
She answered me to thank me.
Killian filled me in after the police left with all the crazy details. How Guy Tremblay was really someone from his apartment building when he was a kid. How he worked with Amber and her drug dealer boyfriend as well as Ray at some stage on a plot to rob Killian, wanting revenge for the death of his sister, who he blamed Kilian for. Killian told me he and the girl were friends, that she’d had a crush but that he didn’t lead her on. She helped out with Will sometimes. That they’d gone out on a date and that Kilian had taken her virginity. And she turned to drugs later on, which had nothing to do with Killian. That Killian paid for the abortion but that it wasn’t his baby. He told me he offered to help her get rehab and she insisted she didn’t have a drug problem.
Guy, rather Trey then turned to one of Gina’s druggie friends, Felix, to plot out some revenge. And Ray was apparently part of it because Trey knew him from their old building, and they all hung out at the local bar. But things went sideways with Ray because that’s what drew Killian’s attention to me and that’s what changed my life. A guy with a misplaced grudge and some greed got a bunch of people involved in trying to get money and revenge.