Poker Face ✔

Chapter 21

After my evening with Gabe, I walked back to my family's home, unaware of what was taking place behind those walls. I didn't know it then, but what was happening and what was yet to happen would change the course of all our lives.

When I slowly entered the house, my ears filled with the sound of my family's screams.

"Chris!" Aunt Kat screamed.

"I don't-" Chris sniffed.

"Come on!" Lila cried.

"We've got to move!" John ordered.

I followed the frantic screams to the living room. There, laying on one my family's stretchers was my cousin Zac, blood soaking his white shirt. He had been shot, my sweet innocent cousin had been shot.

"What's happened?" I gasped.

"My equipment is in the examination room" aunt Kat informed the others, "Lila, Chace, Michael, you're with me!"

I looked over to Chris who was standing covered in Zac's blood, his hands shaking rapidly.

"What the fuck happened?" I cried, a sick feeling washing over my entire body.

"Rina" Chris weeped "I..it...the gun...bam..boof"

I looked over to uncle Nate, Uncle Jason, John, and Vanessa, who had just given birth a few days before.

"He was disoriented when Lila brought them here" Vanessa explained to me.

"What happened?" I repeated myself.

"They were at coney island on a simple job when they bumped into a Larrunzario, who decided to shoot Zac" Uncle Donny summarised, looking over at his son Chris.

"What?" I gasped in shock. "They just shot him out of nowhere?"

"They were pulling the same job" John explained, "they shot Zac to slow him down."

"Thank God, Lila was with them" Uncle Nate does the sign of the cross.

None of us leave the house without a bullet proof vest. Especially when we're on a job. I didn't understand how this could have happened if Zac was protected.

"Why wasn't he wearing his bullet proof vest?" I raised a brow.

"They had just come off the wild river" John rolled his eyes. "...so they took them off"

"Those idiots" Uncle Jason muttered.

I held my breath. I had lost a lot of people in my life, but I wasn't ready to lose Zac yet. Little did I know that Zac's critical state was the least of my worries that night.

After a few hours, Chace came out if the examination room.

"Well?" I questioned.

"He'll be fine" he informed, removing his rubber gloves and wiping the sweat off his forehead.

"Thank God" uncle Donny sighed in relief. "Can I see him?"

"Yeah" Chace nodded, guiding uncle Donny into the room.

"Why?" I asked uncle Nate once it was just the two of us.

"Why what?" He looked down.

"Why did you send me to see the Saint Peter's Painting?" I finished.

It was some thing that had been playing on my mind since Miranda and I had found the painting. I didn't believe that it was coincidence, because in my family nothing was coincidence.

"you want a coffee?" He changed the subject, limping through the house.

I followed him, my jaw locked into place as I watched him avoid the subject.