So I don't have to think about the phone.
I only have to think about the gun on the ground three feet from Frank's ruined hand.
Nico's still standing over him, chest heaving, hands red, and for one second the whole world is just the sound of Frank moaning through his teeth and my own heartbeat slamming in my ears.
"Lydia." Nico's voice, rough. "Get back."
I don't get back.
I walk forward instead, bend down, and pick up my stepfather's gun off the cracked concrete of the driveway I grew up in. It's heavier than I expect, warm from his hand, and my fingers know what to do with it without me telling them anything.
Fourteen years old, standing in this same driveway, watching him drag my mother inside by the arm and telling myself I'd never be big enough or brave enough to do a single thing about it.
I'm not fourteen anymore.
Frank looks up at me. Even now, flat on his back, hand shattered, he's grinning through the blood on his teeth.
"Knew you had it in you somewhere." He laughs, wet and short. "Your mother never did."
"Don't talk about my mother."
"I made your mother into exactly what I wanted. Every year of it." His eyes flick to Nico, then back to me, daring me. "Your father too. Best work I ever did, and nobody even knew to call it work."
"I know."
"Course you know. Whole thing's on your little phone, isn't it." He laughs again, and it turns into a cough, blood on his lips now too. "Go on, then. You want to shoot me, shoot me. I'll die knowing I ran your whole life from a folding chair in your kitchen and none of you saw it coming."
My hands are steady. That's the part that surprises me most, standing here with fourteen years of him in every nerve I have and my hands aren't shaking at all.
"You didn't run my life," I say. "You ruined my mother's. You told me yourself you built the whole trap that got my dad killed. And you're about to find out those aren't the same thing as running anything, because I'm still standing here and you're the one bleeding out in the dirt."
"Lydia." Nico again, closer now, not stopping me, just saying my name like he wants me to hear it before I do this.
I don't look at him.
I look at Frank.
"This isn't for you," I tell him, and my voice doesn't shake even a little. "This is for me."
I pull the trigger.
The sound of it fills up the whole yard and bounces off the house I grew up scared in. Frank goes still. No drama to it, no long slow flicker. Just final. Just over. I stand there with the gun still warm in my hands and I don't feel the world end.
I feel it start.
Sirens.
Distant, then not distant, rising up out of the neighborhood fast. Half the street must have heard that shot and reached for a phone. Nico's head snaps toward the sound and something in his face goes hard and fast. He's already three moves ahead of me. I can see it happening behind his eyes before he says a word.
"Give me the gun." Flat. No room in it for anything else. "Now, Lydia."
"What? No, I did this, I'm not letting you..."
"Give me the gun." He's already crossing to me, already reaching, and his hand closes over mine on the grip, gentle even now, even in the middle of this. "You will not be the one they find holding it. Not you. Not after what cops have been to you your whole life. I won't let that happen. Not ever."
"Nico..."
"Give it to me."