🔥 Chapter 4 — "The Night God Looked Away"
1085 Words
The first gunshot sounded like a firework.
Someone even laughed.
A crack of gunfire echoed.
Guests cheered, thinking it was just.. fireworks—
Until the screaming began.
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Masked men in black suits swarmed the garden, shooting without mercy.
Flowers exploded into petals and blood.
People screamed in terror.
Chairs toppled.
My wedding cake collapsed under a bullet.
Aiden shoved me behind him. “Liana—run!”
But I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t think.
I could only watch.
My sister screamed crying for someone to help them. She fell beside her husband, hugging her stomach, still protecting her baby.
Then my niece.
Her pink dress disappearing in the chaos. I lost her too...
My mother ran toward them, but a bullet caught her back —no warning, no mercy, and she fell beside them, hands reaching for her daughters even in death.
I tried to go to her.
Aiden held me back.
“Liana, NO—”
I screamed, trying to reach her, but Aiden dragged me inside.
Through the glass doors I saw one killer force my father and brother to their knees. My father tried to fight—tried to grab the gun—
But he was outnumbered.
Through the glass doors I saw one killer force my father and brother to their knees. My father tried to fight—tried to grab the gun—
But he was outnumbered.
They knelt there together—father and son—held down by strangers who showed no mercy.
My father lifted his head once more, meeting my brother’s eyes. There was no fear between them. Only understanding.
And in that moment, I knew—
love and courage were never going to be enough to save us tonight.
The gun rose.
I screamed.
The first shot tore through the night, sharp and final.
My brother...
My little brother...
My father roared then—a sound I had never heard from him before.
Rage.
Grief.
Despair.
Through firelight and smoke and shattered glass, his eyes found mine.
The second shot echoed louder than the first.
My father fell beside my brother, his body folding as if the strength had been torn from the world itself.
They didn’t move again.
Two shapes on the ground. Two lives erased. Two anchors ripped from my soul.
I slid down the doors, my screams dissolving into nothing.
My throat burned.
My chest felt hollow, carved out by bullets I never felt.
In seconds— I lost my father. I lost my brother. I lost the last pieces of the life I knew.
Suddenly, the killer spotted us.
His masked face snapped in our direction.
And in that single second, everything ended.
“Run!” Aiden shouted.
We ran.
The world blurred—firelight, screams, shattered glass beneath our feet. His hand was locked around mine, pulling me forward, shielding me even as death chased us.
Then the sound came.
A sharp crack. Too close.
Aiden’s grip loosened.
He staggered, his body jerking once before he collapsed into my arms. The force nearly dragged me down with him.
“No—no—please—” I sobbed, clutching his face, my hands shaking violently. “Aiden, look at me. Please. Stay with me.”
But his eyes stared past me, empty, unseeing.
“Not Aiden,” I whispered, my voice breaking into pieces.
“Not him. Anyone but him.”
I pressed my forehead to his, rocking him as if love alone could pull him back.
“Please, God,” I begged. “Please. I’ll give anything.”
But the night stayed silent.
And God wasn't there.
Rough hands yanked me by the hair, tearing a scream from my throat.
I fought—clawed, kicked, thrashed with everything I had—but he was stronger. Too strong. He dragged me across the ground and threw me into the open yard like I weighed nothing at all.
I barely caught my breath before his boot slammed into me.
The air exploded out of my lungs.
I collapsed, coughing, crawling away on shaking hands, my vision swimming, my body already giving up.
He grabbed me again.
Lifted me.
I was weightless for one horrible second—
then he hurled me into the overturned chairs.
Pain ripped through my body, sharp and blinding. I cried out, curling in on myself, trying to disappear, trying to protect what little I had left.
The cold circle of the gun rose before my eyes.
Time slowed.
The shot tore through me.
Agony burst inside my stomach, so violent it stole my breath. Another shot followed, closer, deeper, breaking something precious inside me.
My hand flew to my belly on instinct.
My baby.
My tiny miracle.
The life I hadn’t even told him about yet—
slipping away before I ever felt a kick, before I ever whispered “I love you.”
Hands seized my hair again, dragging me across shattered glass. I felt my skin tear, felt myself bleeding, but the pain barely registered.
Everything inside me was already numb.
Cold spread through my body, deeper than the fire, deeper than the fear.
And all I could think was—
I couldn’t even save my child.
Bullets kept flying.
People dropping like broken dolls.
My family’s villa turning into a slaughterhouse, the air thick with smoke and terror.
The killer’s voice was the last thing I heard:
“BURN EVERYTHING. LEAVE NO WITNESSES.”
Then the fire started.
Flames climbing the curtains.
Flames eating the walls.
And the bodies.
So many bodies.
My brother.
My cousins.
Our friends.
So many people... So many lives stolen in a single night.
All gone.
I tried to crawl toward Aiden one last time, but my body wouldn’t move.
Trying to shield my stomach.
My baby.
My tiny heartbeat.
Gone before I could even touch him.
The flames reached me.
I felt my dress burning.
My skin blistering.
My vision fading.
I didn’t scream.
I couldn’t.
There was no breath left to scream with.
And in that darkness…
I begged for death.
My wedding day…
should have been the beginning of my life.
Instead, it was the night God turned His face away from me.
…The flames were everywhere.
My mother’s body lay beside my sister’s.
My niece’s little hand curled against her mother’s neck.
My father’s face was buried in the dirt.
And Aiden, my love..
I let out one last breath—
shaking, broken, filled with everything I lost.
And then…
I closed my eyes FOREVER...
- Writer
