Assasins

Grand Finale (pt 2)

Cecilia POV

When I was younger, my biggest concern was staying alive. Just keeping on. Now as I speed my way down Maryland back roads with my dearest husband in the car, nothing matters but making sure my daughter is safe. Becoming a parent permanently changes a person. It can make the most mild mannered of humans become the most violent, and the most level headed beings hostile and viscous simply to protect the pride and joy that is their offspring. Losing a child is perhaps one of the most painful thing I've endured in my life, worse than anything I've felt in my entire life.
"What's the plan?" Andrew asks me.
"What do you mean? I already told you that if I don't give this psycho bitch what she wants, she'll kill Lily." I throw back at him tightening my grip around the black steering wheel and slightly accelerating.
"You're not just gonna walk straight in there are you? That's freaking suicide!" Andrew shouts.
"I know, but it's not like I have many other options here!" I shout back. "I know you're just trying to protect me, I do, and I love you for it, but I'm a big girl, Honey. I can make my own decisions!"
"You can't if you intend on just waltzing into the airport and giving yourself up! You're not doing this!" I find it funny that we're having this conversation as I'm on my way to indeed offer myself up on a silver tray.
"Hate to break it to you, dearest, but I'm on my way to do this."
"This is unbelievable! There has to be a better way!"
"There's not!"
"There has to be, dammit!"
"Well, there isn't! You sitting here screaming at me isn't going to change the fact that if I don't go, our daughter is going to die. So yeah, it might be suicide, but I'm gonna go, and I'm gonna save my goddamn kid, and she is gonna live a long, happy life, okay?" Tears blur my vision as I think of my baby being yanked into the life I was. It's not fair, it never has been, but I'll be damned if my daughter dies tonight. I look over and see my husband with a few silent tears rolling down his face.
"I'm sorry. I wish things were different I do," I say looking out the windshield. "But it's not."
"I know." Andrew says. I look back at him and take his hand after putting on the radio. The lonely twang of a sad country song fills my ears. I can feel Andrew playing loosely with my fingers as I go at breakneck speed down back roads leading to where I need to be.

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Zach POV

I pass back and forth around the cell. Picturing the things that the bitch was undoubtedly doing to my niece made me sick to my stomach.
"C'mon Celes, you gotta hurry," I say as if she can hear me and slide down the concrete wall. "I at least hope you have a plan."
Of course she doesn't have a plan. She never has a plan. In the thirty-some-odd years we've know one another, the only plan that the girl has ever had was to punch first, ask questions later.
"Dammit, Cecilia."
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Cecilia POV

As I walk through the airport, I realize we never set up a meeting point, and this worries me. Andrew loosely holds my fingers as we look absently around. I hear my phone. I pick it up.
"Nice to see you again, Cecilia. Might I say, you look lovely, I love your shoes." I hear the evil woman's condescending voice pierce my eardrums.
"Mhm, well I've been told that They look a lot better up close. Why don't you come find out?"
"Soon enough, dear, soon enough. There is a McDonald's to your left. I'm sitting at a table to the left of the front counter," I look in and see my daughter and the lady with an evil smirk plastered to her face. "Come in with Andrew, sit down nonchalantly." She hangs up her phone. I lead Andrew into the McDonald's and we sit down opposite the lady.
"Hello, Cecilia, Andrew. My Cecilia, you've not aged a day." She nods curtly. I nod in her direction.
"I wish I could say the same." "
You've raised a lovely child. It would be a real shame for me to have to shoot her in the head." She says smiling.
"C'mon we complied. I'm going to go without a fight, so let's go." I say.
"Not just yet, dear. You see we've got some business to attend to," Andrew grips my hand tighter. "Mr. Andrew, I know you love your wife and all but I can't have you trailing us, now can I? So here is what I need you to do. I want you to take dear, sweet, Lily, here and I want you to take her to the gift shop a few shops down. Stay there for fifteen minutes precisely. Then I want you to get in your car and go home, don't try to follow us, don't try to save her, and most importantly, do not disobey me. I have eyes everywhere. I will know and I will pay your sweet little family a visit. Understand?" He nods and squeezes my fingers, then looking at me. Andrew hugs me and kisses my cheek.
"Aw, golly gee, that sure is sweet, but move your ass." Andrew takes Lily's hand and they leave while I enter an intense staring match with the still unidentified. A few seconds later she tells me it's time to go. She grabs my arm roughly as we leave the airport, dragging me along with her. After walking for a few minutes she puts me in the back of a black van and she gets in the driver seat. There is a black grate like thing separating me and her, much like you'd see in police cars.
"So, I bet you're wondering who I am," She says as if we were having the most normal of conversations.
"The thought crossed my mind a few times."
"Do you remember a man by the name of John Bryant?" I stay silent. "You can sit and think about that for a minute." She says. The grate separating her and me turns completely opaque. I try the handle on the door a few times and it doesn't unlock, nor can I find a latch to manually unlock it so I decide to count the minutes until I arrive at the desired location. One hundred twenty-seven minutes and forty-three seconds later the van stops and the door opens. A large, burley man is there and he grabs me around my middle and tosses me over the shoulder. The woman who brought me here is no where in sight, it's just two of what I assume to be her henchmen. Against my better judgement, I don't fight back. I can't motivate myself to do it. Why, I don't know, but I can't.
The two of them eventually pull me into a room that consists of concrete, a metal door, and one metal chair. They force me into the metal chair and a handcuff is placed around my wrist and attached to the chair. One of the guys punches me in the face. For good measure I guess? He laughs.
"Bitch." He says.
"Asshole." I spit back. He laughs again and shuts the door, following suit of his other large friend. Moments later the woman walks into the room.
"Figure out who I am yet?" She asks, popping her fingers.
"You're his wife, huh?" I say with a non-humorous laugh.
"I was. But then you and your brother killed him, so that's what I'm gonna do to you. You know I've been waiting for years to get my hands on you two." She says turning around, probably grabbing some sort of torture apparatus.
"Okay. That's fun, but I want you to know something. I enjoyed putting that poison in his food. I'm so glad that I did it. I'm so glad you wasted years of your life trying to find me. I'm happy that the sound of my voice, my prescience I'm this room makes your blood boil. Doesn't it? Don't you just hate me so much? Do you wanna punish me for what I did? Good, do it, you bitch."
"In due time, dear." She says with her teeth gritted.
"No, now. I know you just wanna kill me, get it over with, get the revenge you've waited so, so long for. Do it for your husband. I bet he loved you so much, I know you loved him. But I ruined that for you didn't I? You're mad that I took away the one thing that made you happy aren't you? You're-"
"SHUT UP! JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP! YOU DONT KNOW ANYTHING." She yells at the top of her lungs slapping me in the face once.
"You hit like a bitch!" I scream back at her. She hits me again and I feel her ring slice a small gash in my face over my cheekbone.
"WHAT, AM I GETTING IN YOUR HEAD?!" Am I driving you insane? What are you going to do, torture me, beat me, kill me? Do it. YOU CAN'T HURT ME LIKE I CAN HURT YOU." I yell getting as my in her face as I can from my restrained spot in the chair. When she gets closer to my face, I punch her with the hand that isn't tied down. She falls on the floor holding her face.
"Didn't they tell you that I don't slap?" I say. The cool metal of the chair cuts through my shirt and chills my back. The girl gets up and gets a small knife off of the table with a curved, wicked blade. She puts her knee on my hand and arm and takes the blade and frames the side of my face with it, carving into my flesh. I groan in pain and she laughs her sickening laugh grabbing my chin. I feel blood drip down my face and loose vision as it drips into my eye. I hear the clink of another handcuff as she moves off of me, moving down slowly to my chest, tracing the cool edge of the blade down the side of my neck. My warm blood sticks to the skin on the side of my neck. The blade dips into the soft skin on my chest and I bit my lip containing a shriek of agony as she opens up cut after cut on my collarbone and chest. She cuts my blood stained shirt open drags the sharp tip of the knife right over my rib cage opening up cuts there too.
All of a sudden, banging feels my ears. The sound of bodies hitting the floor and gunfire sporadically happens. The woman gets off me and goes towards the door.
"Cecilia!" I hear my brothers voice.
"Mom!" I hear my sons voice. I can't deduce while he is here, but I hear him, I hear them both and so does she. She walks over quickly as I hear the door slam open, clanging against the wall.
White hot pain fills my body, my neck being the source. I struggle for a second, grabbing at my neck before I hear a cry of "No!" And gunfire. The woman who's name I never knew falls on the floor in a bloody, bullet riddled heap and my brother's face comes into view.
"Celes! Oh my god," he works on my wrists freeing them. "You're going to be fine, c'mon." He rips my shirt off and presses it against my neck. Zach picks up my hand and presses it against the cut that's flowing blood on my neck. 
"You're gonna be fine, Celes, come on. Please." He picks me up and starts to walk away but my hands fall and, in turn, my shirt does too. He sits me down on the floor.
"C'mon, Cecilia Anne Andrews. I promised to keep you safe. When we were little, I swore I'd always protect you because I was your big brother and that's just what big brother's do."
I feel my eyes fluttering shut involuntarily.
"Don't you die on me. Dammit, Cecilia, please!" My eyes shut all the way.
"Cecilia, please! HELP ME! SOMEONE HELP ME, I NEED HELP!" I hear him scream, but it sounds like it's underwater. I feel myself slipping out of my body slowly and then all at once.
Some used to say that the world would end in fire, some in ice, now I can't tell you which one is accurate, but I can tell you someday we'll all be gone. The bravest of the brave, the weakest of the weak, those that think they live in infamy will someday be erased from the face of the earth just like the rest of us. Personally, one way or another, I don't think it really matters how you go as long as you raise a little hell on your way down.