Total pages in book: 166
Estimated words: 169305 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 847(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169305 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 847(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
The Bentley tipped over on its side, flipping onto its roof. We landed upside down.
He was still on top of me.
Still shielding me.
It happened fast.
Loud, piercing ringing.
Then, pain.
Complete, utter pain.
Everywhere and nowhere all at once.
I was both numb and in agony.
I blinked fast as if it could help me see or even hear.
“You’re okay, Zachary. You’re fine.” His lips shaped the words, his face less than an inch from mine.
His whole body shook.
His eyes swung down between us, and he closed them, taking a ragged breath. “Wo cao.”
My eyes flared.
He cursed.
Dad never cursed.
Something sticky and dark dropped onto my right leg, coming from Dad. I shook it off.
Blood.
It was blood.
Dad’s blood.
And then I saw it.
A landscape rake pierced through his gut. Spearing him into the door.
The jagged edge poked my stomach, grazing it. I sucked my belly in, struggling to breathe at the same time.
I blinked fast, hoping this nightmare would wash away. Dad came into focus, his entire face bloodied, shards of glass sticking to his skin like hedgehog spikes.
Blood everywhere. Sliding down his temple from the forehead scar to his chin. His blood—warm, metallic, stinky, sticky—soaked into my clothes, my skin, my hair.
I wanted him off.
I wanted to scream.
His lips moved again, but this time, I couldn’t make anything out past the ringing in my ears.
I can’t hear you, I mouthed. Say it again.
I tried to move, to touch his forehead, stop the bleeding, but he was too heavy, and I had to keep sucking my stomach in to make sure the rake didn’t cut me open.
The red pouch.
I reached for it, stretching my hand as far as it would go. The rake sliced a tiny hole into my skin, but I managed to grab the satchel, dumping it upside down.
A knife.
I wrapped my hand around its handle and tried to cut off my seatbelt. It tore at the side, making no difference.
I still couldn’t move.
Henry, I tried to scream our driver’s name.
No response.
I glanced over my right shoulder, finding Henry’s forehead pressed against a deflated air bag, creating a constant piercing ring with the horn.
I knew he was dead, even without seeing any blood. He looked like a lifeless puppet, his pupils black and flat.
Dad’s lips moved again. His eyes begged me to listen. I wanted to, I really did, but all I could hear was the horn.
A tear fell from dad’s cheek to mine.
A hiss slipped out of my throat, like the drop burned me where it landed.
Dad never cried.
His lips moved slower, his body still covering mine. Protecting me from whatever was happening or had already happened.
A cage of bent steel boxed us in. I couldn’t move out from under him if I tried.
I managed to form a fist, clutching on to his shirt before he collapsed on me. My hands tremored with his weight, the other still wrapped around the knife handle.
Dad’s eyes remained open, but I knew he wasn’t alive anymore. His soul had already drifted away. And I finally understood what he meant when he’d said souls were priceless.
My senses returned one by one, trickling like rain.
First, my hearing.
“Is there anyone else in there?”
“A child.”
“Alive?”
“Damn… I doubt it. That truck went straight into them at full speed. They stood no chance.”
Then, my skin receptors.
Dad was cold.
So cold.
Too cold.
I knew what it meant.
A piece of his flesh melted from his face, dropping onto my chest. If it was hot, I couldn’t feel it.
I trembled all over, screwing my eyes shut, fighting down the bile rising up my throat, my stomach still clenched tight.
Get off me.
I don’t want to feel your death.
I don’t want to feel, period.
Finally, my ability to talk.
“Alive,” I croaked out, hearing people groaning, grunting, shouting, trying to flip the car upright. “I’m alive.”
But I didn’t feel like I was.
“You hang in there, buddy,” a voice called out. “We’re coming to get you. It’s just gonna take some time, okay?”
“Okay.”
Not okay.
Nothing was okay.
I squeezed my mouth shut, listening to them talk.
“Wait. Isn’t this…?”
“Yeah. Bo Sun. The Bo Sun.” Silence. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
“Is he…?”
“They’re going to have to cut him off before they can get to the kid. He’s speared onto the rake through the melted metal.”
“Goddammit. Poor kid.”
“Iheard her hair stylist has less Instagram followers than she does.” Tabby snapped her gum from the backseat of the Mercedes GLE. “And she has, like, four thousand? I mean, just let the butcher at Balducci’s do your hair and be done with it.”
“She’s flaunting those bangs like it’s 1999. No one has the guts to tell her they look awful on curly hair.” Reggie snickered. “And her balayage is downright orange.”
Tabitha and Regina Ballantine, ladies and gentlemen.
My stepsisters.
Between them, they produced enough venom to kill a well-populated island.
My stepmother Vera tutted from her spot behind the steering wheel.
“Now, now, girls. That’s not very charitable.” The words didn’t match her vicious giggles. “Sylvia is a nice girl. A little plain, but that’s not her fault. Have you seen her mother?”