Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 117920 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 590(@200wpm)___ 472(@250wpm)___ 393(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117920 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 590(@200wpm)___ 472(@250wpm)___ 393(@300wpm)
“Motherfucker!” I yell, pounding my fists on the steering wheel, the car nearly going off the road. “You don’t give a shit about anything, do you? Just your image! Just what you can take! All you’ve ever done is take, take, take!”
“Aksel, please,” Nicklas says, his voice growing louder, nervous.
“Please?” My eyes bore into him just as I correct the car back onto the road. “Please? Your manners forsake you. You don’t give a shit about any of this. You’re only fucking her because you think it will spite me, that you’ll take my place. Guess what? She’ll ditch you as quickly as she ditched me! You think I’m some one-off victim, a fool she gets to blind? She went after me from the start! She pretended to want me, pretended to love me, all to get the crown. Now she has it. Now she has the crown and she’s pretending to want you, only to flaunt what a shallow, lying bitch she is!”
“The fuck you’ll talk to her that way!” Nicklas yells, punching me in the arm, trying to go for my face. It’s now that I know for sure that I’ve hit a nerve. You can’t hide love when it’s been insulted, threatened. He thinks what they have is genuine and real. Who’s the fucking fool now?
“Nicklas!” Helena yells, unbuckling her seatbelt and coming forward between the seats, trying to break us apart. “Stop it!”
“Oh, he knows, Helena!” Nicklas says, voice in anguish. “He knows, everyone knows. This is it for us. This is the end.”
“It’s not the end,” she snipes, and I can hear the panic in her voice as her hands slap against the side of my arm. “Oh fuck, oh fuck.”
“Fuck is right,” I yell. “How long has this been going on? How long have you been betraying me? Betraying the family?”
“You’re full of shit,” she hisses. “I haven’t betrayed you. We both know you never loved me. You only married me because you had to.”
“I loved you!” I roar. I squeeze the steering wheel so tight I swear I could break it in half. “I loved you so much that I thought my world would end if our love ended. And our love did end and everything else kept on going. I learned it was all a lie.”
“Fuck you,” she says, sitting back. “As if I haven’t given you what you wanted, children, as if I haven’t been the perfect future queen. I’ve given you all you wished for.”
“You wanted that too! That throne, that crown, that’s the only thing that’s mattered to you from the start. And now you have it. Now you’re queen and I’m tossed aside for some fucking butler. A man who is supposed to shine your shoes, not fuck you out of them. But we both know your standards are pretty fucking low.”
“You fuck!” Nicklas says, lunging, trying to punch me again.
He’s hitting me and I’m ducking, and the road sweeps to the left in a tight curve and I hit the brakes, whipping the wheel around like the pro I used to be. But even though this sort of turn isn’t a concern to me, the wetness of the road, especially after weeks of drought, means that the rain hasn’t sunken into the asphalt.
It’s slick and the car starts to spin out.
In a moment I forget why we’re even fighting.
I forget about the betrayal.
I forget that I’ve never hated two people so much in my life.
All I know is that we’re sliding out.
All I know is that if I can’t correct this vehicle, we’ll all go over the edge of the road and down into the valley below.
So I tap the brakes and I correct and I do everything that racing has taught me and I keep my head level, like this is just another bend in the course.
But the SUV does not behave like a rally car.
And the road does not behave like a rally track.
And my passengers aren’t navigators.
Everyone screams as the SUV speeds forward, spinning out of control as it bursts over the side of the road that barely had a shoulder to begin with.
We’re airborne for a moment.
Then we crash.
We implode. It feels like thousands of pounds of steel are warping around me.
Then we flip.
Over and over.
Again.
Bam.
And again.
Bam.
And again.
I don’t know what’s up or down.
The seatbelt digs at my windpipe, carving into my waist, just as Helena’s figure moves past me.
I reach out for her, to grab her, and I graze the length of her leg, my fingers trying in vain to grasp her.
But it’s too late.
She’s going through the windshield.
Glass shatters like rain and then everything is black.
It’s a blackness I can sink into. A void. A place where my sins live, waiting for me in its depths.
Then, after eons, centuries, years, minutes…
There’s rain on my face.