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)
Christine scrambles to pick up the sniper rifle that I knocked out of Anton’s hands and I can barely make out the shape of her as she steadies herself on the edge of the wall. I’m trying desperately to hold Anton in place as he batters my head and face, and then, after a prolonged moment of struggle, I hear…
Pop. Then another pop.
Two shots. Two quick, sharp shots with a bullet being chambered between the first and the second.
Two sniper rifle shots.
And, immediately, the sound of the gunfire from below stops.
ALEC
Andra is crying again, more loudly, as I look to the side and see the chauffeurs drop to the ground.
One. Two. Drop. Drop.
Zander dashes to pick up one of their discarded weapons and points it in the direction the sniper’s bullets came from.
“Father!”
When I look up, I can see Christine’s head behind the scope. And to the side of her I see Danny struggling against the one called Anton.
As Zander points the submachine gun toward Christine, she lifts her head up.
Don’t, I will at her, silently. Don’t give him a larger target to aim for.
Why would she do that?
And then I realize why.
She’s looking to me.
She catches my eye.
I can make out from this distance that she’s looking for something from me.
Not permission exactly. But confirmation.
Confirmation that this is what is wanted. What is needed. To complete the journey.
That after this long, winding, brutal, painful, glorious, tragic, uniquely ours road we’ve traveled, that landing here, in a version of the place where we started, is right.
Is this the right place to do what must be done?
Is this what we need to make ourselves complete in some indescribable way?
Is this the end?
It is an impossible question to answer.
But I believe it is.
I believe it is indeed.
So I nod. Ever so faintly.
And she pulls the trigger.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Zander van den Berg’s head explodes as it is impacted by the bullet, and in that same moment, Danny unleashes a primal scream. Something I’ve never heard before and I hope to never hear again.
And out of that scream, he lifts Anton into the air and hurls him off the roof like someone hoisting a kettle bell and throwing it as hard as they can, the momentum almost carrying him over the side as well, but I grab him around the legs and keep him from tumbling. I pull him back from the edge.
I grapple him to the concrete and he lands on his back, splayed out, spent.
It is quiet. It is still.
I wait for long, long moments to see if the sound of gunfire picks up again or someone unaccounted for pops their head from some unseen hiding place, but no one and nothing does.
I look at Danny bleeding on the ground, one eye open and unfocused. But I’m not afraid. I’m not worried that he will not be all right. I don’t know why. I just know I feel at peace.
I sit beside him, bringing his head onto my lap and resting it against my stomach. He reaches up and paws at my belly as I stroke the side of his face.
After a few moments of just sitting there, being, he says, “Alec?”
I smile. Because even though… everything… it is the first word he utters.
I don’t respond with words in kind, just maneuver myself out from under his head and help him to stand so that we can look over the wall together. We see…
The two guards. Dead on the ground.
Anton. Splattered onto the earth below.
Zander van den Berg. Alexei Gorny. Whoever he was. No more. Gone. Ended.
And Alec, our Alec—for better or worse, in murder and in ecstasy, until death tries to do us part but fucking can’t because somehow or another we always find a way not to let it, Alec—holding onto a sobbing, wailing Andra.
All else is silence.
I turn my head to look up. I don’t know why. I just do.
In the sky… the moon. Full. Bright. Shining. Round. Casting an eerie black-blue tint over everything.
Holy shit. We crushed it open.
This world. This life. This… “thing” we share, as Zander called it. We crushed it open.
Time and time again.
That’s what we’ve been doing all along.
Trying to break it, maybe to see what makes it seem so pretty despite all the ways in which it shouldn’t be, especially given who we are and what we’ve done, but…
At the end? The source, the genesis, the thing that explains why we held onto hope and belief and never let go, the beauty that came spilling out of the crushed-open blueness…
Was us.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
… NOW.
The sun is finally fully extinguished over the edge of the planet and a black-blue darkness has settled. The white tips of the waves come to a splashing conclusion as they lap at the shore just barely visible in the dusky shade that envelopes all.