Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 89074 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89074 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
I hear the distant wail of sirens but I barely register it. I keep my eyes on Rayne and Wes, needing them to be okay.
Rayne’s terrified.
The gun is shaking in his hands.
He doesn’t know how to hold it properly at all.
“Even if you kill us, it isn’t going to matter,” Briar says, coming toward me and Kai. “Our father is on his way to your father, to ensure that a deal is finally struck. This war is bigger than you.”
It turns out her words are just meant to distract us.
She’s clearly going to try to get Kai’s gun away from me.
She lunges at me a moment later, but I was anticipating it.
I reach one leg out and manage to trip her before she can connect with my body. She falls to the ground, but she’s not badly hurt, still getting up and coming at us.
The sirens get louder.
Briar comes at me, putting her arm around my neck.
If I move at all, Kai or Briar will be able to get the gun from me.
If I don’t move, Briar will be able to choke the breath out of me.
Rayne and Wes will watch me die right here in front of them.
The same way I watched someone I love die in front of me.
Already, I can’t get enough air.
My lungs start to burn, but I can’t move.
“We have to leave,” Kai says to Briar, over and over, as he realizes that the sirens are coming for us.
She doesn’t listen.
She wants to kill me just for fun, now.
She never did like letting me win a fight.
I’m losing consciousness when the sirens become louder.
And a little glimmer of hope burns inside me when I finally start to pass out.
I see a team of police, running toward Wes and Rayne.
“God fucking damn it,” Briar curses.
And she finally drops me hard onto the ground.
Briar’s hand leaves my neck as she and Kai try to make a run for it, but my head drops to the grassy ground as my vision becomes spotty and I gasp for air.
Rayne and Wes are safe.
And we’re not alone at all.
27
Rayne
Something becomes so obvious when you’re faced with death.
And it isn’t complicated or confusing at all.
When I thought it might be over…
The only thing that remained was love.
“We were walking back onto Red Row when we heard a gunshot,” Ollie explains, his eyes wide. “We didn’t feel safe going toward it, but we called the police immediately.”
“You saved our lives,” I tell him.
I’m bone-tired and weary, and everything feels like a morbid dream.
We’ve just spent the last four hours with the police, explaining everything.
And it turns out that the FBI had been looking for Briar and Kai already. But right at the end of our questioning, before the police let us go, they let us know another thing that had happened, just an hour after we were kidnapped.
Howard Zhang, Briar’s father, had found Barrett Knox.
He’d gotten to him as he was in the back of a black car, being driven to Crimson College.
There had been a gun fight.
Howard Zhang and Barrett Knox had both been killed.
I feel like I’ve been through hell and back today, but I can’t begin to imagine how Wes and Hunter feel.
Learning their father was using them as a bargaining chip for his business deals.
That he didn’t even value Hunter’s fucking life.
And now he’s dead.
It’s like we’ve all just woken up from a nightmare.
One that none of us are going to be able to recover from quickly.
But Briar and Kai are in prison, and the warring families aren’t going to be able to threaten us anymore. We were informed that the Zhang family had been imploding for years now, and the few remaining loyal members were apprehended along with Howard Zhang.
For the first time all semester, we are safe.
I’d almost forgotten what it felt like.
Three weeks later, all the leaves have fallen from the trees.
I sit with Hunter in the front living room of Onyx House, in a comfortable silence as we both study for exams.
The fireplace crackling fills the air, and some of the other guys are over in the back room, playing poker, and more are in the kitchen cooking up a big pot of pasta.
Things feel more normal than they have all semester.
If normal is even something that can exist.
With each passing day, I’ve been there for Wes and Hunter. Every time they have a fit of white-hot rage. Every time they shed tears for the father who failed them.
And for the first time in their lives, Hunter and Wes are bonded together as brothers in a way that they’ve never been before.
If there’s any silver lining to this storm, it’s that.
“Hey,” I say softly to Hunter now, closing my history textbook and scooting over on the couch to be closer to him. “How are you doing?”