There is no version of this story where he walks out alive.
Berk steps back from Bryce, wiping her blade on his shirt like she’s bored with him. Blood drips down his leg and arm, splashing onto the concrete in slow taps. He’s shaking, but his mouth still runs because a coward’s last defense is noise.
Ronan nudges Bryce’s chair with his boot and looks at us like he has an idea forming. A stupid one. A perfect one. “Rock. Paper. Scissors?” he asks, grinning like a demon.
Rowan huffs out a dark laugh. “For real?”
“Yeah,” Ronan says. “See who gets the honor.”
Berk snorts. “Boys are idiots.” But she watches anyway, eyes sharp.
We square off. Hands ready. “Rock. Paper. Scissors.”
Rowan smashes Ronan with rock over scissors.
Next round, I take Rowan with scissors over paper.
Final round. Ronan claims victory, hooting like he just won a championship.
Bryce wheezes, voice cracking. “So, what… since he won… that means I get to live?”
We all stop. Then laugh. Hard.
Ronan wipes a tear from the corner of his eye. “No, dumbass. We’re not playing to save you. We’re playing to see who gets to kill you.”
Bryce pales. Good. Let him feel it.
I won the last round by default because Rowan refuses to celebrate Ronan’s victory, claiming a redo, and Berk finally says she’s calling it before they wake the whole damn dock. I step forward, gun in hand.
But I pause.
“Berk,” I say, offering her the gun. “You want it? After everything he did… after what he took from you.”
She meets my eyes. Slow. Steady. She shakes her head once. “Blood kills blood. He took your sister. That belongs to you.”
“He took something from you too,” I fire back, because it burns in me like acid. “He took something from all of us.”
Her gaze flicks between the three of us, and a wordless agreement settles thick in the air. She isn’t wrong. We all lost pieces of ourselves because of this man. Because of his choices. Because he let demons keep breathing. Because he is one.
“You’re right,” I tell her. “We finish this together.”
We form a line without speaking, like we’ve done this a thousand times. Bryce whimpers something desperate, but I’m done listening.
We raise our guns.
He tries to speak.
We pull the triggers before he gets the word out.
Four shots.
Four holes.
Four pieces of justice drilled through a man who never deserved breath.
He slumps, head hanging, blood pooling under his chair in a spreading midnight stain.
Ronan exhales. “Well. He’s fucked.”