The Bodyguard Affair

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything. But it’s me you want. Let Bianca go. Her blood sugar must be getting low by now—”

“Fuck her blood sugar! If she slips into a coma, it’ll make my life easier. I wouldn’t even have to kill her. I could just let nature take its course.” She cocked the gun. “But that would take far too long. I don’t have that kind of time.”

Tears poured down Bianca’s face. She was going to die here, one way or another. She willed any God who might be out there to knock her out before she died. She didn’t want to feel anything. She didn’t want to see the look on her mother’s face when it happened.

And she didn’t want to think about how she’d never get to tell Sam how she felt about her.

“You can put the gun down, Ellen.” How her mother kept so calm, Bianca had no idea. “We don’t need a gun right now.”

“Yes, Vivi,” Ellen said. “It’s a gun. Good job. I see you actually did graduate college, after all.”

A tear fell down her mother’s cheek. “It’s okay, baby. Everything is okay.”

“It’s not okay,” Ellen cried to her ceiling. “Nothing has been okay for forty fucking years!”

But her screams were cut short by the sound of the front door swinging open and Sam leaping into the room, her own gun pointed at Ellen.