Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 89093 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89093 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
After checking that the cabin is empty and snatching up the pocketknife I’m rarely without, I head for the charred remains of the greenhouse, conscious that is the only other place to hide around here.
Partway there, my head snaps to the side when a twig breaking under someone’s foot demands my attention. I didn’t exactly hear the stick snap in two. I more sensed it. When you live in dense woodlands, you pay attention to every movement the land makes because more times than not, the slightest rustle of a tree’s branch announces more than a windy day.
I put years of hunting skills to work when I scan the rugged landscape. It is an endless sea of green and brown with some scatters of white from the snow that fell overnight, but in the very far corner, there’s a flicker of light reflecting the last of the sun’s rays.
That’s the sign I’m seeking, and it is what I race for.
“Cecil.”
I stop dead in my tracks when I find him. He isn’t giving Mario lip as I was anticipating. He’s dangling from the tree by the rope he told me years ago was useless.
“No!”
I sprint for him so fast, my feet lose traction in the sloshy mud. I crash into his still legs like a foal learning to walk before I curl my arms around his thighs and hoist him into the air.
“Help!” I scream, aware my pleas are worthless but too fucking lost to comprehend what I’m doing.
I need to cut him down.
I need to loosen the rope digging into his neck so firmly his face is purple, but to do that, I’d need to let him go.
If I do that, he will die.
I will never climb the tree he’s dangling from in enough time, not to mention hack through the rope that would have easily claimed my life if Cecil hadn’t deceived me.
“Come on!” I scream, torn between yanking on the rope hard enough to snap it, but mindful it could snap Cecil’s neck and continuing to hold him up until my father and his cavalry arrive.
Just as Cecil’s heaviness breaks my heart, a rustling at my side gains my attention.
“H-Help me, p-please,” I beg, uncaring that my voice is on the verge of a sob. Roderick isn’t as heartless as my father, so this scene will be just as shocking to him, wouldn’t it? “I’ll hold him while y-you climb up on the t-tree and loosen the r-rope.”
“He’s gone, CJ.”
“No!” I shout. “He’s a f-fighter. He’s got this. He j-just needs some help.” I nudge my head to the tree again. “Climb up and c-cut him down. P-Please!” My last word echoes through the dense woodlands because they can’t bounce off a man as soulless as my father.
Roderick shakes his head, infuriating me to the point I almost let Cecil go. “He’s fuckin’ purple. He’s dead.” All rational thoughts leave my head when he tacks on with a condescending smirk, “And it serves him right after what he told me. He’s a murderer.”
“Cecil wouldn’t hurt a fucking fly!” I roar, my voice unlike anything I’ve ever heard. “He is a good man—”
“Was,” Roderick corrects. “You can’t refer to him in the present since he isn’t with us anymore.”
I charge for him before he knows what hits him. I’m blinded by rage, and so fucking angry I pound my fists into his face over and over and over again until the blood streaming down his cheeks matches the salty blobs careening down mine. I don’t stop beating into him. I hit him with everything I have. My anger. My rage. My wish that I could belt into my father with the same amount of intensity.
I beat the living shit out of him, my onslaught only ending when the vicious sneer of my father curdles my stomach more than the image of Roderick’s caved-in face. “I should have known there was a monster inside you. You are, after all, a Petretti.”
As quickly as rage blinded me, it disperses, and I realize what I’ve done.
I became the very thing I swore I’d never be—I became my father.
Sickened, I leap to my feet and charge for the woods. I miss darting behind a large tree trunk by half a second. The delay costs me greatly. Not only does a bullet shred through the ear, damaging the already ravaged cartilage from years of abuse, but one also rockets through my right shoulder.
As blood pools out of me, I stumble through the woods like I drank too much of the liquor Cecil lived off every winter. My mind is hazy, and my vision is blurry.
I’m on the verge of death.
Perhaps it is for the best?
Cecil is dead, and I killed Roderick.
I have nothing left to live for, so instead of fighting to fill my lungs with air, I slump into the hollow of a tree trunk, pull out my pocketknife, then drag it up the veins in my wrists.