We still don’t know what happened. If someone got caught or killed? The day it happened; we went to a local eatery.
The air smelled of charred beef and fried plantains, rich with the scent of sizzling oil and slow-burning tobacco. Voices murmured across the room, layered beneath clinking plates and the occasional burst of laughter.
It was a perfect illusion of normalcy.
Until it wasn’t.
I had just pushed my chair back, steadying my posture, when I saw the movement—sharp, deliberate. The gun.
The barrel raised—aimed directly at me—and the trigger pulled.
The gunshot cracked like a rupture in time.
I didn’t think. My body moved before my mind caught up—or it was the force of impact that sent me downward, my back hitting the floor, knocking the breath from my lungs.
A shadow plunged over me—my partner, her weight pressing me down, shielding me.
"Stay down!" she hissed, voice sharp, controlled—trained.
Had I been shot? The question slammed into my brain before my body registered pain.
I braced for it. Expected the searing burn. The spreading warmth of blood.
But it didn’t come.
Then hands—rough, forceful—grabbed my collar, pulling me up. Another man, but not one of them. Not one of the attackers.
I stumbled to my feet, pulse hammering, my vision unfocused. Chaos erupted around us—chairs scraping, shouts, the dull thud of bodies shifting, fleeing.
And then I saw him.
The man who had been watching us, sprawled over the table, head limp, blood pooling beneath him, staining the rough wood dark, almost black in the dim light.
I had never seen that much blood.
The scene blurred in fragments—the metallic scent, the way the liquid spread too fast, the way his arms dangled like something lifeless, discarded.
"Move!" my partner snapped, snapping me out of the shock.
She was already dragging me toward the side exit, her grip iron-tight.
I turned once more—just for a fraction of a second—and locked eyes with one of the gunmen.
His gaze was flat, devoid of hesitation, of remorse.
A professional. A man who had done this before. Who would do it again?
And I knew in that moment—this wasn’t just an attack.
It was a message.