Chapter 22 #2
He keeps his eyes on the road, the night unraveling ahead with its dark blurs and sprinkle of overhead stars.
We’re taking the scenic route around the south side of the mountain.
It added an extra twenty minutes to our estimated arrival time, but it should be a less traveled road at this hour with less chance of picking up a tail.
“I’m breathing,” I tell him.
“Deep breath. I can hear you.”
My response is an exaggerated sigh.
“Hey, I care about your well-being, Olivia, and I don’t want you spiraling over this guy. As long as I’m around, as long as Leo, Dax, and Beck are around, there’s no way he is getting anywhere near you.”
“They should be home by now,” I mutter, checking my phone. “They haven’t texted me yet. Last I heard, they were leaving the scene.”
“No one in their right mind would go after the three of them,” Carlos tells me.
“Yeah, but we’ve already established that Marcus is not in his right mind,” I retort.
Looking out the side mirror, I see two pinpoints of light behind us. They are small, not too close, but they still set my teeth on edge.
Carlos tries to ease my mind with stories about the guys from over the years he’s known them, their bravery, their feats of strength. It settles me just a little bit.
That is, until I peek in the side-view mirror again.
The two lights I saw earlier are getting bigger.
They’re approaching fast, which means they’ll overtake us in a matter of minutes.
When Carlos spots them in the rearview mirror, I see a muscle twitching in his jaw before he shifts his focus back on the road ahead .
“Carlos is that—” I ask, noticing the headlights swelling brighter in the side mirror.
“Yeah, I see it.”
He speeds up, the engine roaring as he tries to put more distance between us.
My heart skips a few beats as the car behind us seems determined to catch up. I’m shaking like a leaf, my hands jittery and my pulse racing as cold sweat trickles down my face.
“Call Dax,” Carlos says. “Tell him where we are: mile marker 3.”
“Okay.”
I grab my phone, but my hands are shaking so hard, I drop it on the floor between my feet. I reach down, desperate to retrieve it, when the car bumps into us from the rear, hard enough to jostle our vehicle.
“Shit!” Carlos snaps. One hand is on the wheel while the other is fiddling with the snap of his gun holster. “I don’t have my radio with me either; I’m off duty. Shit, shit, shit.”
“It’s okay,” I hurriedly reply. “I’ll call?—”
The second bump is even harder. Carlos curses under his breath, struggling to keep control over the car. We’re zigzagging all over the road, and I can’t reach my phone. It must’ve slipped somewhere beneath my seat.
“Olivia, hold on!” I hear Carlos shout.
By the time I raise my head, the third bump hits the hardest, causing us to veer off the road. I scream as we skid across the hard dirt, bouncing uncontrollably until we hit a tree, causing the airbags to deploy .
I hear Carlos’s pained grunt. His head is whipped back against the headrest. My airbag hits me square in the face, temporarily knocking me senseless. The horn blares, on and on, echoing in my ears and dragging me back into consciousness.
“Oh, God,” I cry out, realizing what just happened.
I look around and try to get my bearings. “Carlos,” I say, then look to my left.
He groans softly; his head lolled to the side. Blood drips from his temple, and his eyes are closed, but he’s breathing. He’s coming to. A sense of urgency comes over me as I hear rushed footsteps approaching.
I can’t see a thing in this darkness. The headlights are out, smashed into the tree.
I reach over to grab Carlos’s gun. In my mind, I need it for protection. Whatever just happened, it was meant to disable us both.
The door cracks open to my right. I scream again as Marcus swoops in and smacks me across the face.
“Shut up!” he snarls and hits me once more.
The sting travels through my jaw, the heat spreading as white stars streak across my field of vision. “Marcus, no…”
He unfastens my seatbelt—or cuts it, I’m not sure—as I see the glint of a metal blade too close to my belly.
“Don’t hurt me, I’m pregnant!” I blurt out in a desperate attempt to stop him.
Marcus stills and gives me a sour look. “Are you fucking kidding me? ”
“Don’t do this,” I beg him.
He looks at Carlos, giving me a split second to notice the dark rings around Marcus’s eyes, his stubble, his messy hair.
It’s been a while since he’s groomed himself; Marcus never left the house if his eyebrows weren’t perfect.
The man I’m seeing here hardly bears a resemblance to the Marcus Bennett I knew and ran away from.
“Unless you want me to paint this car red with his blood, you’re gonna keep your mouth shut and do as I tell you,” he commands me.
“Please, Marcus, you’ve gone too far…”
He grabs me by the throat and yanks me out of the car. I sob and squirm in his hold, but to no avail. He has no mercy for me, no consideration. My only safe bet is to submit and let him take me.
So I soften and obey.
We leave Carlos behind, the horn still blaring, the dark night wrapping itself around me as if to kiss me goodbye forever.
All I can think of is that I may never see Dax, Leo, or Beck again, that my babies may never find their way into this world.