The Deadline. KiKi Swinson

didn’t think you’d go through with showing up here, all out in the public. We’re all proud of you back in Norfolk. You still got a lot of balls,” he said, smiling wickedly, the bright stage lights glinting off his one gold tooth.

      He turned his attention to Kyle. “You can thank your sister for everything.”

      I shivered.

      “Ms. Mercer!” another photographer shouted, jutting his camera forward for a close-up. I twisted away from the man in the suit, happy for the distraction. Kyle and I hurried down the walkway, faking happiness so we didn’t make a scene. It didn’t last for long.

      “Khloé! Khloé Mercer!” a male voice boomed.

      My head jerked at the voice. Still smiling and faking like I wasn’t about to faint from fear, I turned to my right.

      “You should’ve stayed the fuck out of the way! You fucked with the wrong people!” the voice boomed again. The source barreled through the crowd, heading straight toward Kyle and me.

      “Gun! He’s got a gun!” a lady photographer screamed first.

      “Oh, shit!” Kyle’s eyes went round as he faced the long metal nose of the weapon. Frantically he unhooked his arm from mine and stepped in front of me. Before he could make another move, the sound of rapid-fire explosions cut through the air.

      The entire place went crazy. The hired security seemed to materialize out of the walls and began running at full speed, guns drawn. Things were going crazy. Photographers, cameramen, backstage staff . . . everyone was running in a million directions. Two of the security guards were picked off, falling to the floor like knocked-over bowling pins. Screams pierced the air from every direction.

      Kyle’s body jerked from being hit with bullets. He was snatched from my side in an instant. I turned and watched as my brother’s arms flew up, bent at the elbow and flailing like a puppet on a string. His body crumpled like a rag doll and fell into an awkward heap on the floor, right at my feet. It was all too familiar.

      There was no way I could lose my brother in this way. Not after everything. I stood frozen; my feet were seemingly rooted into the floor under me. This was just a bad dream. It wasn’t real. I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs to breathe.

      “Kyle!” I shrieked, finally finding my voice.

      “Help!” someone yelled. “Call the police! Help!” More screams erupted around us.

      The sounds of people screaming and loud booms exploded around me. I coughed as the grainy, metallic grit of gunpowder settled at the back of my throat. I inched forward on the floor next to Kyle. The floor around him had pooled into a deep red pond of blood. Everything was happening so fast. I blinked my eyes to make sure this was real.

      “Kyle!” I screamed so loud that my throat burned. I grabbed his shoulders and shook them, hoping for a response.

      “No!” I sobbed, throwing my body on top of his. I just knew I wasn’t out of danger. I knew who it was they wanted, and it was me.

      More deafening booms blasted through the air.

      I couldn’t think as I lay on the floor. The thundering footfalls of fleeing guests left me feeling abandoned and adrift. I lay next to Kyle, listening to his labored breathing.

      “Why? How did we let this happen? How did we get here?” I sobbed. “How did this all happen?”

      “Hey! You’ve got to get out of here,” a security guard huffed, pulling me up onto my feet. I was shocked to see that I hadn’t been hit. “Get out of here. Run as fast as you can and hide,” he instructed. He hurled demands as fast as his lips could spew them out.

      “I . . . can’t . . . leave . . . ”

      “I’ll take care of him as best I can, but it doesn’t make sense for you both to die,” the guard told me. “Now run!”

      1

      AMBITIONS

      Four months earlier

      I stood in the WXOT-TV evening news executive producer’s office and wrung my hands. My boss, Christian Aniston, had called me into her office like there was an actual fire burning under her desk. She’d told me to sit down, but I told her I preferred to stand. I was of the mind-set that I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees. My father had taught me that. Give me my verbal punches standing up. Everyone in the station knew about my boss’s reputation. In my mind it was more ruthless than Miranda Priestly from The Devil Wears Prada. In fact, that character had nothing on the mean-mouthed, cruel, heartless, power-drunk, ratings-whore Christian Aniston. But I hadn’t gotten this far by chance . . .

      * * *

      I had always worked hard all of my life. I didn’t have anything given to me on a silver platter. I was a girl from the hood who was no stranger to the street life. I had grown up in a poor and eventual single-parent household in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the city. My father had been murdered right in front of me and my twin brother, Kyle. We were six when my dad was shot dead at my feet. I can still see how his body jerked and spun while his eyes bulged out of their sockets from the powerful shots.

      I was always a daddy’s girl before then. I had been standing so close to him when the man shot him, the tinny smell of his blood shot up my nose until I had been able to taste it on my tongue. To this day I remember the smell and taste every time I think about it . . .

      “Daddy!” I remember emitting an earthshaking scream. Tears had burst from my eyes like a geyser. Even in the face of danger, I had thrown myself down at my father’s side.

      “Shut the fuck up!” the man who’d shot my father screamed, grabbing me by my hair and tossing me aside like a rag doll. I felt something crack in my back as I hit a wall inside our small town house.

      “Khloé!” Kyle had called out to me. I was still on the floor when I saw Kyle charging at our father’s killer. At that age Kyle was a bit smaller than I was, but his size was not indicative of his fury in that moment. Kyle growled and his small fists flew out in front of him. Swinging wildly, Kyle had tried his best to connect with any part of the man who had assaulted me and killed our father. The other man, the one with one eye, grabbed Kyle around his throat and hoisted him off his feet like he was a toy. Both men laughed, making the fine hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Kyle’s little legs had pumped feverishly, like he was pedaling a bike or running an invisible race. His arms had swung like the blades of a windmill too.

      The man holding Kyle by the neck had begun to squeeze harder and harder, choking off Kyle’s oxygen, until his little legs finally slowed to a halt and his arms dropped at his sides. The color had faded from his face and his eyes rolled up until all I could see were the whites. Fear had put a stronghold on me, and my stomach muscles had clenched so hard I wanted to faint, but I scrambled to my feet instead, and ran into the man holding my brother.

      “Let him go!” I had hollered, and bulldozed into the man’s legs. I opened my mouth as wide as I could and chomped down on his inner thigh, the only thing I had been tall enough to reach back then. I was like an attack dog. I sank my teeth into the man’s leg and used every bit of strength in my little jaws to latch on like a steel-jaw trap.

      “Agh!” the killer screamed. “You little bitch! Get off of me!”

      With that, the one-eyed man had no choice but to let go of Kyle’s limp body and they both dropped to the floor. I finally released my jaw and freed him. I watched in horror as Kyle jackknifed onto his side, wheezing and coughing until the color started returning to his face. But because of the bite, the other man turned his attention to me. Suddenly I felt the cold kiss of a pistol against my temple.

      “Shoot the little bitch!” the one-eyed man had growled, still writhing on the floor. I closed my eyes, and my bladder released all over my feet as I sobbed.

      My mother bursting in with the cops was what had saved our lives.

      After