by Fallon Hart
“Jake,” Dove said, his plump, youthful cheeks stretching into a smile as he gazed up at the approaching Wilde.
A gunshot rang in my ears and suddenly Dove was on the ground. Horrified I looked away from the bloody mess the bullet had made of his head and turned to Ben as panic ensued. My uncle’s people yelled and screamed, some ducking for cover, other trying to push past my uncle’s men who held them back with their own guns.
Ben stood, gun pointed in Dove’s direction as my uncle yelled at him to stand down.
“Dove,” I whispered, tears stinging my nose as I looked back toward him.
Wilde now stood in front of the boy’s body, Brett clutched in his grip as he used him as a shield against Ben. The blade of his axe dug into Brett’s neck as Wilde’s dark eyes bore into Ben with utter hatred.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” William raged at Ben.
“What you should be doing old man!” Ben spat, still aiming his smoking gun at Jake Wilde. “No man waltzes into our community and makes demands that we freely give into. We don’t negotiate. This is our land and our fucking rule. We let word get out that we’re a bunch of pussies the gangs will come for us first.”
“That isn’t up to you, you little prick!”
Ben sneered. “I know what I’m doing.”
Realizing he had no intention of letting Wilde walk out of here alive, instinct drove me. Wilde was my only chance outside the ranch. I grabbed the gun holstered on my uncle’s hip and pressed the barrel to Ben’s temple.
He froze against the gun as I cocked it.
I heard guns unholstering all around me but I ignored them as my uncle yelled out a command for them to hold their fire.
“Ben’s aiming to take you out, William,” I said, trembling with my hatred for this man and for what he’d just done to Dove. “I’ve heard the talk. And this proves he has no respect for your authority. He’s jumped the gun, so to speak, because he hasn’t convinced enough men yet. Have you, Benny Boy? But so impatient. And you killed an innocent boy. A hard worker. Someone who was liked.” I quickly glanced around at the men to see them frowning at my words. “You just fucked yourself.” I raised my voice. “We all know what the punishment is for treachery. We all know what the punishment is for killing in this community without a direct order from William. That punishment is death. Say the word, William, I’ll execute this traitorous murderer and then you let me and Mr. Wilde walk out of here unharmed.”
Silence reigned around the barn.
Ben looked at me out of the corner of his eye, his own arm wavering. “These men will kill you if you kill me, you little bitch.”
“These men will abide by my uncle’s orders, you murdering piece of scum.”
I glanced at my uncle.
His expression was blank. Then he nodded.
I pulled the trigger before I could think.
Not even hours later that moment would come back to haunt me but right then the act of killing a man felt surreal and necessary. All that I cared about was justice for Dove and getting the hell out of this Godforsaken place for good.
I handed the gun back to my uncle, grabbed the small bag he’d made me pack earlier, and strode toward Wilde. He still had Brett by the throat.
“You can let him go,” William said. “You have my word that you and my niece will leave here unharmed.”
“If it’s all the same to you I’m not sure I trust your people.” Wilde looked at me. “You got your shit?”
I nodded.
He turned back to my uncle. “I’m going to keep your man as a shield. I’ll let him go once me and the girl are outside your gates.”
“Fair enough,” William agreed.
We left the barn, not giving my uncle and his men our backs. William ordered his men to stay where they were and he followed us out onto the yard in front of his house. He walked slowly with us as we walked backward, Wilde holding fast to Brett with a calm steadiness that impressed me.
My heart thudded in my chest as I kept pace with this man. This stranger I was putting all my hope in. How had it come to this? That I’d choose a strange man, who could hurt me a million times over for all I knew, over my uncle? Over my flesh and blood.
I’d grown up with a mother and father who adored me. When my mother died of cancer when I was twelve the world as I knew it ended. Her loss changed me irrevocably. It cut a piece of me from myself, a piece I’d never been able to restore. And then at fifteen the world as we all knew it ended and my father brought me to the middle of nowhere to an uncle I’d never met. We’d only been at the ranch three days when my father collapsed. A day later he was eliciting promises from both me and William on his deathbed.
I lost another piece of myself that day.
And in the days and weeks and months and years after, William tried to chip at the remaining parts of my soul. Why? I didn’t know. It was a mystery that had haunted me for so long. Eventually I realized that in order to survive I would have to let go of the hurt and hold he had over me. The burning need to know why he treated me so badly had been carefully buried. Actually, I thought I’d rid myself of it.
But watching him stalk us off the ranch, the question suddenly hovered on my tongue and then forced itself out.
“Why have you always hated me?” At least I managed to ask it with no emotion. A flat, cool question in a tone that bordered on bored.
William’s eyes sharpened on me.
We kept walking but he didn’t speak.
“Well?” I pushed. “A grown man doesn’t decide to take a dislike to a child for nothing.”
“You were a burden,” he answered.
I shook my head. “It was more than that.”
I’d always suspected how William felt about me was complicated. Sometimes, I’d turn to find he’d been watching me, a look of pain and something akin to longing in his expression that puzzled me. As soon as he realized I was watching him back, darkness crept into his expression suffocating the pain, the tenderness.
“Don’t I deserve to know now that we’re finally going to be free of each other?”
We reached the twenty-foot gate and wall William had erected around his ranch. Some said the wall would hold back the gangs if they came but the truth was a rash of illness among the cattle and a number of setbacks in the greenhouses made a future at the ranch for this many people uncertain. It was stay behind and eventually starve or travel west in hopes for a better life.
William nodded to the guard posted at the gate and I watched as it was slowly unlocked and pushed open. Wilde let go of Brett and together we stepped over the threshold.
“Rebecca.”
At the sound of my name, I looked over my shoulder at my uncle.
“You look like your mother.”
I froze.
William’s expression hardened. “You look exactly like your mother. You have her eyes.”
My eyes. The ones Wilde was afraid would attract attention on the road. I had long since stopped paying attention to my appearance. What I knew was that I was of average height, slender from rations but strong from hard physical labor. My hair was shoulder-length and a dark brown that turned auburn in the light. The sun had long since darkened my skin to a golden tan. There was nothing exceptional about any of that. But for my eyes.
They were a clear, pure, startling spring green.
Some said they were beautiful. Others that they were unsettling.
I cared for no one else’s opinion of my eyes. What I knew was that they were the only thing I had left of my mother.
“And?”
The hatred I saw in my uncle’s gaze was familiar. “She was mine first. Did your father ever tell you that?”
Stunned I could only give him a slight shake of my head.
“Well she was. Until your father came back from college and stole her from me. That’s why we didn’t talk before… I never forgave either of them.”
Bitterness swelled in my throat making it thick and my voice
hoarse as I replied, “So you took it out on me? An innocent child?”
“You’re the daughter of a whore and a traitor. You were never innocent.”
“I don’t have time for this,” Wilde suddenly cut in, reminding me he was there. His eyes were flat. “You’re either coming or going.”
I nodded despite the rushing speed of my heart rate. For years I’d been plagued by my uncle because of the sins of my parents. I wouldn’t respond to his insults though I wanted to defend my mother and father. Instead I did the only thing I thought might piss William off more than anything.
I gave him nothing.
Nothing except my back.
To my shock he didn’t take a hit at it. Instead I determinedly kept pace with Wilde’s long strides as we marched down the overgrown road of my uncle’s ranch and disappeared into the woods beyond.
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