Page 34 of Hooked On Victor
Sharp. Final.
They both stood.
And they didn’t look back.
Chapter ten
Chapter 10 – Bloodlines and Burdens
The car tore down the old back roads like it was trying to outrun the entire world. Headlights off, they were just a black shape hurtling through deeper black, the hood slick with mist, the windshield streaked where wipers struggled to keep up. The pavement was still wet from the storm, and every bend sent the tires singing low against the asphalt, flinging up sprays of cold water into the night air.
The forest pressed in on either side.
Dark. Wild. Ancient.
The trees blurred into one solid mass, their branches clawing at the narrow sliver of road, trying to reclaim it. Sometimes the moon broke through the clouds for a heartbeat—just enough silver light to illuminate the slick track ahead—before vanishing again behind roiling thunderheads.
Inside the car, the silence was worse than the wind.
Victor had one hand on the wheel. His other hand was clamped over his ribs, fingers splayed wide, red seeping between them in sluggish drips that soaked into his shirt. His breath washarsh, ragged, punching out of him with every bump in the road. But his jaw was locked tight, eyes fixed unblinking on the way ahead.
Rose sat next to him, so close she could feel the heat of his blood in the air, metallic and sharp. She had the first-aid kit balanced on her lap, the hard plastic edge biting into her thighs with every curve he took too fast. Her fingers drummed restlessly against the lid, the rhythm erratic—betraying every thought she refused to say out loud.
They didn’t speak for miles.
The silence grew claws.
It scraped along her nerves with every passing second, raw and accusing.
She watched the way his knuckles whitened on the wheel. The set of his mouth. The thin sheen of sweat on his temple that caught the faint dashboard glow and made him look carved from something breakable.
When she couldn’t take it anymore, she turned her head fully toward him.
“Pull over,” she said.
He didn’t react.
Didn’t even glance at her.
“You’re bleeding too much,” she said again, voice lower.
His nostrils flared.
“We don’t have time—”
“Now, Victor.”
Her voice cracked like a whip in the confined space.
He exhaled. A sound more like a growl than a breath.
Without a word he jerked the wheel to the right, tires crunching over loose gravel as the car swerved off the road and down a narrow, half-hidden turnout. Branches scraped along the sides with brittle fingers. The headlights, dimmedand shuttered, cast crooked, fractured shadows that leapt and twisted through the trees.
Finally he stopped under a heavy copse of dripping pines.
The engine ticked in the hush, heat fading from the block.
Rain ticked against the windshield. Soft now. Relentless.
