Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 118042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 590(@200wpm)___ 472(@250wpm)___ 393(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 590(@200wpm)___ 472(@250wpm)___ 393(@300wpm)
Ily…where are you?
The world flipped upside down.
I gasped and swayed. I cried out as my left knee buckled and crunched against the grass. The hole in my side burned as if something with many teeth and vials of venom chewed through me.
Christ.
Tapping my head with the heel of my hand, I willed myself to stand.
Get up.
Stay awake.
Just a little longer.
Stewart grabbed my elbow and hoisted me up. “Come on, Mercer. Let’s finish this. Then we’ll get the pilot to fly us out of here and come back with help, alright?”
I nodded and tried to speak, but no sound came out.
“Let’s go,” the bald guard said. “Seeing as you’ve hobbled Mr Grand, you better be right about this. You better pay us what you promised. And you better be able to get us off this island because if you can’t…we’ll do to you what you did to our boss.”
“You’re going home.” I nodded, forcing myself to speak. My tongue felt swollen in my mouth, my teeth ached, my entire face unfamiliar. Every step we took, the pain I’d ignored returned, one agonising memento at a time.
The punch to my jaw by Victor.
The gunshot to my side by Larry.
The uncountable number of lashes.
The cracked ribs.
The broken ankle and forearm that had healed but not enough.
All of it clung to me like sandbags, weighing me down, making every step such a fucking struggle.
But I kept going.
We all kept going, getting closer and closer to the castle.
Jewels appeared in the shadows, standing around and safe.
A few guards who’d fought beside them noticed us and headed in our direction.
I no longer had hope but reality.
We’d won.
Fuck…we won.
I almost went down again. The sheer relief made me want to sob and slam into sleep.
No more screams echoed in the stars.
No more gunshots.
No more carnage of war.
The fight was over.
My heart skipped strangely again, tugging me toward the fire, summoning urgently, urgently to find Ily.
Incessant tears burned my stinging eyes.
I had to see her.
I felt as if I’d die if I didn’t.
I’d finally delivered on my promise. I’d vowed to get her out. It’d taken me a while, and I’d stepped off the path a few times, but…I’d done it.
I saved her.
And she…she saved me.
My knees threatened to buckle again, but I managed to stay standing. Just.
Together, we came to a stop at the garden’s edge, buffeted by the smoky heat of the ruined fortress. From here, the windows of Victor’s pride and joy glittered with flames as curtains cindered and expensive fakery turned into ash. The deck continued to smoulder, the skeletons of tables and chairs signalling an end of an era.
Everything looked purged. Purified—
A deafening drone sounded in the sky, growing louder and louder.
It rang in my ears. It throbbed in my jaw.
Oh shit.
I braced.
Was Victor’s contingency plan about to detonate?
“What’s that?” I looked around in panic.
Ben stiffened. Stewart glowered at Victor. “What did you—?”
Something exploded through the smoke hiding the stars above. Something with spinning rotor blades and piercing bright lights.
I squinted as another helicopter appeared.
Followed by another. And another. And another.
The drone was un-fucking-bearable.
The whop-whop-whop of their mechanical wings as they soared around the burning castle. The pressure beat down on us, churning the smoke into little tornadoes and wind devils.
Victor thrashed and fought.
The guards dropped him and narrowed their eyes at the helicopters. “Friends of yours?” the bald guard asked.
My vision struggled to focus. The blinking lights and speed didn’t help with my rapidly building nausea and dizziness, but I studied the tail of the closest one.
The largest helicopter hovered directly above us, buffeting us in wind and granting scents of ocean instead of fire.
Raising my hand to shield the spotlight that clicked on and aimed right at us, I followed the silver emblem painted on the tail.
An emblem I’d only seen once before.
On a business card.
For Moineau holdings.
A black Q with a sparrow soaring in the letter’s flick.
“Shit, I knew he’d come!” Ben suddenly slapped me on the back. “Told you we called your brother.”
I snarled in agony as he caught the whip marks and layered me with yet another gush of pain.
“Oh fuck. Sorry!” Ben reached for me as if to rub away my mind-melting discomfort.
Stepping out of his reach, I flushed with sickly sweat. “You…you called Q?”
“I told you that.”
“No.” I bared my teeth. “You didn’t.”
“Ah well, I was trying to before. When Stew turned the scrambler off—”
“I told your brother to check the cufflinks coordinates,” Stewart cut in. “It was the only way anyone would ever know where we are. The cufflinks were the map.” He laughed out loud. “He must’ve listened. I had my doubts, but…fuck. It worked! It really worked!”
All of us backed up as the huge hulking helicopter slowly descended directly behind us, hovering like a bird of prey in the gardens. The other flying machines soared over the wall; the whine of their engines blasted across the entire island as they prepared to land.