Chapter 46
RONNIE NEWSOME
I limp into the carnival with a gas can filled to the brim with gasoline in one hand and a gun in the other.
Screams erupt around me once everyone sees me; parents snatch up their kids, and boyfriends and husbands steer their partners towards the entrance of the carnival.
I don’t care. I’m here for one reason and one reason only: Dante Romano.
He took everything from me, and now I’m going to end him.
I’m covered in scars from the fire he started weeks ago, the fire I wasn’t able to save my family from.
I should have died with them that night. I couldn’t save them, and the guilt eats me alive every single day.
But not anymore, because tonight is where this ends. And as I watch Dante follow some dainty little girl into the Funhouse, a cruel smile forms on my face.
He’s making this so easy for me.
“S-sir,” someone says from behind me. I turn around to see a boy, probably no older than eighteen, standing a few feet from me, cellphone clutched tightly in his hand.
A cruel smile forms on my face, and the boy backs up a few steps at the sight of it. I can only imagine how terrifying I look right now: half of my face is normal while the other half is disfigured with shiny pink skin.
He looks like a monster, children whisper to their parents as I walk down the street or into a store.
Their parents don’t even bother to correct them, to explain to them that people get hurt really bad sometimes and it can change the way they look on the outside, but it doesn’t change them on the inside.
It doesn’t matter now, because soon, I’ll be nothing more than ash on the wind.
And I’m bringing Dante Romano down with me.