He grinned, then turned to his driver. “Let’s go,” he said, voice heavy with defeat and something worse—fear.
They piled into the car and reversed down the drive, tires carving ruts in the mud.
I let the silence settle for a full ten seconds. Then I walked back into the house, where Jojo was still hiding, trembling but unhurt.
I opened the door, and he spilled out, arms wrapping around my neck so tight I thought he’d cut off my air.
“I’m okay,” I said. “We’re okay.”
He nodded, face buried in my shirt.
I looked over his head at Macon, who just grinned and gave a two-finger salute.
Behind me, I heard Harrison exhale for the first time since the shooting started. He stood, hands shaking, but when he spoke, his voice was different—smaller, maybe, or just honest for once.
“You could’ve gotten us all killed,” he said.
I looked at Jojo, at the hand he held over his belly, then back at my father.
“No,” I said. “I just kept you alive. Like always.”
He stared at me, and for the first time, I thought maybe he saw me. Not the fuckup son or the embarrassment, but the man I’d become. The protector, the weapon, the goddamn wall between everything I loved and everything that wanted to destroy it.
We stood in the ruins of the living room—glass everywhere, blood pooling on the floor, the wreckage of my life on full display.
But Jojo was safe. The baby was safe.
I wiped the sweat from my face, smeared it with a little blood, and smiled for the first time since the alarms went off.
Let them come. I’d be waiting.
You can always tell when a firefight’s about to break wide open. There’s a moment, after the first volley, when everything slows down—sound drops out, colors flatten, and all the years of muscle memory do the heavy lifting while your brain catches up.
That was where I lived, in the gray-space between shots, dragging Jojo behind the kitchen island as another barrage of bullets ate the clapboard above our heads. Plaster dusted the floor, mixed with the shattered remains of Mom’s wedding china and a week’s worth of Jojo’s careful, perfect pies.
He landed hard, knees up, hands over his ears. I pressed him down, bent low until my breath mixed with his. “You stay here, understand? If I say run, you run. If you hear anything that isn’t my voice, you crawl out the back and get to the horses.”
He nodded, but his eyes never left mine.
Above us, a bullet ripped through the light fixture, showering us with glass. I rolled to my side, Sig in hand, and fired two blind shots toward the noise. It wasn’t about hitting anything—just reminding them I wasn’t afraid to shoot through my own goddamn walls.
Burke’s voice crackled over the walkie, low and urgent: “Contact, west side, closing fast. At least four, all carrying. Possible heavy on point.”
“Copy,” I replied, keeping my tone level. “Macon, you got east?”
“Eyes on,” he grunted. “They’re stacking up by the feed shed. Gonna lose sight if they break left.”
I risked a glance over the island. Through the warped window glass, I could see figures moving along the fenceline—ducking low, advancing in twos, rifles out and ready. My land. My home. I’d tilled the earth those bastards now trampled.
I felt the old training settle over me like a Kevlar shroud. No more emotion, no more rage—just the next action, then the next. The familiar coldness was almost a relief.
“Hargrove must have spent a fortune on these assholes,” I muttered, mostly to myself.
Jojo heard me anyway. “Will the police come?”
I glanced at the old rotary phone, now a mosaic of shattered Bakelite. “Eventually.” I didn’t say that sometimes help came too late.
I checked my ammo, then swapped the Sig for the AR-15. The balance was perfect, the grip worn smooth from years of practice. I felt a twitch of nostalgia—a better time, or at least a simpler one, when violence was the job, not the last line between everything I loved and oblivion.
