Chapter 22
TWENTY-TWO
FREYA
Gunshot flew around in the other room as Mom pushed us back to where Bronx had pointed.
Hayley grabbed the door and thrust it open, ushering aside the little girl and a young woman who looked a lot like the guy who wasn’t a fan of me right now.
Or maybe he was. I really didn’t know where we stood on that right now.
Glass continued to break, and the guys yelled back and forth at one another.
The sounds of guns cocking and bullet casings falling to the floor rang out in my ears as I gathered the little girl in my arms. She was shaking.
Shivering. Sniffling and crying. And in that moment, I realized why my father had worked so hard to keep me away from this life. Away from his lodge.
Because danger lurked around every corner.
“Where did he say that shotgun was?” Hayley asked.
My eyes darted around before I shoved the crying little girl into her arms. I ducked underneath the bed, digging out the shotgun as my mother got down onto her stomach.
I saw her smoothing her hand underneath the bed before she ran it against something.
Soft curses fell from her mouth as I pulled the gun from underneath the bed.
My father hadn’t taught me much about guns.
Hell, he’d hardly taught me anything at all.
But I wasn’t an idiot. I’d watched him over the years cleaning his own guns.
Stacking up his own ammunition in the home.
He taught me how to be safe with them, and that was enough.
“I found the ammo for it,” my mother said as she crawled underneath the bed.
A metal box slid toward my foot before she reappeared.
“What can I do?” the blonde-headed girl asked.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“That’s Ella, Stone’s sister. And Keva, Ella’s daughter. They’re with Texas,” Hayley said.
I nodded as my mother tried to wrangle the gun from me, but I pulled it away from her. I glared at her hard before I held out my hand, wiggling my fingers for the ammunition. She gave me a hard look before she plopped some down into my hand, and I promptly loaded up the two-gauge shotgun with it.
Then, I stuck the rest in my pockets.
“What are we going to do?” Ella asked.
“Right now, we’re going to stay put. There are no windows in this room, which means—”
Before I could even get the damn sentence out, a bullet pierced through the wall. I watched it, almost as if it moved in slow motion. It sliced through the front wall and tore through the room and exploded into the wall on the other side leaving a gaping hole that caused my mother to gasp.
“Hollow points,” she hissed.
“Okay. New plan. We need to get out of this room,” I said.
Another bullet blew by, opening another large hole in the wall.
I motioned for everyone to follow me, and Mom promptly opened the door.
She found a small hallway off to the right that tucked us between the back of the lodge and the middle rooms. Ella and Keva went first, and then I pulled Hayley into the hallway.
I didn’t know if my mother had a gun on her, but she was pretty confident about where she was going.
Which was more than I could say for myself.
The men roared in the other room, and it felt like bullets were raining down from heaven.
Ella cradled her daughter against her chest, both to soothe her and so we could all move faster.
We slipped through the narrow passageway before it dumped us out toward the side of the lodge.
Mom took a right and made her way for a door and then ripped it open and motioned for all of us to get in.
I turned around and made sure no one followed us before I slipped in after everyone else.
“It’s okay, Keva. I’ve got you. This’ll all be over soon, okay?”
“Texas is gonna protect us. He always does.”
“Sh-sh-sh-sh, princess. You really have to be quiet. Promise Mommy you’ll be quiet.”
As wood splintered and glass shattered, I looked over at my mother.
She had guilt in her eyes and sadness seeping down her cheeks in the form of tears.
She looked over at me with a look in her eye that both apologized and said, “told you so.” And my heart broke for her.
Caught between a man she once loved who did her wrong and a man she currently loved who did wrong in his professional life.
I looked over at Hayley and watched her wrap her arms around our mother, trying to comfort her as best as she could as her own tears threatened to take over.
And as I stood there listening to the carnage take place around me, a piece of myself died with every bullet that landed against the lodge.
“Where does that door lead to?” Ella asked.
I looked over at it and narrowed my eyes. I didn’t even notice it when we first walked in.
“I figured it was a bathroom or something,” my mother said.
“You figured?” Hayley asked.
I leaned my back against the door heavily, feeling the ground rumbling underneath my feet.
Something was very wrong about this. There was gunfire canvassing the rest of the lodge.
Why not this back room too? I looked over at my mother and saw panic rushing over her features.
Keva wiggled away from her mother, exclaiming that she needed to go to the bathroom.
Then, that side “bathroom” door flew open. Exposing the wrap-around porch before the cliffside drop of the ocean.
“Keva, no!” Hayley called out.
A hand darted into the room and gripped hold of Keva’s shirt.
A long, slender arm pulled her toward the door as her mother lunged for her.
Gunfire slipped through the door, just barely passing Keva’s ears.
People screamed, and Hayley yelled. Ella sobbed with profuse tears as plaster from the walls exploded out of nowhere.
I looked down at the shotgun in my hands before I looked back up, seeing another hand come out of nowhere and wrap around Keva’s leg.
“Not today,” I murmured.
Without thinking, I leveled the gun at the man I could see. I looked down the barrel of the shotgun and aimed as best as I could. I waited until Keva fell to the ground, completely out of my sight. Then, I unloaded the first shot.
The man groaning caused me to run across the room to get a good sight on the other guy as well.
I cocked the gun to reload it, feeling the shell casing fall to my feet.
And as the man looked up at me, he tried to fiddle with his weapon.
Ella reached for her daughter and Hayley ran for the man.
But all I did was aim that fucking shotgun right at his face.
I gritted my teeth, knowing there was no going back if I pulled that trigger and did what I wanted to do.
But when he tried scooped Keva underneath his arm, I discharged without a flutter of guilt filling my gut.
I peppered the man’s face in ammunition.
He groaned and gargled as he released his grip on Keva.
People scrambled around me in a blur as I watched blood pour from the man’s face.
He choked on it. He stumbled against the railing.
And as the man I had originally shot lunged for him, they both tumbled over the railing, falling down the cliffside and finding their deaths on the deserted, sandy beach below.
I was numb. Like everything was on pause. The world stopped turning as Hayley lunged for the door, closing it and then locking it too. I slowly looked around the room, my eyes falling to the door we all had originally come through.
Then, a hand on my shoulder slowly pulled me back into reality.
“Freya. Sweetheart. Honey. Can you hear me?”
I heard my mother’s voice as I slowly turned my eyes toward her.
“Give me the shotgun,” she said.
My eyes danced around her face. The gunfire and the explosions were nothing but a backdrop soundtrack to how hard my heart pumped blood through my ears.
All I heard was the rushing sound it created as the thunderous war rumbled below my feet.
I felt sick. I felt strong. I felt humbled.
I felt disgusting. I felt so many things but none more than protective.
I felt more protective of the people in this room than anything else.
“No,” I said plainly.
I slipped my hands into my pockets and opened up the barrel of the shotgun. I loaded up two more rounds and then stuck two more between my teeth. I crawled onto the comically small bed, rested the shotgun against the end of the frame, and readied it for my next shot.
If anyone came through that door, I was blasting them to hell.
Along with the two men I’d already killed.