He leveled it at my face, barrel steady, black and merciless. I could see the small scratches along the slide, the oil sheen catching the light. I had stared down guns before. Too many times.
“I warned you,” he said, finger tightening on the trigger. His lips formed the words clearly enough for me to read. “Now you die.”
Behind me, I felt movement.
Small hands fisted the torn hem of my dress. The boy pressed against my back, shaking violently, breath hitching in panicked sobs. I could feel his terror like a current through my spine.
I didn’t turn around.
I stared straight down the muzzle.
My wedding was in less than an hour.
A chapel waited. A groom waited. A life I had already resigned myself to waited.
None of it mattered.
Not the vows. Not the inheritance. Not the prison disguised as marriage.
The only thing that mattered was the terrified child clinging to me—and the truth I had spent ten years trying to forget.
I was still her.
Still the woman who had cleared rooms with blood on her boots.
Still the woman who had stood her ground in a basement when death pressed in from every side.
Still the woman who knew exactly how far she could push pain before it stopped her.
I planted my palms against the pavement and rose slowly, deliberately, placing myself fully between the gun and the boy.
I didn’t beg.
I didn’t flinch.
I would not let them take him.
Not today.
The man’s finger tightened on the trigger.
I saw it happen in slow, horrible detail—the minute tremor in his knuckle, the way the pad of his finger compressed against the metal curve. The barrel stared back at me like a black, unblinking eye, cold and absolute. I knew that shape. I knew exactly how fast death traveled once the pressure crossed a certain point.
Then the boy ran.
He bolted sideways with a sharp, frightened cry, small sneakers slapping against the pavement in a frantic, uneven rhythm. Pure instinct propelled him—flight overriding everything else.
The gunman’s head snapped toward the movement, reflexive, automatic. Predator tracking prey.
For one critical, fragile second, his attention broke.
That second was everything.
I exploded forward.
Low. Fast. Every ounce of pain vanished under adrenaline as my body moved before my mind could catch up. I drove my foot upward, a sharp, snapping kick that connected perfectly with the underside of his wrist. Bone met bone. Nerves screamed.
The Glock flew free.
