CHAPTER ONE
ON MY LAST RIDE
AVA'S POV
They say your life flashes before your eyes before you meet your end. Well... In my case, falling from a 200-foot drop tower would do that to you.
It was a trauma could only be described as hell.
An abyss that still held on, zipping my unconsciousness between the frigid clasp of the rusty carriage and a flat, firm surface that probably carried me away to the next afterlife... Or anywhere worlds apart from that beast.
I waited and waited. Hoping to hear an angelic voice call out my judgment... But it didn't come. The faint light that sifted through my eyelids did not match the awe-inspiring tales of Christened light and golden gates.
Instead, it was a different stimulus that filtered into my senses. At first, the air reeked with a sterile sting, and my toes jittered from the soft, frigid breeze that caressed the skin beneath. As the entire region had been bleached and polished clean with surgical efficiency.
A sharp contrast to the empty playground where my dear husband tried to kill me.
I was feeling again, and it wasn't the heavenly aura or the scorching heat I was expecting. No. Far from it. Instead, it was the cold. Then, it was the clustered voices murmuring over my ears, spewing words that were way too grounded and earthly for my liking.
The whiff of alcohol and spirit even oozed around me, wearing my skin like I was in some hospital gown or some-----
Wait...no.... It couldn't be... I was still...."I was still alive. I was still present in the mortal realm.... still in possible proximity to my murderer."
Pathetic. Just great. I couldn't even die right.
My dad would have relished my sheer durability, but what did he know? He wasn't strung up in a structure so high that the faces had started to look the same. And yet, I could still pick out his green eyes, raised and relentlessly drawn to mine.
The future could have me forget everything about that fateful event, and yet the picture of his square jaw, barely sheathed in skin--- would expel that amnesia in seconds because that was the man who murdered me. The same man whom my father gave the responsibility of keeping me safe ended up being the reason for my excruciating death.
Such was my life. Even as I was supposed to be resting forever, I had to mess up and not die.
Worst case scenario, I was being rolled off for another session of endless torture. One that could come right amid the battle brewing in my mind. The kind that was calling me back into that night again, like this was going to be the purgatory before my heaven.
I fought with every fibre in me, but it was too late. My consciousness was way past the threshold, and it didn't take long before I was sent back into that cold carriage. Back when all my limbs were strapped, and the only thing I could do was to wait as his head raised skywards, and announced that I--- Ava Kovacevic, his wife. Betrayed him.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
"...I didn't ask for this..... I was promised a wife. Someone to grow our empire with! ----
"And all I got ... the only thing life could present me -was a sabotaging cunt like you, huhn?! -Tell me how's that fair, Ava. Tell me. Why you stabbed me... ME!!".
"TELL ME!!!".
"I didn't betray you, Hugh... I swear...I sweeeearrr", Augggh!!! If only I could go back in time and just... end my past self for saying that, maybe it would have saved me from the heartbreak and the searing sensation that had grown between my legs.
And yet, none of them... No point in that horrid night hurt more than the sight of that snake slithering off from behind him. Her face was seamlessly poised with dampened sympathy, but her lips... Her lips had betrayed her.
Of course, it had been her all along. The crushing sense of betrayal I had felt just looking was unforgettable.
I would have missed it, thought it out as just a misfitting glimpse, but that image of her twitched-up lips said otherwise.
Her words that came after dripped with deception. Stained with dangerous lies even as she tried to placate the matter, her arms draped around his neck, but of course, his decision remained firm. I wouldn't be bouncing off realms between present and past if it weren't.
"Hugh---- I think she has had enough. It's just one base. The crew they apprehended wouldn't dare snitch, they wouldn't da---"
"Enough---This bit... Enough you say... Do you know how hard it was to find a base that could hold that much cargo, do you do you, DO YOU— ".
He lurched towards her, one arm slung overhead while she staggered back, and when he was to connect — his whole body froze, then jolted back like he had been pushed by something powerful.
Then, he faced me, twisting with such speed I was sure my death was coming, and his emotionless gaze simply backed up my fears.
No counsel saved me in that moment. Not even from the associates who circled him, beckoning for a possible rethink. I begged, pleaded--- squeezed my lungs to their limit screaming, and yet, he paid no heed to any of them.
Nothing flinched nor moved across his face except his parted lips and tongue, the latter rolling of the go-ahead to my execution. Simple and yet as disengaged as any assassin's bullet could ever be.
"Activate the machine".
Yes. That was all it took before the metal gears awakened with a deep creak, drowsy at first but deafening once the metal carriage, my prison, surged up to its final summit, freezing my skin as blistering winds tugged against it mercilessly.
And when the machine stopped, a rerun of the Earth's distance apart came rushing back.
Oh!! The anticipation had nearly killed me then. And God, I wish it did. But instead, the dread just festered like a killer disease, coursing in like nitro to my pounding heart, sucking my womb dry until a burning pang flooded the emptiness within.
The monster had put a pause on my suffering, letting the carriage hold its breath before it surged up — then plunged without remorse.
And I was left to my death.....