3. Keira
KEIRA
I don’t hear the gunshots.
I think my mind blanks them out—protects me from the sound of it. But I see it. The flash. The way my father’s head bounces against the pillow. The dark spray that paints the walls like an artist gone mad.
I see him , too.
The man standing beside my father’s bed.
He’s tall. Broad shoulders wrapped in black. Calm in a way that doesn’t make sense. One arm extended, hand steady, gun still raised.
Then he lowers it. Slow. Like it was nothing. Like it wasn’t a human being he just ended.
I don’t move. I can’t. The only thing keeping me upright is the doorframe and the static ringing in my ears.
My father’s dead. And the oddest thing is, I don’t know how I feel about that.
The man turns. And everything inside me lurches. He isn’t what I expected—not that I had any image of what a killer would look like. But not this. Not him.
He looks young. Late-twenties, maybe. Light brown hair, a little messy, damp at the ends like he came in through the storm. Strong jaw, high cheekbones. Skin sun-kissed like he spends more time outside than behind a desk.
But it’s his eyes that do it. I’ve never seen eyes that shade of blue. Like the deepest depths of the ocean. Cold. Dead calm. It makes the rest of him almost worse. Like the universe got lazy and gave a killer the face of someone you’d stop to look at twice.
If I’d passed him on the street, I might have smiled at him. Now I can’t breathe. I’m suffocating.
He sees me. We lock eyes. He doesn’t flinch. He just stares at me, like he’s trying to figure out how much I saw—how much I understand. The gun doesn’t lift right away, but I can see it twitch in his hand. His fingers shift. Tighten.
Then the barrel rises. Pointed at me.
I’m quiet for the longest time. I don’t even scream. I just shake my head.
He starts walking toward me, slow and quiet.
Something snaps inside me. My body finally catches up to what my brain’s been screaming. Move. I drop the gun and stumble back into the hallway. My legs are jelly but I try to run.
He’s faster. He grabs my arm—hard. I cry out, more in surprise than pain, and try to yank away, but he’s already dragging me down the hall.
“No, no—please—let me go!”
He doesn’t answer. His jaw is locked. I catch the faintest clench of his teeth, like he’s biting down the need to snap.
We reach the stairs. I twist, clawing at the railing, but he hauls me down without slowing. His grip is a vice on my arm. We hit the bottom step and he doesn't stop moving.
We’re outside. The grass is cold and wet under my bare feet as he pulls me across the lawn. I try to dig my heels in but they just sink into the mud. The rain has eased to a mist, but the ground is soft, slippery. The cold snaps at my skin, but I can barely feel it above the fear.
“I won’t say anything!” I yell again, my voice cracking. “Just let me go—I don’t care what you did!”
He’s not paying enough attention, and he doesn’t even look at me as he drags me across the lawn.
That’s when I rip free. I don’t think. I just run. My feet pound the grass, slipping, sliding, but I keep going. Trees. Fence. Somewhere—anywhere—until something hits me from behind.
We crash into the ground. His body slams into mine, knocking the air from my lungs.
I hit the wet grass face-first, a grunt tearing from my throat.
My arm is twisted under me, cheek pressed into the dirt.
He flips me over and pins me down. One arm across my chest. One knee pressing into my thigh. His breath is rough against my face.
I squirm beneath him, shoving, twisting, but he’s heavier. Stronger.
“You don’t understand,” I gasp.
He leans in closer. His eyes flash, sharp and hollow.
“I’ll kill you if I have to,” he says, voice low, steady. “But if you shut up and come with me, I won’t have to.”
Something flickers through me at his words.
It should be fear. It is fear. But something else creeps in too—warmer, unwanted.
A spark under my skin. His body is pressed into mine, hard and heavy.
His hand is wrapped tight around my wrist. My chest is rising fast, my heart slamming against my ribs, and I hate that a part of me notices how close we are.
He feels like danger wrapped in heat. And for one terrifying second, I don’t know if I want to scream—or kiss him. I must be in shock. It’s the only explanation.
He sees it in my eyes. That flicker. His jaw tightens again.
“Don’t make this any harder than it has to be,” he says.
Then he hauls me to my feet like I weigh nothing, and this time when he drags me, I don’t fight. Not because I trust him, but because fear wears many faces.
And tonight, it wears his.
I don’t know where I am anymore.
Not just physically. Mentally, emotionally—whatever thread of reality I was clinging to has long since snapped. I’m stumbling across wet grass, barefoot and aching, with a stranger’s hand clamped around my arm like a chain.
The man who killed my father.
His grip doesn’t loosen, even as the black truck comes into view. Parked under a tree like it’s part of the night. The engine’s still running. A shadow leans against the hood, cigarette glowing like a warning flare.
He sees us. Straightens.
The second his eyes land on me, something in his expression changes. The man doesn’t ask questions. He doesn’t speak. He just pulls the gun from his waistband and raises it like it weighs nothing and aims it straight at my head.
“Who the fuck is this?” he screams.
“A hiccup,” my father’s killer says.
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” The other man’s voice is sandpaper and madness as he cocks his gun.
My father’s killer steps in front of me so fast I don’t realize what he’s doing until I’m staring at the back of his head instead of the barrel of a gun. He doesn’t say a word. Just stands there—solid, still, a wall of silence between me and the other man’s bullet.
For a second, the world shrinks. It’s just the three of us. One gun. And a storm of tension thick enough to drown in .
The other man’s arm trembles slightly. It’s nothing to do with hesitation or reluctance and everything to do with rage.
I can’t see the killer’s face, but I feel the shift in him. The way his body tenses. The way his head tips, just enough to meet the other man’s eyes. A silent exchange passes between them—fast, sharp, deadly.
I don’t understand it, but I feel it.
Whatever their code is, I’m on the edge of it. One wrong word, one misstep, and I’m gone. The thought hits me like ice water. They’re not arguing about my life. They’re negotiating the terms of my death.
The man with the gun spits on the ground, low and furious, before finally lowering the gun. “You better know what the hell you’re doing,” he mutters, venom laced through every syllable.
The killer doesn’t respond. He turns and grabs me again, rough this time—like punishment for being here. Like it’s my fault any of this happened. I stumble forward, chest heaving, heart a wrecking ball against my ribs. He shoves me toward the back seat, opens the door and pushes me forward.
I hesitate. Because getting in means I’m not just a witness anymore. I’m a secret. An obligation. A problem they’ll have to get rid of. My life may be a shitshow, but I’m not quite ready to die yet.
“Move,” the killer says, voice low. Deadly.
So I move. I slide into the back seat, my body rigid, eyes locked on the two men outside.
The man with the gun lights another cigarette like he didn’t just try to kill me.
The killer stands with his back to me, spine straight, shoulders tight, like he’s still deciding whether or not to regret what he just did.
The door slams shut beside me, and I flinch.
I think of my father’s blood soaking into his sheets. How it pooled—thick and hot and final—as though trying to say something even in death. The smell of it clings to my skin, clogs my throat, seeps into places soap will never reach.
I blink, but the image of his unmoving body doesn’t leave me. It burns behind my eyes like a curse.
And somewhere in the back of this car, tucked between the silence and the storm, I understand something I didn’t before: whatever I thought fear was—whatever I thought survival looked like—I was wrong.
This? This is what the fall feels like. And I’ve already been pushed.