For one suspended, impossible moment, I thought that was it... that the sound alone had ended everything. But death didn't come cleanly or kindly.
The bullet tore through my chest, close enough to my heart that I felt it more than I understood it, and the pain that followed was blinding. White-hot. Total. It erased thought, erased language, erased everything except the raw, screaming fact that something inside me had been destroyed.
My body gave out beneath it.
I fell backward, hitting the concrete with a hollow, brutal thud that rattled what little air remained in my lungs. The impact knocked the breath out of me completely, leaving my mouth open in a silent gasp that went nowhere.
I couldn't breathe.
Couldn't think.
Couldn't even scream.
There was only pain… radiating outward from the wound in violent waves, swallowing everything else whole. The world narrowed to that single point in my chest, where something vital had been ripped open.
Blood followed.
So much blood.
