Page 98 of Crowned in Sin
His face changes. Just slightly. I've hit something true.
"You don't know anything about me."
"I know you're a coward who needed a badge to feel like a man." Another step. He doesn't notice, too busy hating me. "I know you spent thirteen years scared of a dead man's memory. I know the only time you've ever felt powerful is with somebody smaller than you and a door locked between them and help."
"Careful."
"Careful of what? You've already lost. Only question left is how many more people you drag down with you before somebody finally makes you stop."
Frank's finger flexes against the trigger guard and Lydia's whole body goes rigid. I hate every second I have to keep standing here doing nothing but talking.
"I know Lydia stopped being scared of you a long time before you noticed." Another step. Six feet now. Five. "That's what really gets you, isn't it. Not that she might die. That she looks at you right now and she's not afraid."
Frank's arm twitches, gun swinging half an inch off her jaw toward me, just half an inch, and it's enough.
I move.
I've closed distance on men my whole life to hurt them. I've never closed it to save someone standing this close to the barrel of a gun.
It changes everything, makes it faster and meaner, because there's no room in it for anything but getting his hand off that trigger before it matters.
I get my palm under his wrist and drive up. The shot goes wide, cracks off into the sky, and Lydia's already twisting free, alreadyout of the blast radius, already screaming something at me I don't have time to hear.
He recovers fast, twists, and drives an elbow into my ribs that knocks the air clean out of me. I let it happen because it buys me another half step closer.
Frank swings the gun back toward me and I take his hand.
Not the gun. His hand.
I close both of mine around his gun hand and I bend it back past where a wrist is built to bend, and something inside it gives with a sound I feel more than hear, and the gun drops onto the concrete between our feet.
He screams.
I don't stop.
Weeks ago I told her I'd take apart anyone who touched her, piece by piece, and I meant it.
Now that opportunity is right here in my hands. I go for the hand that held the gun on her, for the hand that dared to touch her. I break his fingers one at a time.
"This is for every time you raised this hand to someone smaller than you." My voice doesn't sound like mine. "This is the last time it ever works."
He goes down hard, cradling the ruin of his hand against his chest.
But he’s still alive.
Still breathing, still cursing, the same man he always was, flat on his back in his own driveway with everything he ever used to hurt anyone broken beyond use.
Suddenly, real fear seeps into his eyes, and he’s not looking at me anymore
I look up and back.
Lydia's standing six feet away with Frank’s gun in her hands.
37
LYDIA
My phone'sbeen recording since the second he pulled that gun on me back at the house. It's been in my jacket pocket this whole time, camera dark, microphone open, catching every ugly thing he's said since, the whole confession, all of it, already saved somewhere I can't lose it now no matter what happens next.
