Chapter 3
No one asked what I wanted.
No one said, "Wait. What about Sophia?"
They had already decided.
They had decided I should be the sacrifice for this so-called fairness.
They had decided my life was worth less than Emily's.
They had decided the eighteen years of misery I'd lived had reached its climax today, only to keep falling after that.
Then the gun fired.
It was a soft sound, like a cork being pulled from a bottle.
Then came the thud of a body hitting the ground.
Emily's kidnapper was shot right between the eyes and dropped stiff as a board. Emily screamed, and the SWAT team dragged her away at once.
She was safe.
And me...
The man behind me was triggered by the gunshot. He yanked me hard against him, and the knife cut even deeper into my neck.
"Fuck," he roared, dragging me backward. "You played me. You really fucking played me."
His voice was shaking. His arm was shaking. Even the blade in his hand was shaking. A man who had watched his partner die had already gone off the edge. "Don't come any closer. Anybody moves and I'll kill her."
I was losing more and more blood. The collar of my white dress was already soaked red.
Anne had given me that dress that morning. She said she'd picked it out especially for me to wear at the family reunion gala.
A pure white long dress with lace trim, like something out of a fairy tale.
It was the first beautiful dress I'd ever worn in eighteen years of life.
Now it was covered in my blood.
"Sophia," My dad's voice finally rang out, panicked this time. "James, hurry. Left side. The left side."
James went silent for two seconds.
In those two seconds, I heard Emily crying through the two-way radio, Anne comforting her, and medics rushing over.
Then James said, "No. The angle changed. The kidnapper is covering her completely. I don't have a shot."
"Then what do we do?" My dad shouted.
James said nothing.
This silence lasted longer.
Then he said, "Dad, I did everything I could."
Those words hit me like a bullet, cutting across the distance and striking me right in the heart.
It hurt worse than the knife at my throat.
The knife cut flesh. He cut through my life.
"James, think of something," mom cried. "Sophia is your sister too."
Too.
What a nice little word.
It meant he was Emily's brother first and mine second.
It meant I could be weighed, ranked, and put in second place.
"Mom, I really did everything I could," James's voice was as calm as if he were filing a report. "If I force the shot, the hostage's chance of dying is over seventy percent. I can't take that risk."
He couldn't take the risk.
He couldn't take a risk for me.
But for Emily, he'd fired without hesitation.
Because Emily was the target on the right, the sister with a name, the family member who was no different from a real sister.
And I was the target on the left, the high-risk cost, the one meant to be abandoned.
"Then what do we do?" Anne sobbed. "Sophia... Sophia's still in his hands..."
"The negotiator is already in place," James said. "Leave the rest to the negotiation team."