Chapter dedication: someone_random111
Song recommendation for the chapter: PSYCHO KILLER - TALKING HEADS. 🎧🎶🎶🎶
*
April glared at Lee, her painted lips pulling back into a mocking sneer. "How many times do I have to tell you common folks that I am indeed a bitch, huh? Name calling don't do jack to me because I've been called a lot worse by other people."
Lee planted her arms on her waist and tilted her head to the side. "It's not surprising, really. I don't know or care what you are doing here, but you have to leave. Can't you see that I am in a conversation with Chris?"
"Yeah, what a conversation it is. Did he tell you that we are also engaged?"
Lee widened her eyes, schooling her expression into what she hoped looked like shock. "R-really?" she turned to Chris, giving April her back. She winked at him. "Chris, is that true? Are you truly engaged to her?"
Thank God Chris' eyes looked red rimmed from crying earlier. He grimaced at her, his head dipping down to hide a smile that Lee saw, but wasn't visible to April. "Yes. I am so sorry, Ledia."
Lee pinched her thigh so hard that tears sprang into her eyes. "Oh my God, Chris. How. . ." she sniffed, then turned to face April. "What did you do to him, you bitch! He is mine. I won't let you have him. That will not happen while I'm alive."
April laughed sardonically. "From the first since I met you, Ledia Arden, you finally said something sensible."
Lee glanced at Chris, wondering what the crazy bitch was up to now. "What do you mean?"
"You won't be alive when I marry him." She reached into her purse, withdrew a 9mm. Beretta, and levelled it at Lee. "You two must think I am so stupid."
Lee's blood turned to ice. Somehow when she envisioned meeting April again and pretending that she was sad and annoyed with Chris, she never imagined it ending with a gun pointed at her.
Chris stood up and came to stand beside Lee, a frown on his face. "What are you doing, April? Please lower the gun and let's talk."
"Talk?!" She chuckled. "You must really think me to be a fool, Christopher Ross. I can't believe this."
Lee puffed her cheeks in attempt to soothe her pounding heart. There was no telling what the crazy woman would do, so they needed to be careful when addressing her.
"April," Lee said slowly, her hands extended in front of her, palms turned up in surrender. "Let's not do anything rash."
"What were you saying earlier, huh? He is yours? What a dreamer you are, Ledia Arden. Chris belongs to me and only me. No one would ever have him if I don't have him. I'll kill them instead."
"Come on, April. I already agreed to marry you."
"That's a lie." She grinned. "I know you were going to pull a stunt like this when she came visiting, which was why I planted voice and video bugs all over your house. I must say, you really don't disappoint, Christopher."
Lee sucked in a breath. Everything seemed to be getting worse as the minutes ticked by. "How much did you hear?"
"Enough to know that he doesn't intend to marry me in two days. Imagine me going all around to make the day perfect and special for both of us, meanwhile you're reuniting with your old lover and planning to bring me down." She tsked. "You shouldn't have tried to double cross me, Ross. You made a mistake the minute you spilled your guts to your father and your nosy friend."
Lee pursed her lips. There was no telling what she'd to do them now.
"April, it doesn't have to end this way. I promise that I won't tell anyone about what happened if you walk away now. Right, Ledia?"
Ledia wished Chris brought up another option. She wanted to wrap her hands around that slim neck and squeeze the life out of the bitch. But that would mean more paperwork and jail-time. She had no choice but to follow his lead now that things have suddenly taken turn for the worse.
"Yes. We promise you that none of this would go past these walls, April. It will be a secret between the th—"
"Just. . .just shut the fuck up!" She gripped one part of her hair with her free hand. "God, I hate you! How I hate you, you little downtown rat rag, baker. I had hope of being with Chris before you arrived, but you snatched him right under my nose. Enticed him with your fucking pussy."
Chris looked murderous now. "Stop speaking to her that way."
"Or what?" April taunted. "Don't forget who holds the power here, Ross. Don't think I won't shoot you if you try to smart mouth me."
"No." Chris drew himself to his full height. "I know you won't hurt me. Because you love me too much to hurt me."
"You're right, Chris. I love you too much to hurt you. But you don't feel the same way about me. No. You seemed to like downtown damsel in distress bakers. This is the April you need. So why do you run away from me? I can be whatever you need. Whoever you need. All you need to do is to realise I'm not going anywhere. But since you keep playing with me, I'll have to punish you again."
"W-what do you mean again?" Lee asked, half afraid to know and half nervous about the gun.
"Oh, Chris. I did so much for you." She wiped her forehead with her free hand. "I know you don't remember, but we've actually met before your father introduced us. You came to my parents house the summer I turned fourteen and I fell for you at first sight. I decided then that I was going to have you, no matter what it took.
"I was in love with you. I built a little room inside my closet for you. I kept your pictures there, collected informational about you. When you got your first girlfriend, I was so hurt. I wanted to kill the bitch, but I didn't want blood on my hands so I hired thugs to beat and rape the bitch. I threatened to tell the whole school if she doesn't break up with you and it was a problem solved in no time. Finally, you were single again."
Lee gasped, bile rising in her throat. April was truly psychotic and obsessive. Shit.
"I got myself into your college so I could be close to you. It was so easy to convince father that I didn't want to go to Harvard. Then you had to go and get another girl, but I took care of that too. Every one of your girlfriends that mysteriously left you was all orchestrated by me. I had someone kill Raymond Arden with the hope that this bitch would resent you and let you go. See what I do for you, Chris?"
Had Lee really thought April was a psycho? The girl was insane as well as manipulative.
"You killed my father?" Lee asked, hot rage burning up inside her. Tears spilled down her cheeks. "You bitch!"
"Yes, of course." Her grin was menacing. "Chris, I followed you to your company, stood outside your office door while you spew your spinless gut to the your father and friend.
"I tried to show you how much I loved you after we met again. I even killed my own parents for you. After they found out my little shrine for you and the diary I recorded everything I'd done, I knew I had to get rid of them before they exposed me. I had someone call them and offer them a huge contract they'd been lusting after for months. Just one little bomb implant in one of the plane wings and. . . boom! They were gone. And you—" she trained the gun on Lee. "—I once told you to watch your back, remember?"
"You're evil!" Lee snarled at her.
Chris remained quiet beside her. Lee could feel the rage rolling off him in waves. He looked ready to kill.
April laughed. "I warned you, didn't I? But you. . . you just wouldn't listen. You wouldn't listen to me." Her eyes narrowed, her gun hand wavered. "I would do anything for you. Kill anyone for you. All you had to do was ask."
Chris felt his throat close up at how he'd been foolish once again. And now, Lee's life was in danger for the second time because of him.
Chris swallowed hard, brainstorming for a plan. There was nothing he could use as a weapon or shield.
One look at Lee's pale face had him making up his mind in two flat seconds, and then he reached for Lee's hand and squeezed it.
His shaking limbs wanted to panic. One wrong move. . . Just one wrong move could make April pull the trigger, and Lee would be killed. Chris wasn't sure he could handle loosing her now that it felt like things were beginning to get better.
Lee seemed to have registered the determined look on his face, horror briefly flickered across her face as she gave a shake of her head. Chris ignored her.
"No," Chris' voice rose an octave. "No one would be killing anyone." He moved to get between Lee and the gun.
"Christopher!" Lee nearly leapt out her skin at the sudden move.
She winced when her stomach muscle began to cramp up. She doubled over. Cursing as the pain slowly increased, rendering her ability to move, to protect the one she loved. Useless.
"How cute. He's trying to protect you even at the face of death." April snickered. "But it's not Chris I want gone. I just want to punish him." She levelled the gun at Chris' chest. "I wanted to protect you. I had a plan to take us away from here, so we can start a new life in the Bahamas. I dreamed of making you mine, to keep you with me forever while I carry your babies, build our own solid little family, but you fell in love with another."
"You're right, I love Lee," Chris said, not concerned she held a gun. "I love her and I will always love her. I won't let anything happen to her."
"Chris," Lee pleaded through the pain that was slowly easing now, reaching out for him, but her hand merely brushed the back of his shirt. He seemed to have moved forward a bit. "Christopher. . ."
April frowned. "What?!" She snarled. "You love her? You piece of shit." Livid, April raised the gun until it pointed at Chris' head.
Lee's heart dropped.
"I will kill you."
"April, No!" Lee pleaded, one hand pressed to the upper part of her belly that ached faintly now. She straightened up, her eyes watering. "If you want me, you can have me. All of me. If you kill him I have nothing left. I'll be nothing. I'll die too."
Her lips curled. "Now that you mentioned it, I've changed my mind. If I won't have him, then nobody will. You'll suffer for the rest your miserable life."
Lee whimpered, her own pains forgotten. "No one has to die. I'll leave him, I promise you."
"But he loves you. I have no use for him if his heart is tainted." She shook her head. "He'll never be completely mine. So it'll be good if we both never have him."
She positioned to fire the weapon.
Chris flew at her.
"No!" Lee yelled.
The door opened.
A gun went off.
Chris dropped to the ground.
Lee screamed, falling to the floor on her knees to get to Chris, completely ignoring the pain trying to cripple her heart.
He was laying on his side, his eyes closed. One out-flung hand held a fistful of April's shirt. His mouth was opened a little. Lee pressed her fingers against his flushed skin. The skin was clammy and cold. She felt the rhythmic flutter of a pulse under her fingers. Faint and slow, but there.
Low on his side a bullet hole oozed slowly, the dark blood spreading out on the tiles, staining it a bright red.
"Police! Freeze!"
People swarmed the room and voices shouted several warning.
She heard the police reading April the Miranda rights as they cuffed her. She felt the paramedics push her aside gently as they lifted Chris' still body on the gurney they wheeled in. All she could see was the blood staining her fingers, staining the floor. Chris' blood.
His thick, red blood.
Lee puked her guts out.
A/N:
Holy shizzzzz!!!
That really happened, yeah?
OMG 😱 ????????
Well, people, we have one more chapter to go and then we have the epilogue. 🎉🎉🎉🎉🥁🥁🥁🥁
QOTC: How do you feel right now?
Please don't forget to vote 🌟, comment 💬, and share 📱.