Author: Priscilla West

Marty raised his fist. I crossed my arms to shield my body, hoping that the flesh and bones in my limbs would prove sturdier than an apartment wall. He was going to punch my stomach. He was going to punch the baby.

“Forgive me, Kristen. I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t have to.”

In a blur, Marty vanished behind the couch. I sat up, realizing someone had tackled him.

“Vincent!” I screamed.

How had he gotten out of the handcuffs?

I leaped from the couch to see Marty and Vincent rolling into the kitchen and crashing into the oven. The force from the impact shook the stovetop and the hot water I’d been boiling in a saucepan for tea tipped and poured over Marty’s head.

Marty screamed and frantically swiped at his face with his hands. His face was steaming.

Vincent was groaning and rubbing his head with the heel of his palm. His hands were mangled, his thumbs twisted inward. That’s when I realized what happened.

The two loud cracking sounds I heard were from Vincent breaking his own thumbs to escape his handcuffs.

I rushed over to Vincent to try to help him up. He was dazed and couldn’t stand up on his own. I hooked my arms beneath his shoulders and tried to drag him to the apartment door but it was difficult to move him. He’s so damn heavy. I thought about escaping just by myself but I knew I couldn’t leave Vincent alone with Marty. Not like this. By the time I came back with the police, Vincent would probably be dead.

Marty blindly reached in front of him, knocking over a jar of sugar and a spice rack on the kitchen counter. White dust and parsley spilled across the counter and the kitchen tile. I’d dragged Vincent a foot when Marty found a towel hanging from the oven. He wiped his face vigorously and opened his eyes.

Before I could react, Marty lunged at us, landing on top of Vincent. I fell backward and smashed into a kitchen table chair.

“You bastard!” Marty cried as he began wailing on Vincent.

Vincent snapped out of his daze and raised his arms to shield his face, shifting his head from side to side to avoid a direct blow.

Frantic, I stumbled to my feet and picked up the kitchen chair with both hands, raising it over my head. Marty leaped from Vincent and rushed me. He swatted the chair out of my hands, making it crash across the kitchen table into the corner. “Don’t fight me, Kristen!” he shouted. “I don’t want to hurt you.” Then he shoved me away. I toppled over the coat rack and into the pile of shoes.

Sprawled over a bed of flats and heels, I spotted the a silver object lying beside the couch. The pistol. It must’ve flown out of Marty’s hand when Vincent tackled him. Crawling on my hands and knees across the sea of footwear, I neared the couch and reached for the gun.

The sound of a punch landing on flesh and the sound of a male voice groaning in pain made me realize Marty had mounted Vincent again and was attacking him.

I picked up the gun with shaky hands.

“Stop it or I’ll shoot!” I screamed.

Marty continued pounding and shouting at Vincent. He wasn’t listening.

“I said stop!” I shook the gun in their direction, but neither of them seemed to hear me. I’d never fired a gun before but I knew how to pull a trigger.

Fearing Marty was going to kill Vincent, I fired a round at the kitchen wall. The sound was almost deafening. The force from the recoil was stronger than I’d expected and I staggered backward, tripping over the coffee table and landing on top of it. The glass shattered under my weight. The back of my head hit something hard. Was it the ground? The broken frame of the table? I laid on a bed of broken shards, the air knocked from my lungs.

The last thing I remembered before blacking out was that the unexpected weight of the gun combined with the shakiness of my hands made the barrel shift downward the moment I pulled the trigger.

The gun had been aimed at Vincent and Marty.

Chapter Eleven

Vincent

Six years prior

My fist was throbbing. I successfully fought the urge to look at it, but I knew it was fucked up from how bad Jim’s face had been. Once he was awake, he was going to have some decisions to make about how to fix his features. That nose would never be the same.

I held Giselle as she cried in the same living room our parents had once held us. Even though they were gone, it was still our home.

“You’re going to be okay,” I said. “I’m going to take care of us.”

“Vincent, look at your hand! I’m so sorry,” Giselle cried.

It killed me to hear her feel guilty about what had happened to her. As much as my fist hurt, I put the pain to the side. “Stop it, Giselle. You don’t have to be sorry about anything. What that bastard did to you wasn’t your fault.”

She shook her head. “I should have handled it myself. I should have gotten out as soon as it started. I don’t know how I let it keep happening.”

“It’s not your fault, and it’s over now.” I squeezed her tighter as she sobbed into my shoulder. It was over. That was the only thing that mattered at that moment.

“What if he does come back?” she choked out.

My jaw clenched. She didn’t want to know the honest answer to that question. “He won’t. If he does, I promise you he’ll regret it for every second of the rest of his life.”

She stopped crying for a moment and pulled back to look at me. “Vincent, you can’t always be around. You have your company to worry about.”

“I’ll find a way. The only purpose of that company is to provide for you and any other family we ever have. If it doesn’t make the lives of the people I love better, I might as well sell the damn thing.”

She nodded and sobbed again. Her eyes were puffy and red, and her makeup had been smudged everywhere. Seeing her so disheveled and upset made my stomach feel like a bottomless pit.

Finally, she calmed down enough to speak. “Vincent,” she said, her voice small. “I have something to show you.”

My eyes widened. I wasn’t sure how much more I could take. “What’s that?”

She rolled up the sleeves of her green sweater. At first I didn’t know what I was looking for, but then I saw them: several raised pieces of scar tissue in a neat row, each in various shades of pink.

My vision blurred as tears welled up in my eyes. “What are these?” I asked quietly.

“Cigarettes.”

“You don’t smoke.”

“He did. Does. Whatever.” Tears rolled down both her cheeks.

My heart sank as I put together the implication. “He put them out on you?”

She nodded. “In a neat row. Once for every time I pissed him off. So I wouldn’t forget.”

My mouth fell open at the audacity of what I was hearing. “He’s sick. I’m so sorry, Giselle. If I had any idea . . .”

“You didn’t,” she said. “I guess I’m pretty good at covering up, but I just have to show you now so I feel like I’ve come totally clean. I’ve been hiding it for so long.

I blinked and felt a hot tear roll down my cheek. “I’m so sorry.”

She looked down. “He said he would kill me if I told anyone.”

I snapped my jaw shut and flexed my still aching fist. “He said he would kill you?”

She nodded.

My heart was pounding in my chest as I breathed heavily in and out. Could I kill someone who had threatened to kill my sister? How would I get away with it?

“Don’t even think about killing him first,” she said, as if reading my mind.

I snapped out of my plotting. She was staring at me with a very serious expression etched into her features.

“I’m not letting my brother become a murderer.”

“But if it’s him or you—” I started.

“It won’t be. It can’t be,” she said.

I sighed and took her by the shoulders.

“Fine. But know this: you’re the only family I have, and I’m going to protect you no matter what. Even if it costs me my life.”

Chapter Twelve

Kristen

The world was fuzzy. Hues of brown and white swirled like cream being stirred into coffee. I couldn’t make out any details in the forms that swirled in front of me. What had happened to my vision?

My ears were ringing. My body felt like it was being poked by a thousand needles. It hurt to move. I remembered a gun in my hands going off. How long had I been out?

A shadow shifted into view. It grew larger and more defined. The outline was a figure. Someone was approaching me.

I blinked. The picture became sharper. I blinked again then a few more times. I was staring at the ceiling, the fan spinning.

There was a face in the picture. It was still. Eerily still. Staring at me from above. Who was it?

Blue eyes. Brown hair. Thick spectacles.

Marty.

My hearing slowly returned, but Marty vanished from my vision almost as soon as he appeared. I sat up and saw that Vincent was still fighting with him. Vincent barreled into Marty with his shoulder, pushing him back until Marty was cornered against the wall.

Vincent pummeled Marty with his mangled hands but it was clear that Vincent was at a disadvantage. I looked around for the gun but it was nowhere to be found, it must have gotten tossed somewhere around the room in the confusion.

I saw a small hole on the kitchen wall inches from where they had been. I didn’t hit anyone.

When I looked over at them again, Marty was kneeling on top of Vincent, straddling him and repeatedly punching him in the face. “Take that you piece of shit!”

“No, Marty! Stop . . . please stop Marty . . .” I pleaded, tears streaming uncontrollably down my face. He was going to kill Vincent, the man who loved me, the man that I loved.

Marty ignored me, continuing to hit Vincent. Vincent had his broken hands up, trying to defend his face. He seemed so helpless in that position that it sent another knife of sorrow into me.

“Stop Marty! Please stop!” I sobbed.

Marty looked up at me, chest heaving, fists covered in Vincent’s blood. “Stop? Stop?! It’s too late to stop Kristen. You made me do this! This is your fault! Look at what you’ve done!”