I’ve felt nothing any time I heard the noise or pulled the trigger myself for the past sixteen years since then.
This time however, I heard it and feel it throughout my entire body.
“Dragna..” I hear someone call out in a panicked, questioning tone.
“Dragna, please answer me.”
I don’t know why I’m so frozen. I don’t know why my body has seized up and is refusing to move.
I hear screams coming from somewhere as well as tyres screeching and then one of the most horrific cries I’ve ever heard. The kind of cry I haven’t heard since my mother found my aunts body and the bodies of my little cousins.
I try to take a breath and that’s when I realise I haven’t been breathing since the gun shot. What if Willows been hurt? What if someone shot her?
“No please, please don’t do this! Don’t take me, please, please, please!” I hear someone scream into the void of the night.
My senses are coming back to me now and I realise it’s been Willow this whole time. My vision is clearer now too, but the pain in my body comes crashing into me like a brutal wave.
It’s me.
I’m the one who’s been shot.
I feel the burning sensation on my neck and I move my hand to clutch just above my collarbone. My hand is immediately covered in hot, flowing blood that’s continuing to pour out of me.
I try to call out to Willow as I attempt to get out of the car but I fumble with the door handle and collapse onto the cold hard ground outside.
“DRAGNA!!” I hear Willow scream again.
“I’m okaymoya dusha, I wont let them take you.”
I can only think the words, I can’t physically speak them out loud. I still can’t get a good breath and my vision begins clouding again as my movements become slower and slower. I start to choke on the blood and its metallic taste as it fills my mouth.
I’m dying.
I’m dying in the middle of the road as the rain starts coming down harder and soaking my body as if I’m being cleansed of all my sins before I meet my maker all while someone is taking Willow from me.
My Willow, the only grounding factor in my life and I never even got to tell her. I never got to tell her that from the moment I set eyes on her that she had me. That I just wanted to protect her, to cherish her, to love her. She’ll never know I am so in love with her that I pictured our wedding day, or our kids and growing old together.
I’m dying but it’s not the pain of the gunshot wound or the blood loss that’s ending my life, it’s that I’m watching someone shove her into the trunk of their car and I can’t save her that’s truly killing me.
I’m dying while my entire source of existence is being stolen from me and I can’t do a single thing to stop it.
Chapter Fifty
Willow
“Dragna…” I say slowly.
It’s so quiet, like the calm before the storm.
I’m too afraid to look in the car window from where I dropped to cradling my knees on the pavement after hearing that sound. It was definitely a gunshot. I’ve never heard a gun being fired before and I never want to again. I should of just listened to him and got in the goddamn car when he asked me to! Why are you so stubborn Willow?
I look up from where I’ve been hiding behind my own forearms and see that Dragna’s car has come to a stop in the middle of the road. It’s eerily silent and I feel the most nauseating sensation creeping all over me.
“Dragna, please answer me.” I plead a little louder now but there’s still no response.
I lower my hands to the ground and push myself up to stand noticing there’s absolutely nobody around. Where did the gunshot come from? Who shot the gun and why isn’t Dragna answering me?
It’s so dark and I have to take a step closer to the car to peer into the open window Dragna and I were just arguing through and that’s when I see it, see him.
