Chapter 8 - The Desperate Trap
The Gary Regional Aviation Hangar was a cavernous, rusted tomb. Rain hammered against the corrugated tin roof like a drumroll of bullets. Wind screamed through the cracked fiberglass skylights, spraying cold mist over the concrete floor.
Inside, tied to a wooden chair beneath the flickering amber glow of a single halogen work lamp, was three-year-old Leo.
The little boy was crying silently, his cheeks red and blotchy, his silver eyes wide with terror as he clutched his toy plane against his tiny chest.
Pacing in front of him, soaked in rain, her blonde wig gone and her real hair plastered wildly across her face, was Sophia. She held a silver revolver in her trembling right hand, muttering incoherently to herself.
“It wasn't supposed to happen like this,” Sophia hissed, her voice bouncing crazily off the empty metal walls. “He was supposed to marry me. He was supposed to move on! She ruined everything! She always ruins everything!”
The heavy sliding hangar door suddenly screeched open.
A gust of wind blew a torrent of rain inside. Framed in the wide doorway were two silhouettes.
Vincent. And Anna.
“Mommy!” Leo screamed, his little voice echoing with absolute joy and desperate fear. “Mommy!”
“Leo!” Anna cried out, taking a frantic step forward, but Vincent held out a rigid arm, stopping her.
“Stay behind me,” Vincent commanded in a voice of deadly calm.
Sophia whipped around, aiming the revolver directly at Leo’s head. “STOP! Don't you dare come any closer, or I’ll blow his brains all over this concrete!”
Anna stopped dead in her tracks, her breath catching in her throat, her hands flying up in surrender. “Sophia, please! Don't hurt him! He’s just a baby! Take me instead—please, take me!”
Sophia let out a shrill, hysterical laugh that sounded like tearing metal.
“Take you? I already tried to kill you once, Anna! You’re like a cockroach! You just won't stay dead!” Sophia’s face twisted in maniacal fury. “Vincent was mine first! We had our whole lives planned out before his father forced him to marry you for your family’s land and political connections! He never loved you!”
“You’re wrong, Sophia,” Vincent’s voice cut through the cavernous hangar, deep, steady, and chillingly clear.
He stepped out from the shadows, stepping deliberately into the light, putting his entire body directly in the path of the gun.
Sophia’s hand shook. “Vincent… stay back! I did this for us! I got rid of her so we could be happy!”
“You killed an innocent mechanic,” Vincent said, taking a slow, calculated step forward. “You sabotaged my aircraft. You locked my pregnant wife in an inferno. And you made me an accomplice to your evil for three years.”
“I LOVED YOU!” Sophia shrieked, tears mixing with the rain on her cheeks.
“You don't know what love is,” Vincent said, his voice dropping into a register of profound disgust. “Love is what Anna did—enduring agony to protect our son. What you have is an obsession with a life you never earned.”
Vincent took another step. He was now only twenty feet away from the barrel of her gun.
“Vincent, don't!” Anna sobbed from behind him. “She’s crazy, she’ll shoot!”
“Put the gun on me, Sophia,” Vincent commanded, opening his arms wide, presenting his broad chest as an unmissable target. “Leave the boy alone. He’s innocent. If you want to punish someone for not loving you, punish me. I’m the one who didn't marry you. I’m the one who never looked at you the way I looked at Anna. Shoot me.”
Sophia’s eyes dilated with madness. The barrel of the revolver slowly drifted away from Leo’s head and centered squarely on Vincent’s chest.
“You really love her that much?” Sophia whispered, her finger tightening on the trigger. “More than your own life?”
Vincent looked over his shoulder for one brief, eternal second. He locked eyes with Anna. In that gaze was three years of unspoken apologies, endless love, and an absolute, unshakeable certainty.
“With every breath in my body,” Vincent said.
May you like
Sophia screamed, and pulled the trigger.
***
