Chapter 5 - The ConfrontationZ
Click. Click. Click.
The heavy metallic sound of the revolver cylinder locking into place rang out in the dark bedroom. Six rounds loaded.
"Dad!" Ryan’s voice echoed closer, coming from the top of the stairwell now. He sounded erratic, his footsteps unsteady. "You think you're so smart, don't you? Sitting up here with your lawyers and your police friends! You think you're a victim?!"
I stepped out of the bedroom into the dimly lit hallway, holding the revolver lowered at my side.
Ryan was standing at the end of the corridor. He looked unkempt, his eyes bloodshot, his shirt stained, his hair wild. In his right hand, he was clutching a heavy tire iron. When he saw me, he let out a bitter, hysterical laugh.
"Look at you," Ryan sneered, pointing the tire iron at me. "The great Arthur Pendelton. Always so perfect. Always looking down on me!"
"Put the iron down, Ryan," I said softly, my voice devoid of emotion.
"Why should I?!" Ryan roared, stepping forward. "Do you have any idea what you've done to me?! The police searched my home! They took my phone, my computers! Melissa took the kids and went to her parents! I have nothing left!"
"You did this to yourself," I told him, holding my ground. "I gave you everything, Ryan. When your mother died, I gave you my trust. I gave you access to my life. And you used it to poison me."
Ryan’s face twitched. For a fraction of a second, a flash of guilt crossed his eyes, but it was instantly swallowed by deep, toxic denial.
"You were old!" Ryan yelled, his voice cracking. "You were sitting on a fortune in equity in this worthless house, and you were just letting it rot! You didn't need that money! I needed it! I had debts, Dad! Real debts! People were threatening to break my legs!"
"So you decided to stop my heart instead?" I asked, taking a step toward him. "Digitalis, Ryan? You gave your eighteen-year-old son a bottle of cardiac poison and told him to slip it into my coffee?"
Ryan flinched back as if I had struck him. "That—that was Melissa's idea! She said... she said it would just make you tired! She said it would make you want to go into a care home!"
"You lied to your own son!" I stepped closer, raising the revolver slightly. "You turned Tyler into a felon! He's sitting in a juvenile detention center right now because of you!"
Ryan looked at the gun in my hand, his eyes widening in sudden realization. "You... you're holding a gun on your own son?"
"I'm holding a gun on an intruder who broke into my home," I corrected him coldly. "The man who raised you died the moment he read those lab reports. I don't know who you are anymore, Ryan."
Ryan gripped the tire iron tightly, his knuckles turning white. A terrifying look of desperate madness settled across his face.
"If I'm going to prison for the rest of my life, Dad," Ryan whispered softly, his breathing heavy, "I'm not going empty-handed. You're going to give me the keys to the safe in your closet. You're going to give me the cash and the bearer bonds Mom left you."
"No," I said.
"Give me the keys, old man!" Ryan shrieked, swinging the tire iron up and lunging directly at me.
BANG!
The gunshot exploded in the narrow hallway like a cannon, the flash illuminating the darkness.
Ryan stopped dead in his tracks. The tire iron dropped from his hands, clattering noisily onto the hardwood floor. He fell back against the wall, clutching his shoulder, gasping in utter shock.
The bullet had passed through the drywall just inches above his shoulder, grazing his jacket. I hadn't aimed for his heart. I had aimed to stop him.
Down below, the sudden wail of police sirens tore through the quiet night. Samuel had called 911 the moment I hung up on him, knowing Ryan might come to my house.
Ryan sank to his knees, staring up at me with terror in his eyes, clutching his bloodied shoulder where the drywall dust and bullet graze burned his skin.
"Dad..." Ryan sobbed, suddenly weeping like a child, the terrifying monster vanishing in an instant, leaving behind only the coward he had always been underneath. "Please... don't let them take me. Please, Dad. I'm your son. I'm your boy."
May you like
I looked down at him, the barrel of the revolver still steady in my grip. My heart heavy with a pain deeper than any physical wound could ever inflict.
"My boy died three years ago," I said softly as the front door was kicked open downstairs and armed officers poured into the house. "You're just the man who killed him."
