“Call the cops!” someone shouted.

“He won’t,” Dad insisted, already fumbling for his phone.

But I knew that look. The rage. The shaking hands. The way his eyes burned, wild and violent, as if nothing in the world mattered except whatever was inside his head. I knew that look because I’d seen it before. Memories crashed into me without warning. My real father chasing my mother around the house. Her screams. Her pleas. The way my sister sobbed for mercy.

Adrenaline took over. I didn’t think. I just moved.

Not as a foster kid. Not as Blake. I moved as the boy who had stood in the shadows as his mother bled out. The boy who had been too weak, too helpless, to do anything but watch.

Not this time.

“Blake!” Dad shouted behind me, but I was already sprinting across the lot.

The man’s hand was still under his shirt when I grabbed his arm and shoved him against the car with everything I had. The gun clattered to the pavement, skidding beneath the vehicle.

“You son of a⁠—”

His fist connected with my jaw, sending my head spinning.

But I didn’t let go. I drove my knee into his gut, once, twice, until Dad grabbed me, hauling me off the guy.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he roared, dragging me away with a grip that was equal parts panic and fury.

I wrenched out of his grip, breathing hard. “You could’ve stopped him,” I shot back. “You could’ve done something!”

Around us, people were watching.

The man I had tackled groaned, rolling onto his side.

“I was handling it,” Dad snapped, his eyes blazing.

“He was going to hurt them⁠—”

“And I was trying to stop it!” he shouted back, his eyes wide and desperate. “You could’ve been killed.”

I stared at him, my vision still spinning, my face throbbing, but none of it compared to the rage burning inside me.

“You can’t save everyone, Blake.”

“Yeah,” I said bitterly. “But I can try.”

Dad was silent.

Sirens screamed in the distance, growing louder.

And then a deafening sound ripped through the air.

I flinched, my ears ringing, my body tensing—waiting to feel it, waiting for the pain to bloom somewhere deep in my gut.

But it never came.

Instead, Dad’s face twisted as he staggered back, clutching his chest. His mouth opened as if to shout, but no sound came out.

“No.” The word barely made it past my lips. “No, what⁠—”

A strangled sound escaped his throat as he swayed, his trembling fingers pressing against the spot where blood began to spill through his shirt. For a second, I didn’t understand. And I didn’t realize I was screaming his name until my throat burned.

My legs gave out, and we hit the pavement together.