Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
I don’t say any of that out loud, of course, because 1) there’s no time to say all of that out loud and 2) I’d sound like a fucking nutjob. So, instead, I try to appeal to whatever sense of… fuck, I dunno, humanity?… fuckin’ Zander van den Berg might have left in him. (If he ever had any in the first place.)
He lost a son. He’s gone to all these great lengths to torment us and put us in a place where we have to choose between two terrible options just because the guy wants his family name to live on so desperately. Maybe—?
“She’s pregnant!” Eliza shouts before I get the chance to do it myself.
There is a stiff, bracing whoosh of something that sweeps through the space. Zander, Liam, and the other six gun-toting fuckers behind me all tense. You can just feel it.
Alec does too. But the tension I feel coming off him is mixed with something else. A kind of slackening. A dawning. A moment of realization.
This is not how we planned to break the news but, oh, well. Surprise, Alec! You’re gonna be a father! Again! Or an uncle? I have no idea. Yay?
The pain around my eye is really throbbing. It feels like there’s a hot poker being shoved into the socket. Even though my premonition tells me that all will be well and everything’s going to be okay, it doesn’t do anything for the shittiness that is right the fuck now.
In this moment of stillness, this brief reprieve from the inevitable that has come from the revelation that Christine is carrying an extra passenger, I start calculating again. I half-see where Alec and Zander are standing off to one side of me. I clock, as best I’m able, the half-dozen or so standing in front of me and Christine. I pretend to writhe a little more than I absolutely need to so that I can get the lower half of my body close to where the kid, Liam, is still standing, holding his rifle like a scared person holds a rifle.
If I can signal to Alec and Christine what I need them to do, we’ll be able to get out of this and get ourselves one step closer to my dream-fantasy. I just have to determine what the best way is. I wish we had a code word. The fuck haven’t we ever set up some kind of code word? We should fuckin’ do that. Another time.
“Pregnant,” Zander says. Then, “Is she?”
“Yes!” Eliza yells.
“You know this for sure?”
“Yes, I know it for fucking sure, you prick.”
There’s a beat as Zander contemplates. I can barely see Alec, but he seems rankled beyond the point of action. Can’t blame him. The guy is processing a lot right now.
Christine continues just hugging me. Keeping herself blanketed between me and the—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven—eight guns pointed at us. And I keep edging my body toward Liam. It would actually be a lot easier if Christine weren’t right on top of me, but whatcha gonna do?
“Whose is it?” Zander asks.
“What?” Eliza says in return.
“I asked whose is it? The child? That Christine is carrying? To whom does this miracle belong?”
It’s dripping with a poisonous sarcasm. I see, vaguely, him look at Alec.
“Is it yours, my seun? Have you once again managed to make new van den Berg life with young Christine here? Will my granddaughter, Alexandria, have a new playmate?”
It’s impressive that in three short sentences, he can trigger everybody who matters.
I can’t really see now. The blood is flowing freely and filling up the reservoir around the one functioning eyeball I have left. But what I can hear is… very little. Some click-clack of hands on rifles; the squeak of a boot on the cold, centuries-old, cement floor; breathing. Mostly Christine’s.
Then, after a long moment, I hear Zander say, “Ah. I see.”
I blink away the blood just enough that I can focus on Zander and Alec, but it’s not what I can observe so much that makes me jerk. It’s what I hear. The sound of the rifle Zander has in his hands shinking into an actionable, firing position.
“Well, then I’m not certain it all has much to do with me,” Zander sighs, lazily.
And the next thing I hear is the click of the trigger and the explosion of a bullet exiting the barrel at high velocity, charging like a lightning bolt toward the back of Christine’s body, still wrapped around mine.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
As we approached this place and my suspicions about what or who might be waiting for us played in my mind—Mr. Gorny tickling at my brain, monkeys scampering all about, memories, recollections, ideas—I had determined that I would be the one to sacrifice myself so that others might survive.
Even as my father was making his cruel, petty, nonsensical, and yet so completely like him demands of Christine and Danny, I was fully prepared to make the sacrifice still. Let them… no, encourage them to go. To leave and live a life without me, happy and safe together. I would, of course, humor my father. At least humor him long enough that I could ensure Christine and Danny would be safe. Or as safe as is possible for them to be. At which point, I would deal with Zander van den Berg personally.