Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 70940 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 355(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 236(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70940 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 355(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 236(@300wpm)
I get out of the car and rush toward the house, calling out for my mother.
Who were those men, and were they here to hurt her?
Or did she know them?
Something is very very wrong.
I push the front door open and keep calling out for my mom as I rush into the kitchen and the living area.
She isn’t in either.
I run down the hall but stop dead when a smeared and bloodied handprint lines the hallway wall, like someone has been dragged down it and tried to stop themselves. My heart jumps into my throat as I round the corner and there, lying flat on her bed, is my mother. She’s covered in blood, so much so she’s almost unrecognizable. Her face is battered and bruised, her throat is slit and her clothes are ... gone.
I don’t realize I’m screaming.
Not until my voice gets hoarse and I start to cough.
I rush over to my mother’s lifeless body and shake her a little. She makes a gurgling sound.
“Mom!” I scream.
She’s still alive.
I pull my phone from my pocket and dial an ambulance, and then, I dial King.
“What is it, Briella?”
“Mom,” I sob, my voice breaking. “She’s ... someone came in and ...”
“Calm down,” King orders, his voice hard and worried. “Tell me what happened.”
“Someone tried to kill her.”
“I’m coming.”
I drop the phone and carefully lift my mother’s head into my lap. There is so much blood I don’t even know where it’s coming from. She’s making a terrible gurgling sound and there is blood leaking too quickly from the wound on her neck. Tears run down my cheeks as I hold her gently, praying that she makes it through.
Praying that she doesn’t die.
The paramedics arrive minutes later, and I’m removed from the room as they work on her. With a trembling body, I lean against the wall and stare into the room as they try to stabilize her. A moment later, King runs down the hall, his face pale, his breathing frantic. He takes one look at me and his face drains of all color. He turns slowly, and glances into the room, and I hear his sharp intake of breath.
“No,” he growls, his voice breaking. “No.”
He turns to me, his eyes so broken I’ll never forget them and rasps, “Tell me she’s alive. Briella, tell me she’s fuckin’ alive.”
“She’s alive,” I whisper. “But it’s so bad. It’s ...”
He grabs me and pulls me against him, and I welcome it, regardless of everything else we’ve been through in the last few days. I welcome it because, right now, I have nobody else to take the horrors away from me.
Moment later the paramedics rush my mother’s still body out and tell us which hospital they’re taking her to. King and I rush out and get into his truck and follow them down there. The entire drive is quiet, and neither of us are saying anything. We’re both thinking the same thing, no doubt, and that is that if something happens to her ... how will we survive?
How will I survive?
How will Magnolia survive?
I stare out the window and pray.
I pray that she’ll be okay.
I pray that we’ll make it through this.
My prayers go unanswered.
Because by the time we reach the hospital, my mother is dead.
“THIS IS HIS FAULT,” I say, staring at the blank wall in the hospital, watching King comfort Magnolia who is screaming and crying, wailing for our mother.
“Briella, you’re hurtin’, but he’s hurtin’ too,” Alarick says, taking my hand in his and squeezing it tightly. “He would never hurt her.”
“He hurt her by getting her into this mess. Someone killed her. Someone killed her to get back at him. He is ruining everyone’s lives, every single second he destroys something else.”
“You’re angry.”
Yes.
I’m angry.
I’m so angry I could take a gun and shoot him myself.
This is all his fault.
Those two men came and killed my mother because of King. Because of some bad blood. I’m not stupid, I know how it all works. Karma came around to bite King on the ass. He took a whole person’s world, and now his whole world has been taken from him. Only the problem with that is, they took my whole world, too.
“How he feels right now,” I say, my voice bitter, “is how Aviana felt when her whole family was killed in front of her. But that was okay, that was something he had a right to do. Now he’s feeling just how it feels to be on the other side of that.”
“You’re sayin’ things you know nothing about, Briella. You’ve got it all wrong, and if you think King would ever let anything happen to your mom, you’re wrong.”
“He did let something happen to her,” I yell, jerking my hand from his. “He let her get killed! She’s gone, because of him. The only parent we had left is gone. She’s gone.”