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“Please help,” he says, givingmehis full attention now. “They’regoing to kill me. Please call for help.”

If I didn’t know any better, I would have believed everything he said. I would fall victim to thosepitiful eyes.

“You deserve so much worse,” I tell him.

“You whore,” he spits out, his face turning red.

Klaus is about to lunge forward, but I reach for his hand,stopping him in his tracks. At the same time, Clara swings the baseball bat again, shattering his kneecap this time. She grins at her handiwork as he howls in pain.

“I don’t know what I ever saw in you,” Sera says. “I wish I never met you.”

“We can fix this,” he says. “You and me, we’re a team, Sera. It’s always been us against the world, remember?”

Tears gather in Sera’s eyes. The anger melts from her face as she stares at the man she once shared a life with.

And then she lifts her gun again, aiming it at his chest.

She pulls the trigger. A loud blast echoes through the room.

There’s a hole in the center of his chest.

Richard glances down at his torso in disbelief.

“Fuck you, Richard,” she says. “Fuck you for making a fool out of me. Also, you might have a pretty face, but your dick is so small.”

Clara laughs then, the sound of her mirth the sweetest melody. She nods in agreement.

Those are the last words Richard gets to hear before he draws his final breath.

All of us stare at him for a moment.

The silence is deafening.

Clara puts the baseball bat back where she found it and walks away from the scene. She’s about to head back upstairs when I reach for her hand. She glances down at it in surprise and then at me.

“Are you okay?” I ask her.

She nods once and then smiles at me.

I let go of her. She floats back up the stairs,her soft footsteps so familiar to me now. My heart reaches out for her, but I’m also in awe of her strength.

Sera’s reaction is the opposite of stoic.

She starts crying, quiet at first, but it soon turns into sobbing. She falls to her knees, but her brother is there to catch her.

“Not in here,” Klaus says. “Let’s go outside.”

Sera wraps her arms around her brother as he lifts her into his arms.

“I thought it would feel better,” she says. “But I just feel so empty inside. I feel...nothing.”

“That’s okay,” Klaus says, walking up the stairs of the basement.

“It’s not okay, Klaus,” she says. “I waited so long for this moment. It’s come and gone, and I just feel the same. I don’t feel any happiness.”

“It’s not supposed to make you happy,” Klaus says. “You took matters into your own hands, but you’re not a sociopath like him, Sera. It’s not supposed to bring you any joy.”

I follow quietly behind them, lost in my own thoughts.