Stop the pain.
“How does it feel to know I chose Kai over you?” I circle back to the front so she can see me. See the pain and thinking all of my pain is for Kai, and none of it is for her.
I stand tall over her, looking like the complete demon that I am.
“How does it feel to know I broke my promise to you because of her? I will always choose her over you.”
And then I choose the words that will break her. The words will be a lie, spoken full of truth.
“How does it feel to know I love Kai when I could never love you?”
She sobs. All she has ever wanted was to be loved by me. And I could never give it. She thought it was because I could never give it to anyone. And she was right. I can’t. But she thinks I love Kai in a way I could never love her.
“I hate you,” she finally says from the floor, naked, exposed, and vulnerable.
“I know; as I hate you.”
Then the fire returns, and I prepare myself for the storm she’s about to blast me with.
“I could have saved your mother,” she shouts.
Her truth.
Her secret.
It guts me, just as she said it would.
“How?” I growl.
She couldn’t have, could she? I killed her with my bullet. She was dying, and I ended her suffering.
“Your father and you left your mother to die on her own, but I stayed. I watched. I snuck into the room, and she was still alive—very much alive.”
No, that’s not possible.
She sits up straighter, watching how her truth hurts me. “Your mother begged me to save her. To get help. I could see that although you shot her, it wasn’t fatal. She would die a slow death, bleeding out. She collapsed to the floor when you shot her so you could think you were saving her from the pain by putting an end to her suffering. But she didn’t die.”
“Why didn’t you save her? Why didn’t you call for help? My father and I left the premises that day. You could have saved her. Called an ambulance. Nothing was stopping you.”
And then I see the monster in her eyes. I wasn’t the only one who gained a monster that day. “Because I saw the pain in her eyes. I saw the evil. She still loved your father despite everything he did to her. She loved him—the monster, the devil himself. And because she loved him, I couldn’t let her live. So I left. I let her die on that floor alone.”
I close my eyes holding in my pain. It’s not fair to hate Liesel. We were young.
My father was the one who started it all.
He shot her.
I finished her.
Liesel left her.
We all betrayed my mother. We all played our own little part. And nothing we do now will bring her back. The only woman who could ever love me. She may have had her faults when it came to loving my father, but she loved me and that’s all that matters.
I reach into my boots and pull out my knife.
Liesel’s eyes go big, thinking I’m going to hurt her with it to get my revenge, but I will never seek vengeance when it comes to her.
I slice through the ropes, freeing her, and then I remove my shirt and pull it down over her arms, dressing her like a broken doll. Because she’s as broken as Kai and me.