“Lina!” Leo dashed toward me, a gun in his hand, but I stepped away, going to where Tino stood unarmed. I pointed my gun at Leo’s. How the fuck could he pull a gun at his own dad?
“Fuck, Angel. Why did you come back?” For the first time ever, I heard a speck of fear in Tino’s voice.
“I couldn’t just leave you behind,” I confessed. “And I needed to know the truth.”
“Lina, I came here to save you from him. He’s been lying about the Lanzas.Hekidnapped you.Healmost killed you.”
“You lied to me, too,” I said.
“Lina, I love you. Everything I did was because I love you. You’re my wife.”
“Not anymore.”
Leo’s eyes darkened. “What does that mean?”
“It means you should go back home. I don’t need saving. Not from Tino.” I meant every word. Tino had always been my savior. My dark, dark protector. I saw that now.
Leo raised his gun at Tino’s head level. “What did you do to her? What the fuck did you do to her? You raped her, didn’t you? You raped my wife and fucking brainwashed her!”
“Leo, please,” I begged. “Just go.”
“I’m not leaving here without you.” His voice took a harsh turn, an edge of darkness I’d never heard from him before. “Come here.”
“Or what? You’re gonna kill me? Like that girl that said no to you?”
“Angel, no. Shut the fuck up,” Tino said.
“You told her about Gloria?” Leo’s jaw twisted. “Is that how you brainwashed her?”
“So it is true? You killed an innocent girl just because she couldn’t love you back?” I asked in disbelief.
“She loved me back! She just didn’t want to believe it. She chose to believe another man’s lies and chose him because of it.” Suddenly, he switched the gun direction and pointed it at my head. “Just like you did.”
Bang!
“Noooooo!”
Thud.
Blood. I knew the texture of it by now when it covered my body, and the taste it left when I got some of it in my mouth. And the surge of panic that followed when I wondered if it was mine or somebody else’s.
I glanced down, and my fear doubled. This wasn’t my blood. It was Tino’s.
I fell to my knees next to his body. “Tino! Tino!” I stared at the blood streaming out of his body, staining my hand as I pressed the hole in his chest, shuddering. “You can’t die. You can’t leave me. You can’t leave me, Tino. You promised you’d never let me go.” My head whipped at Leo as I pointed my gun at him. “What did you do? What did you do?! This is your father, you sick fuck!”
He aimed at me again. “What didyoudo? How could you choose him after all he’s done to me, to my mom, to you? He was gonna kill you.”
The memory of Tino standing by my bed with a gun in his hand flashed in my head. The situation was similar. He was about to shoot me dead so I wouldn’t be with another man. Just like Leo did now.
Except Tino couldn’t pull the trigger and Leo could. “So were you. He never did, though. It’s you who just shot at me.” And Tino had jumped and took the bullet for me. He’d die for me for real, not in a staged charade.
“Put the gun down, Lina.”
I thought about shooting him with the goddamn gun in my hand I didn’t know how to use. How hard could it be? All I needed to do is squeeze the trigger and empty the whole magazine in his body. But another idea came to me out of rage, out of desperation, out of the loss he should feel, too for the rest of his life. Leo shouldn’t die. He should suffer for a very long time. “Or what? You’re gonna fire at me again? Do it. Shoot me. Shoot me and the baby inside me.”
His eyes narrowed in shock. “Baby? You’re pregnant?”
“Yeah. So go ahead. Kill me and your baby brother or sister just like Seppi did to your mom. I want you to live with that guilt. The guilt of killing your father and your sibling.”
