Heart warming.

FROM BOOKFUNNEL: And then the little girl walked out of the back bedroom. She was about three, with curly black hair, nut-brown skin and sleepy eyes she rubbed at with one pudgy fist. She saw the men and her eyes went wide, much like her now deceased mother’s had just before she was shot.

Bad Boy shook his head. “Crap, almost forgot about her.”

Lil’ Grill echoed the movement. “Too sad for you girly.” He pointed the gun he’d finally managed to remove from his waist band and pointed it at her bare chest. She was wearing only a soggy diaper.

Jerome gripped his wrist and twisted till the gun pointed at the ceiling.

“Whach you doing, man?” cried Lil’ Grill, his bones on the verge of breaking.

“She’s just a little girl,” said Jerome.

“Never know what anyone can or can’t do, brother. ‘Sides, the man said everyone here dies, no exceptions.”

“Nobody said anything about a little girl,” said Jerome. It was maybe the longest speech he’d given in a year.

“Not to you,” said Bad Boy. “The man said there’d be a baby here and she had to go with the mom.”

Jerome’s brain took this in and did the type of calculations he was supremely capable of. He shot Bad Boy through the upper lip and then, still gripping Lil’ Grill’s wrist, put three rounds into his chest. Lil’ Grill’s body went limp and only the strength of Jerome’s arm kept him from slumping to the floor.

The baby girl, her eyes squeezed shut and her hands pressing tight over her ears, started to cry. Jerome picked her up and patted her back, just like he used to do with his sister, Clair, so many years ago. He didn’t know the little girl’s name so he patted her back and whispered “Clair” gently into her ear as he took her away from the blood and death he had brought to her home. ( )