“Rubin?” Walsh called out to him.
Rubin turned, just as he approached me, looking back at the man who was meant to be his father.
“You’ll pay for this,” Walsh warned him. “You’ll die for this.”
I blinked hard and turned to look at him. I’d seen some fucked up shit in my time, heard even worse, but watching themayor of our town tell his only son that he’d kill him had to be one of the most messed up pieces of shit I’d ever heard fall from a man’s tongue.
“Fuck you,” Rubin spat before he turned to walk to Ayda.
Caught off guard, I found my attention drifting to Rubin, both proud of his response and concerned for how this would affect him later in life. What I hadn’t realized as I looked at him, however, was that I’d lowered my gun.
In a moment of weakness and concern, I’d taken my eye off the target, and while Rubin climbed over the ledge of the window, Walsh took his opportunity to strike, charging at me with so much force and at such a speed, I didn’t have time to respond.
My body hit the floor hard, the shards of glass forcing my back to arch and my eyes to scrunch tight. Walsh was on me, a fist flying across my face before I could find the energy to strike back.
I took two hits to the face, sending my chin one way only for him to send it flying back in the other direction before I was able to lift a knee up between us and hammer it into his groin. A groan of pain erupted above me, but Walsh didn’t falter or move, and as I tried to raise my gun to his head and shoot, he hit the weapon out of my grip, sending it sailing across the floor.
I was about to fight back when I heard the unmistakable sound of the cocking of a gun.
A second later, a bullet soared through the air.
It hit Walsh and sent him crashing the floor beside me, a limp body crying out in pain, leaving me to whip my head back in the opposite direction.
There, by the window, stood Rubin. His eyes narrowed, jaw set tight, and his arms out with the gun aimed directly at his father.
“And fuck you once more,” he pushed out through grittedteeth.
