Page 20 of Rock the Boat
Gazing at Sergio, I silently asked about the gun. “She must have had it hidden in her tits or her pussy. I didn’t give her a pat-down. Next time, I might,” he said, chuckling.
All I could do was shake my head.
And suddenly, she was coming at me. Helena had managed to get away from Dom, and her claws were out. My knife was put away. I had no blade. No weapon besides the gun I held in my hand, and with Dom here, my conscience was getting the better of me. I didn’t want to kill her, but I did want her to suffer. Without thought, I raised my arm and pulled the trigger, hitting her in the arm. The bullet sliced through her skin like butter and landed in the wall on the other side of the room. She would forever have a scar in the exact same spot I had one.
Dom held her once again, Sergio stood in front of me, and Marcos cuffed her. Her arm was bleeding, but it was nothing more than a flesh wound. It wouldn’t kill her.
I was too damn nice. I should have slit her throat.
The room was in an uproar. “Well, that was an interesting turn of events. We are headed back to port where this group will be remanded into custody.”
“And you?” Helena’s mother demanded. “You did this. You made her do all of this. And you,” she pointed her finger at Leon, “How could you do this to my baby?”
“Me? I’m going to disappear. Nell Ward died when your daughter killed her and left her bleeding in a back parking lot. When your future son-in-law and the others threw her away like garbage on the rocks, hoping an animal would drag her off and eat her,” I snapped, my emotions too close to the surface. Try as I might, I could not push them down, and they were bubbling over.
“It was all—”
“Fake? Were you not looking at the same thing everyone else was? You can live in denial all you want, but I’m going to rejoin the real world.”
“You shot her!”
“In self-defense. The video evidence will show that. Mrs. Robins, let me put it this way, your daughter is screwed and not in a good way.”
“What’s going to happen to us?” Mr. Robins asked.
Shrugging, I said, “You will be let off the ship when we dock. My dispute wasn’t with you.”
“You could have taken this directly to the police. There wasn’t any need for these theatrics.”
I grinned. “But where was the fun in that.”
I took Dom’s hand in mine and pulled him out of the room, singing.
Row, row, row your boat
Your wedding is no more
I took the ship and made you my bitch
Because you are such a whore.
Row, row, row your boat
Your life is what I’ll take
You left me to die, so an eye for an eye
I really hope you bake.
“Bake?” Dom chuckled when the dining room doors closed behind us, and the fresh ocean air hit us in the face. “I think your other one made more sense.”
“I needed something that rhymed. I had more time to come up with the last one. This one was more spur of the moment,” I snickered and sighed. My thoughts traveled back to when I saw Dom suddenly appear in the dining room. He was both the last person I wanted to see and the one I wanted to be there the most, although I wasn’t sure if it was to talk me down or support me. “When I saw you walking along the wall, I almost lost it. You surprised me. What are you doing here?”
He sighed and let go of my hand to squeeze the railing and look out over the water and blackened sky alight with stars. “What I always do. I came to save you,” he finally said.
“I’m not the same girl I was. I’m not the teen who needed help with her bike chain, and I’m not the girl you found on the rocks.”
“You’re right. You definitely are not. But she is still in there somewhere. If not, the dining room would be a bloodbath, and we would not be standing here talking right now.”
