I shift my weight from one foot to the other and feel the sweat on the backs of my knees.
“Kendall,” he says, using my soon-to-be-former name, “Do you think Patricia and Paul are looking down at you and smiling or frowning?”
That’s what Emil has always said to me, to keep me in line. On those occasions that I do talk back or push back. He brings up my biological parents. It worked when I was seven years old. But I didn’t know then what I know now.
Ten years later, his manipulation is no longer working.
He has no leg to stand on when it comes to virtue. Not only is he responsible for the death of my parents, but I know the real intent behind “adopting” me.
My mind flashes back to a conversation I overhead between Spade, one of Emil’s longtime guards, and Emil’s spoiled, bloodthirsty only son, Crypto. I’d woken up one night to the sound of low-key scuffling outside my bedroom door.
“Dad said she was for me, anyway. What’s your problem?” That was what I’d heard Crypto say that night.
“And she ain’t even 18 yet. Why do you think I’m posted outside the door? To keep you away from her,” Spade had answered in that thick Bronx accent. I wasn’t a fan of having guards everywhere, but at that moment, I was grateful. I didn’t know why Crypto wanted to get into my room that night, and I didn’t want to know. More importantly, I learned Emil had been grooming me for his son. Sure, if that horrible kid would inherit the family business one day, he’d need someone at his side who was stable.
Fuck this “family.”
“You keep their names out of your filthy mouth,” I say to Emil, gripping the slide with my thumb and forefinger to move it back, like Khaz showed me how to do. My hands are sweaty, though, and the spring is tight. In the time it takes to pull the slide back and aim the gun at my target again, Bulletproof still hasn’t moved an inch.
I wait.
I wait because I want to see that look on his face, which tells me he knows he’s about to die for what he did. I want him to know that I’ve been planning this day under his nose for ten years, and he never saw it coming. Because Bulletproof always sees it coming, and he always survives.
In my mind, I’d imagined he had his hands up in surrender. I had imagined him pleading to spare him or reaching into his pocket to set his phone to emergency. Something other than sitting there staring at me, incredulous, with cake in his grizzled hand.
“And why should I not say their names? They loved you, and I did my best. And this is how you thank me?”
Inhaling slowly, doing a terrible job of controlling my trembling breath, I reply, “He begged you to let her go,” referring to my mother. “Under your orders, you made him watch them kill her first. It was all so unnecessary. You left me orphaned, so you could raise a wife for your unbearable son.”
At this, his eyes widen. He didn’t know that I knew that part.
“Your days were numbered, and the countdown began when you moved me here.” I gesture to indicate all of our surroundings. The gardens, the ten-car garage, the tennis court, the swimming pool, the movie theater, the bowling alley, and the gigantic, corny mansion that looks like a castle, complete with a stone fortress of a fence around the perimeter.
“You don’t want to do this,” he says casually, taking a bite of the cake.
“Oh, I do. And, I’m going to enjoy seeing you piss yourself before I do it,” I reply.
He chuckles. “I’m not afraid of death. But you are.”
“No…no, I’m not.”
“If you kill me, you’ve got no protection. The whole operation is up for grabs, and you will be at the center of it. Everyone will want a piece of you.”
Strange that he should say this when he has a perfect heir to the throne in waiting. Well, not perfect, and in no way good. Or the least bit competent. But I’m not here to split hairs or talk shop.
“I can protect myself.”
He takes another bite of cake, then sits back and sighs thoughtfully. “You know, I wondered if this day would come. I wondered, but then I thought, no. She’s a normal teenage girl with teenage problems. She’ll come around. Turns out my first instinct was correct. Always trust your gut. Just remember, Kendall. I gave you a good life. A comfortable life.”
My feet are itching to run. I need to do this now. Now, before someone starts to wonder where we are.
“I don’t want a comfortable life. I want a great life,” I say.
I squeeze the trigger once. The bullet hits dead on, snapping Bulletproof’s neck backward. The folding chair rocks back on two legs but then rights itself, and the forward momentum dumps him forward.
Splat.
He’s face-first in the cake. That, I didn’t see coming.