Chapter 53
53
Isaac
I n that moment, everyone else disappeared. My siblings, her mom…it was like my father, Tovah, and I were the only ones in the room.
I launched myself at my father as he pulled the trigger, knocking him out of his chair and onto the floor.
The shot went wide, the bullet hitting the window behind Tovah. Glass shattered, high pitched and eerily musical.
“You fucking shot at her?!” I’d hated my father for years, for causing my mother’s death and trapping me in a life I hated. But I’d never, ever felt rage like this toward him before. I’d never felt this kind of rage toward anyone, not even myself.
He struggled against me on the floor, gun still in his hand. I reared back and punched him square in the throat—right above his bandage.
“Don’t you ever—” I began.
He choked, eyes bulging. Blood leaked, staining the bandage and my knuckles. An inhuman satisfaction filled me.
So I punched him again.
“Fucking—"
And again.
“Hurt—"
And again.
“Her—"
He coughed over and over, choking on blood and his own sins, as my monster unleashed his unholy anger on him. My father fought to free his hand, but I just kept whaling on him.
“You fucking asshole, you’ve done so many horrible things, and I’ve accepted all of them. Would’ve let you get away with this shit. Until you tried to take the woman I love from me.”
“Isaac!” Tovah yelled from across the table. A warning.
I wasn’t fast enough. My dad raised the gun he was still holding and pistol-whipped me with it. Pain shot through my head, turning my vision grey. Holding my head in my hands, I rolled off him, and he crawled away and clambered up the chair until he was standing.
As my vision cleared, I saw him aim the gun again.
“This is the man you were always supposed to be, but your loyalty is in the wrong place,” he croaked.
“I’m not a man, dad. I’m a monster,” I slurred. Dizzy, woozy, and sick, I stumbled to my feet and launched myself at him again, this time grabbing him from behind. We grappled for control of the gun, my hand slippery from his blood, his own hand shaky from the pain I’d inflicted on him.
Tovah was still yelling my name, but I couldn’t concentrate on her. I needed the gun. Needed her safe. Needed this nightmare to end. Because everything I feared was happening; loving someone only for her life to be at risk because of my family.
With a surge of energy, I grabbed the gun, but I couldn’t get it out of my father’s hand. The most I could do was turn his wrist around, so the gun was pressed against his chest.
All it would take was me pulling the trigger, and he’d be dead.
But I was behind him, holding him in place with my arm locked around his neck. I’d learned how guns and bullets worked at a young age. If I shot a bullet into his chest, there was a 70-30 chance it would pass through his body—directly into my heart.
The world slowed back down in that moment, as my father tried to turn the gun back around.
If I shot him, and I miraculously didn’t die, I’d be forced to take on a life I loathed.
If I shot him, I’d probably die.
But if I didn’t shoot him…
…I lost everything that mattered. Because she was everything.
Tovah was on her feet now, my father’s man still pressing a gun against her skull.
“Lower the gun,” I told the man. “Or I shoot him.”
“Ignore him,” my father said. “Kill her.”
The man cocked his gun.
“You kill her, I kill him. I’m your next boss. Who do you think dies next? And not only you. I’ll take out your entire family, everyone you love, until there’s no one left,” I told the man.
After a moment, he lowered his gun.
One problem solved. But my father still had a grip on the gun and battled me for control of the trigger.
Fuck.
No time.
“I love you, bashert,” I said. “Any time with you, however short, was worth a million lifetimes.”
Tovah’s eyes widened as if she understood what I was planning.
“Isaac, don’t, please,” she begged.
“I love you, bashert,” I said. “I’ll see you in another life.”
I stared into those big brown, terrified, loving eyes, committing them to my soul.
I pulled the trigger.
The shot was deafening. My father’s scream even louder. A moment later, a fireball of pain tore through my heart—the one my bashert had brought back to life.
As my father slumped against me, as I fell to the ground, as my father’s man raised his gun again and pointed it at me to finish the job, Tovah’s voice rose above the cacophony, an enraged battle cry. She elbowed him in the side, knocking the gun out of his hands and running toward me?—
—and then there was another hellish slap of a gun firing and a bullet hitting skin.
Through blurred eyes, I spotted a red spot bloom on Tovah’s chest and grow.
Watched her fall to the ground.
Helpless, trapped under my father’s body, I roared my rage and anguish, at a world that would accept my sacrifice and take her from me anyway.
With the little strength I had left, I shoved my father’s body off mine and rolled over, crawling toward where she lay. Somewhere, far away, Liza was barking orders. Somewhere, far away, a woman was wailing.
When I reached Tovah, she was on her back, gasping for breath.
“Isaac, why—please, be okay, please be okay,” she was trying to say.
And, “Tovah, bashert, you’re okay, you’re okay,” I was saying back, or maybe thinking, I wasn’t sure. Were those tears on my face? “Tovah, you’re okay,” I kept repeating, weakly reaching forward like I could staunch the blood seeping out of her chest, but I could barely move my arm.
Around us, people were moving, there was yelling, maybe someone called the family doctor, I wasn’t sure. Everything disappeared again but the woman lying inches from me, as I tried to touch her and couldn’t. Tried to hold her and couldn’t. Tried to save her and couldn’t.
I heard a choked laugh.
I strained my head to look over at my father. His legs were hidden by the table, but I could see his face.
“Now you have no choice,” he said, with a strange gleam in his eye. “You’ll take over this family. And I can join your mother.”
With one final gurgle, he went still.
There was more yelling around us, guns being cocked. I ignored all of them. I didn’t care about anything. What else mattered?
“Tovah, please,” I begged. “You’re okay. Be okay.”
“I need you to live,” she was crying, reaching an arm toward me. “Live, please. Live .”
I reached out my arm and felt cooling skin as my fingertips touched hers. It was barely contact, but I grasped for it like it was the only lifeline left.
“Isaac,” she whispered, her eyes shutting. “I’m so?—”
And then she stopped breathing.
Someone roared with so much anguish, it shook the house. I didn’t even realize it came from me.
Someone was trying to drag her away from me. I grasped onto her hand, but the barely-there sensation of her fingers disappeared from under mine, like she’d never been there at all. Like she was already a ghost, and god, please fucking god, let her haunt me forever, let me not be alone for long.
Someone was pressing down on my chest, trying to staunch my bleeding, speaking to me. I didn’t hear them.
I didn’t pay attention to any of it. Didn’t respond to any of it.
My hand was empty.
She was gone.
Tovah, my bashert, was gone.
My own eyesight was going, my heart was stuttering, I was losing the will to breathe. To live. My father had the right idea. I’d go with her.
My eyes shut and I saw her face in front of mine.
Live, she said.
Not without you.
And then finally, thankfully, it was quiet.