35. AVERY #4
The bathroom door clatters open with an echoing punch that reverberates through me. My throat closes up as I peer out back at the mirror. My pounding heart hangs itself somewhere between my knees and the floor. It doesn’t matter how fast I act, he was already anticipating me.
“Come on now, doll,” Mike grunts as I try to shut the cubicle door, and he rams into it, sending me stumbling back. “Don’t make this hard,” he sighs, shaking his head as though he’s hurting himself with his actions. “I didn’t want it to come to this, Avery.”
Do something! I yell at myself, shaking off the shock and my ridiculous stupor.
Mike is coming closer, and while my natural instinct tells me to cower away, I stand my ground.
“It was always going to come to this,” I spit as he pulls out a small gun, and the only thing I can think to do is slam the door right into his face.
It all happens so quickly that the jarring sound of the shot ricocheting off the walls winds me for a brief moment as the door bounces back on its hinges. Without a second thought, I run as fast as I can past him. If I can get out of here…
Almost. My fingertips graze the long door handle as he pulls me back by my elbow brusquely. While I stagger back, slipping on the water I dropped on the floor earlier from my hands, Mike grabs me by my hair, tugging it so that I’m looking straight up at him.
Fear evades me in that one moment where his dark eyes narrow to slits on mine.
“I tried to warn Robert to stop, but he couldn’t help himself. Like father, like daughter. Your husband was right about one thing after all.”
“Did you kill him too?”
“I did you a favor, doll,” he sneers in my face, and while he’s too busy gloating, I close my hand around the barrel of his gun gently enough that while it’s pressed to my stomach, on its side, he doesn’t realize what I’m doing.
“I told Carl he was an idiot for choosing a whore over you, and he laughed. I tried, Avery, I tried to make him see that you were the best choice.”
If we weren’t in such a precarious position, I would laugh myself. Maybe I was the best choice, but I’m grateful that I wasn’t the one Carl made.
“I even got the judge to push back the hearing. All that idiot had to do was bring you back home.”
“This is my home, Uncle Mike.” I try to breathe as steadily as I can to buy myself some time and purchase on his weapon.
“I suppose we all make bad choices. Want to know what mine were?” he asks, blowing a long breath over my face.
“I didn’t take care of your father soon enough.
It would’ve saved us from all of this. Now my hands are all dirty.
Look what he made me do, Avery!” Another hard tug of my hair has me looking up at him again. “Look!”
“You did it all yourself,” I spit back at him, pulling at the firearm in his hand as hard as I can, refusing to let go when he releases my hair and pulls at it too.
We’re in a tug-of-war when the loud shot rings around us, making me jump back as shards of porcelain from one of the basins fly everywhere and water pours onto the floor.
“He should’ve let it go! But he just had to be the hero all the fucking time. It was always the Robert show. Nobody else mattered, only what he wanted.”
“So, you poisoned him. You had him killed like a criminal.” Turning, I step over the shards on the floor. If I can get close enough to the exit, maybe I can find a way of getting away.
“No, I took care of him myself. Like I should have taken care of you instead of sending that useless whore to do a man’s job.” Mike takes a deep breath, shrugging off the visible tension in his shoulders before he takes a step forward and swipes my legs from under me.
The impact rattles all the way up my spine to my head as I land on the wet floor on my ass.
“We all learn from our mistakes, and I’m here to fix mine now.”
“They know it’s all you. The feds have everything.”
“They have jack shit,” he laughs, and my racing heart thunders faster and faster as scorn wickedly tugs at the corners of his lips. “Because it’s not what you know, it’s who you know and what you can leverage over them.”
The door swings open suddenly, and while Mike’s attention is diverted from me, I jam my feet into his knees.
The shards on the ground cut into my palms as I fall back into the wall and watch him slip back.
His head hits the edge of the shattered basin as his neck snags along the sharp edge, eyes blinking and his mouth gaping open and closed like a fish out of water while blood pours from his neck.
His body twitches and limbs convulse as the life floods right out of him.
That’s it.
It all happened so quickly. A split second. That’s all. One last heartbeat.
It’s over.
Except I still can’t find the air I need to live.
A sob breaks from my throat. Hot and raw, it burns as though my lungs are corroding in my chest while I look for a way out of here. There’s only one person I need right now, and nothing will stop me from getting to him.
Nothing will ever stop me from being with him again.
Rhett Reynolds is my one and only. The forever and eternity I hoped for all my life. He is my everything.