Page 197 of Romancing in Rot

“Stay with Jacob.”

Jacob is there before I finish saying it, pulling Poppy back against his side, one hand already rising toward her eyes. Poppy doesn’t fight him, but she grabs his wrist with both hands, holding tight over her eyes.

I walk into the middle of the arena.

Every step hurts. My ribs ache. Blood dries sticky on my face and neck. My tank top clings to me, soaked in proof that I am still alive. The crowd watches me now, quiet and uncertain.

Russ looks up at me from the floor.

For the first time in all the years I have known him, he looks afraid of me.

“Clair,” he begs. “You can’t.”

I take the gun from Leon.

His fingers brush mine.

Warm. Steady.

There is blood under his nails and grief in every line of his face. He stays fixed on me, not Russ, not the crowd, not Bryant watching us like he’s trying to figure out if this is still entertainment or the moment his kingdom starts to burn from the inside.

I want to touch Leon. Pull him into me. Say something to reach the thirteen-year-old boy still bleeding inside.

But Russ is still breathing.

So I turn.

Russ drags himself backward, his wounded leg useless behind him. Blood pumps through his fingers and leaves a dark trail across the tile. His broken face twists with panic. The man who once made me feel small is on the floor, crawling through gore, begging me to remember a connection he spent years poisoning.

“You can’t kill me,” he says. “I’m Poppy’s father.”

Something in me goes very still.

I lift the gun. “A mother would do anything for her kid, right, Russ?”

His face crumples.

All those years of fear shrink down to one man bleeding on tile.

How strange.

How small.

“I hope you taste like shit.”

Then I pull the trigger.

The gunshot punches through the open court.

Russ’s head snaps back. Blood and bone burst across the tile behind him in a hot spray. His body jerks once, then collapses, the rest of him going slack in a spreading pool of red.

Silence follows.

Not peace.

Never peace.

But an ending.