Reign of Wrath (Dirty Broken Savages #3)(7)

Julian still sees her, and the fury cuts across his face like a vicious mask just like it did before. He still pulls his gun and aims it right for me.

My mind races. If he shoots me and Hannah doesn’t get in the way, what will happen then? I’d give my life for my sister in a heartbeat, so I don’t even flinch when Julian fires this time.

I just tighten my grip on Hannah’s arm, trying to keep her in place.

But it doesn’t work. She shoves me to the side hard, and I stumble, letting go of her hand for a split second. That’s all the time it takes for her to take the bullet for me again, going down in the same heap as before.

“No!” I shout. “No. This isn’t right.”

“You should have stayed out of it!” Julian screams. He runs in and grabs Cody. He doesn’t spare a look for Hannah as he escapes the alley.

My chest goes tight as I stand there, watching Hannah die for the third time.

No, goddammit.

There has to be a way.

There has to be something I can do to keep this from happening.

Once more, I force time back, this time a little bit farther. Before we come bursting out of the church. The alley is empty, and I realize I don’t know what Julian was doing before we got there.

Was he waiting for us? Was he trying to make his own escape?

There’s nothing to fill that in with, so as soon as we come pelting into the alley, Julian appears at the mouth of it. He catches sight of us, and his face twists with that familiar anger, the same as all the other times.

We argue, and he fires.

I try to yank Hannah back when she runs forward, but this time she just spins and holds onto me in a hug, her back to Julian as the bullet hits her right between the shoulder blades.

This one is so, so much worse because I can feel it when she jerks in pain. I can hear the labored rattle of her breath and see the pain and anguish in her eyes before she goes down to the ground.

Something warm and wet rolls down my cheek, and I realize I’m crying.

Seeing this over and over again is like ripping away more and more parts of my heart, but I can’t stop. The thought that there’s something I could do to stop this from happening or fix it consumes me, and I can’t accept that it won’t work.

I force time back time and time again.

I keep pushing, keep trying, but it doesn’t help.

I try attacking Julian, knocking him back before he has a chance to shoot at me, but the bullet just goes wide and ends up hitting Hannah anyway.

I try putting Cody in the front, thinking that Julian won’t shoot if his son is on the line. But Hannah jumps in front of her son, and that makes Julian shoot all the same.

I push Hannah out of the way, knocking her down before the gun goes off, but somehow she still ends up in the way.

Three, four, five, six, seven times. Seven times, I watch my sister bleed out in the alley. Watch her blood pool under her body. Hear that whispered promise we made to each other years and years ago.

“Kill for you, live for you, die for you.”

It’s like the first time each time, only with a new layer of agony, because I don’t understand why this isn’t working.

Why I can’t save her.

Nothing works, and each time I watch her go down, it’s that much harder. I feel frantic, crying uncontrollably now, trying to drag in deep breaths through my mouth, even though it just makes the stabbing pain in my chest hurt even worse.

“Hannah. Please.” I choke the words out, and they come out raspy and broken. They also make no difference.

Her body is cold.

Her spirit is gone.

There’s nothing left of her here.

My eyes pop open, and I glance around the dark room wildly for a second. I’m awake, out of the nightmare…

But that’s not right, is it?

I’m still living the nightmare, because what happened in my dream is true. Hannah is dead, and there’s nothing I can do to bring her back.

I feel so numb. Dead inside.

My heart is still beating, and I’m still breathing in and out, but I may as well have died in that alley with my sister.

I don’t remember lying down to go to sleep, and I’m still in my underwear from when the guys undressed me earlier. Everything after that is kind of a blurry mess, and it makes my head hurt to try to think about it too hard.

So I stop.

Someone shifts in the bed behind me, and I turn over and realize Priest is sleeping with me. His face is unlined and more relaxed than usual in his sleep, and there was a time when I would have reached for him or cuddled up and tried to take comfort in his presence and warmth.

But now I’m barely aware of him. If I hadn’t felt him move, I might not have even realized he was there. The connection between us feels thin and muted, just like everything else.

I just lie there, staring at the ceiling for what could be minutes or hours. Time doesn’t even matter.

Eventually, the numb blankness shifts to a restlessness that I can’t ignore. It feels like something is pressing down on me, making it hard to breathe. It makes me feel like I’m going to crawl out of my skin, and the closest thing I can compare it to is the feeling I had after I killed Ivan and the pain didn’t go away.

Lying here in the dark feels wrong somehow.

It feels like I shouldn’t be here.

Like I can’t be here.

I can’t do this.