Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 85569 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 428(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85569 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 428(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
"It's a clean wound," I told her, but realized I was so choked up with emotion and nervous tension I could barely speak. Eventually, I took a moment to calm myself down because this wasn’t over yet. Her father needed to be okay; otherwise, this would be a monumental disaster. His face was pale and his breathing was shallow.
"He’ll be fine. I’ll go get help. Just press down on the wound, don't move him." Montana nodded in response. Her face was full of bruises, her hair plastered to her forehead in sweat, and there were cuts on her hands, but otherwise, she was all right.
"Dad!" Anya screamed.
“Be brave and wait for me,” I said because I couldn’t focus on her right now. I needed all of the strength I had to get help in time. I started the trek back and halfway through I saw the sheriff and the paramedics we had sent for. Together we raced back to the bunker. Montana's father was still alive, but he was losing consciousness fast; the medics worked quickly. In record time he was lifted and sent to the ambulance. Montana got in with him, but I didn’t.
"I’ll be behind you all," I told her, and they hurried away.
I turned then to look at my daughter, and in that moment, it was as though the world had stopped. I collapsed down to the ground, and she hurried towards me, sobbing uncontrollably. I caught her in an embrace, pulling her into my arms, and we stayed that way for the longest time. I could see that she was only superficially injured but I gave her body a thorough check up. Seeing that she wasn’t hurt or harmed, I held her tightly to me.
I was unable to let go for ages.
Eventually, my strength began to come back once again, and I felt my heart beating in my chest. It was a strange feeling because for the past several hours, it had felt as though it had completely stopped. I pulled away and looked into her eyes then, and all I could do was apologize.
"I'm so sorry, sweetheart. I am so sorry," I said.
“What about Mommy?” she asked.
“She’s going to be okay,” I said with a smile.
“Really?”
“Yes. Soon you might be able to visit her.”
My daughter’s face broke into a big grin. “Daddy. She’s never going to come live with us again, is she?”
“No, honey. Your Mommy and I are not meant to be together.”
She thought for a while. “What about Miss Moore? Are you meant to be together?”
“Would you like that? Would you like Miss Moore to come live with us?”
She nodded. “Yeah, she’s nice. And brave. She was very brave today, Daddy. Mommy’s scared of creepy crawlies and snakes and rats. Miss Moore is scared of nothing.”
I laughed, and suddenly out of the blue, I remembered something Anya had told me about her nightmares. In them, her mother was lying on a black bed and she was very still. That was indeed how I found Arianna. She was lying on a black bed and she was so still and pale she could have been dead. I wondered if somehow, on some psychic, subconscious level Arianna had connected with her mother and seen and felt the danger she was in.
I hugged my daughter once again and swore to myself that I would never, ever, put her or anyone else in danger ever again.
Chapter 59
Montana
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2lxEVnhox0
-Felicita-
After my mother died, I hated hospitals in a way that I didn’t think I could put into words.
Every chance I got to avoid them, I took it, but here I was in one of them again as I sat by my father's bedside.
Thankfully, he wasn’t dying.
They had brought him in just in time, and as Cole had said, it was a clean shot through his shoulder, so more or less a flesh wound. God, I had been so frightened when I saw him fall to the ground after they shot him. I wanted to kill those men. If Cole, I should stop thinking of him as Cole … if Luca hadn’t done it, I would have.
My father was going to be fine, but I didn’t know if I would be.
There was still so much to process. In so many ways, the last few hours felt like a surreal nightmare, and as I watched my father sleeping, I couldn’t help but wonder if I had dreamed it all. I was still waiting for someone to pinch me awake … until I looked down at the cuts and bruises all over my body. Then I couldn’t deny that all of it was real. Even the dead body with the axe in its face, totaling my beloved old Volvo, running through the woods like hunted animals while those monsters came after us, and watching my father fall, thinking he was dying or dead …