Page 3 of Violent Little Thing

The sound was unimaginably loud.

But then I remember seeing Sonja’s face in front of mine. Our eyes met, and I saw the fear in them.

That was the last thing I remembered.

Nine days later

“I’m going to sue them!”

“With what money?” Dad asked in exasperation. “We’re already struggling to spend time with her thanks to our jobs. How are we going to sue them?”

I looked to my mother, who was the sweetest woman in the world. Then to my father who wasn’t necessarily sweet, but he loved my mom and me fiercely.

“I don’t know how we’re going to pay these medical bills, Tom.” My mother threw up her hands. “And we’ve both missed a week’s worth of work.”

My dad, named Thomas Wayne Kensington Junior after my Pop, looked beaten and broken down to his soul.

I cleared my throat. “You don’t have to be here.”

My mother, who hadn’t realized I was awake until now, cupped my face. “Oh, baby. That’s not what I’m saying.”

Except it was what she was meaning.

She couldn’t afford to be out of work. Neither could Dad.

The last thing that they needed were medical bills, and I was racking them up fast.

An anger so deep and intense lit in my soul, and I had the urge to crawl out of this hospital bed, drag myself down the hospital corridors, and make my way into Seraphina’s room where she sat in the president’s wing of the hospital, and beat her to death with a bedpan.

“I hate her,” I whispered, voice ragged.

I didn’t remember much from the accident.

I didn’t remember being pulled from the squished BMW, the Jaws of Life tearing through jagged metal to make it so. I didn’t remember the first four days in the hospital. I didn’t remember the hours of time that I was “awake.”

I only remembered, fully, two days ago when I’d asked my mother if Sonja was okay. Why she hadn’t visited yet.

That was when my mom told me that Sonja had died.

That Seraphina had killed her.

She’d hit the SUV face first—though my mom hadn’t shared that. I’d gotten that information out of Beau.

Beau, who’d visited every single day, multiple times a day.

By Sonja not wearing her seat belt, and Seraphina pulling out in front of an SUV going seventy, she’d died.

On impact, according to Beau.

She’d hit the SUV and had been thrown out of the car through the back glass as our car had rolled.

She’d also been decapitated.

He hadn’t wanted to share any of that information with me, but I’d begged.

He’d then told me about Seraphina, who had a broken femur, and that was it.

My mother’s warm hand touched my face. “I know, baby. I know.”