Page 9 of The Final Say

“You are a petty woman. I gave you every chance to make me happy, but you failed miserably every time. God bless your soul for trying, but you don’t have the first clue about what it takes to make a happy home.” Bryan belittled me, once again resorting to old habits of putting me down to make me feel inferior.

This was getting under my skin. The plan came unraveled when I turned to face him.

Chapter Six

Cameron

Standing in the shadows and listening to them bicker back and forth was hard to take. She needed more than my support, but I was determined to let her see this through. She was expecting me to jump out of the shadows to defend her honor, but that wasn’t going to give her the closure she needed. I would act when it was necessary. Doing anything else would take away her power. That was the last thing I wanted to do.

I could easily overpower him with my hand out to stop him from hurting her. He didn’t know that was that close. It was a wonder he couldn’t feel my hot breath on his neck. The gun was my main concern. It was there but he didn’t have it drawn.

“He was quite informative after my mother disappeared for parts unknown while I was just a child. She never did contact me. What kind of mother leaves her little boy in the middle of the night and never looks back? You’re all alike, thinking that you have all the answers when you don’t even know the questions.” Bryan deflected from his male-dominated childhood by making women the scapegoat for all of his problems.

I just learned his animosity toward the opposite sex came from deep-seated mother issues. He could have been raised by a father that was bitter and alone lashing out at the gender with words of discouragement. It would be no wonder he grew up hating women but also feeling deserving of their affections.

That last part was purely conjecture on my part. It did fit with what I was hearing.

“You’re still that little boy waiting for your mother to come home to save you. She made a mistake by leaving you, but you have never let her live it down. You take it out on other women without consciously realizing it. She’s the one you are mad at all the time. Women in your life become a substitute for that rage you carry around on your shoulders,” Julie persisted with words, apparently trying to make him ponder the circumstances revolving around his treatment of women.

He began pacing back and forth, looking toward the ceiling away from his prospective victim. It made me breathe a sigh of relief to see that her words were getting to him. She had to continue and was going to need a little bit more time to settle things between them.

Julie was trying to close that door with this vehement, metaphorical slam. This was a girl that wasn’t going to surrender despite having a gun in her face. This called for a patient and decisive voice of reason, which she was providing him.

Conquering her fears was making her stronger in the face of adversity.

It was my intention to sneak up behind him, but she was doing a remarkable job of talking him down from the ledge.

This final chapter, and the final say, had to come from her and nobody else.

“You are trying to mess with my mind, and it’s not going to work. I wasn’t going to show you this, but I want you to know what your rejection has done. This would fool his own mother into thinking he was a despicable human being. Evidence is what makes a case solid, but sometimes you have to manufacture what you need to give them very little wiggle room to escape,” Bryan said with the phone in front of her face until her eyes widened with her mouth moving.

She was slowly reacting to the shock of what it was he was trying to do.

“You can’t think for a single moment anybody is going to believe this nonsense. Do I need to remind you by using your own words against you? There is no such thing as a perfect crime in this day and age. You can’t account for every variable. There’s always going to be some little thing you missed to make all of your lies come undone. You make me sick to my stomach,” Julie rasped, standing there indignant with her arms crossed defensively.

Bryan huffed and pointed at her in a nonthreatening way. “You forget who you’re talking to. This is what I do for a living and I’m very good at it. They will see what I want them to see and nothing more. I will come out of this smelling like a rose. I decided that death is too good for you. I want you to live with the memory of me killing your lover right in front of you. Speaking of which, where did the coward disappear to? I have something I want to give him,” Bryan laughed, spinning around on his heels with the gun in his hands in an effort to find me.

“We both know this has nothing to do with Cameron and everything to do with you. I wish that I could say I was surprised by the way you are acting. It was just a matter of time before you snapped and made a mistake. You’re usually more careful than this,” Julie replied with this smirk on her face.

“What are you trying to say to me? You want me to shoot you and put you out of your misery but that’s too good for you. It will be your word against mine when the dust settles. Who do you think they are going to believe?” Bryan questioned with his eyes on fire staring at her with his finger still on the trigger.

I could breathe again after realizing he wasn’t going to shoot her. His plans were more devious than that. He wanted her to suffer my loss without any way of pointing a finger at him. It would’ve been nice to see what was on the phone, but it had to be pretty damning evidence against me for her to act defensively.

“That’s where you are wrong. You made it easy for me. Have you ever noticed that you can’t stop talking? Sometimes it’s better to keep your mouth shut, but I’m glad that I can predictably get a rise out of you. This is the final nail in your coffin. You don’t have to believe me. You can hear it in your own words,” Julie hinted with very little subtlety before showing him her phone.

She pressed a button and his voice confessed everything, including his plans to railroad me. His face turned white with his mouth open in complete shock at this reversal of fortune.

“This whole conversation has been recorded. You forget that I learned from you every time you talked about a case at dinner with this look of pride in your eyes.” He reached out for her phone and she pressed it against her chest taking a couple of steps back. “Do you really think that I’m foolish? I’m not sorry you got caught. It’s time for you to go. There is no way out of this. I forgot to mention this conversation is being uploaded to all of your friends on your contact list. Go ahead and kill me. It’s not going to change anything,” Julie refused to give up and had come up with an ingenious plan to turn the tables.

She should’ve been taking a bow for her performance. This was a woman who knew how to play the game better than anybody. Using his tactic against him was simply a stunning example of what she could do when push came to shove.

“I would call you a bitch, but I don’t think there is a strong enough adjective to describe what you have done to me. It’s pretty damn smug of you to think that you have won anything when I’m still holding the gun.” Bryan showed her the menacing revolver only to find that she didn’t seem to be affected by the equalizer in his hands.

“You don’t need that, but, well, maybe you do, considering how you are lacking in a certain department,” Julie belittled him with her thumb and finger stretched out no more than 3 inches. “I know what that gun compensates for better than anybody. It makes you feel big when you don’t have the tools to get the job done in the bedroom.” Julie smiled at her ability to stand up to her tormentor.

“Where is all of this courage coming from? You have changed, and not for the better. This attitude isn’t going to fly with me. I will gladly spend the rest of my days behind bars to see you dead at my feet. That’s not going to happen until I get my hands on your boyfriend and finish what I started. We both know he’s listening somewhere,” Bryan stammered with his lips practically sticking together.

Julie shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t need him to fight my battles for me. You are nothing more than a small insignificant mosquito. I can hear you buzzing around but you are mainly an annoyance. Do everybody a favor and put that gun in your mouth where it belongs. Nobody will miss you, not after they listen to the confession in your own words.”