Chapter 85 Endless Darkness

Chapter 85 Endless Darkness
Bella's POV

The second I got into my car, I sped out of the base, tires screeching against the pavement as I merged onto the main road, my mind already miles ahead of my actual location.

My mind was already racing through every possible way I could convince my father I had genuinely switched sides. I needed my performance to be flawless, every word calculated, every expression believable enough to make him lower his guard completely. He was too sharp to fall for anything less than perfect.

My phone rang suddenly, cutting through my thoughts, buzzing loudly against the passenger seat.

I picked it up without even checking the screen, my mind still preoccupied with rehearsing what I would say to Benjamin once I reached him.

"Hello, Eva," a familiar voice said smoothly. "Or should I say, my darling wife, Bella?"

I wasn't surprised to hear his voice at all. If anything, I had half expected this call after that video of me found its way to Sasha. It was only a matter of time before Lucas came sniffing around.

"Lucas," I said, my voice dripping with heavy sarcasm. "You must have missed me so much you couldn't even wait another day to call….How touching."

"We need to meet up," he said, ignoring my tone completely, his voice carrying that same infuriating calm he always used when he wanted something. "Talk about things properly. Especially considering we're technically still married."

I laughed, sharp and humorless, the sound echoing slightly against the car's interior.

"Don't get ahead of yourself," I said. "As far as I remember, our so-called marriage was nothing but a fake arrangement between you and my father's family. We have absolutely nothing to discuss, and we certainly have nothing to do with each other anymore."

There was a pause on the other end, long enough that I almost thought he had hung up, the silence stretching just a little too long to be comfortable.

"I have something you might be interested in knowing," he said finally, his voice quieter now, more deliberate, carrying just enough weight to make me almost want to ask what exactly he meant by that.

"Get lost," I said flatly, refusing to give him the satisfaction of curiosity.

I ended the call without waiting for his response, tossing the phone onto the passenger seat beside me with more force than necessary.

Whatever game Lucas was playing, I refused to give him the satisfaction of engaging with it right now. I had bigger problems to deal with than entertaining whatever manipulation he had planned next, especially with everything already stacked against me today.

I gripped the steering wheel tighter, focusing back on the road ahead of me. Traffic was light this time of day, the streets mostly clear except for the occasional car merging in and out of lanes around me.

I approached an intersection, preparing to make a turn into the next lane over, my mind still partially distracted by everything happening around me all at once. Kim. The technician. My father. Lucas and his cryptic warning. Everything tangled together into one overwhelming knot of tension pressing hard against my temples.

I signaled and began shifting into the adjacent lane.

That's when I saw it.

A massive truck barreling toward me from the side street, moving far faster than any vehicle had any business traveling through a residential intersection like this, its horn blaring uselessly against the noise of the impending disaster.

My eyes widened in shock.

I yanked the wheel hard, trying desperately to swerve out of its path, my foot slamming down on the brake pedal with everything I had, my body bracing instinctively for what was about to happen.

It wasn't enough.

The impact hit before I could fully react, the sound of crushing metal exploding through the air as the truck slammed directly into the side of my car with bone-jarring force. The force of the collision sent my vehicle spinning violently across the intersection, glass shattering around me in a spray of glittering fragments, the world tilting sideways in a blur of motion I couldn't control no matter how hard I fought against it.

My body jerked forward with brutal force, the seatbelt cutting hard across my chest before it could fully catch me.

I felt my head slam hard against the steering wheel, pain exploding through my skull in a burst of white-hot agony that stole the breath straight out of my lungs.

For a split second, everything around me seemed to freeze completely. The screech of tires. The crunch of metal folding in on itself. The sharp sting of glass fragments cutting across my skin in dozens of tiny, stinging cuts.

Then everything blurred together, colors bleeding into one another, sounds distorting into something distant and muffled, like I was hearing the world from somewhere deep underwater.

I tried to move, tried to reach for something, anything, to steady myself against the spinning sensation overtaking my entire body. My hands felt heavy, disconnected from the rest of me, refusing to respond the way they should have, no matter how hard I willed them to move.

A warm, wet sensation trickled down the side of my face, sticky and unmistakably wrong.

I blinked hard, trying to force my vision to clear, but everything only grew hazier with each passing second. The edges of my sight darkened, closing in like a slowly tightening circle around whatever remained visible in front of me, the world shrinking down to nothing but shadows.

Somewhere in the distance, I thought I heard voices. Panicked shouting and footsteps rushing closer, growing louder and then fading away again.

But the sounds felt so far away now, muffled and distorted, like they belonged to an entirely different world than the one I was currently trapped inside.

I tried to fight against the darkness creeping into the edges of my vision, tried to hold onto consciousness through sheer force of will alone, refusing to let go so easily. But my body refused to cooperate, exhaustion and pain dragging me down faster than I could resist, faster than any amount of willpower could counter.

My last coherent thought drifted to Ethan. To the plan we had just discussed only minutes ago. To Lucas's cryptic warning right before this happened, the timing suddenly felt far too suspicious to be coincidence.

Had this been an accident?

Or had someone finally caught up with me, after everything I had done to stay hidden all these years?

The question slipped away before I could hold onto it, swallowed whole by the darkness pressing in from every single direction now, refusing to let me go.

My vision faded completely, the last flicker of light disappearing entirely from view.

And then there was nothing but endless darkness.