Chapter Four – The bloody game

I didn’t go home that night. I couldn’t. I stayed in a hotel, numb, broken, replaying Nathan’s words until they carved wounds deeper than any slap.

By morning, I knew. This marriage was dead.

When I walked into the house, he was waiting, pacing, his eyes red with fury. The moment he saw me, his voice thundered through the room.

“Where the hell have you been, bitch?”

I froze. He almost lifted his hands to sign but remembered—I could hear. His words stabbed sharper than knives.

I didn’t answer. I dropped the divorce papers on the table. My fingers shook, but my voice didn’t.

“Sign.”

He blinked, stunned, then smirked like I was some child throwing tantrums. He picked up the pen, twirling it lazily.

“You think this scares me? You think you can walk away from me, Rachel? You’ll crawl back like you always do.”

I didn't alter a word.

His smirk faltered. He leaned closer, eyes burning.

“You’re bluffing.”

I didn’t move.

He slammed the pen down on the paper, scratching his name across the page like carving flesh. My chest tightened as the ink bled into the paper. Done. Finished.

A car horn blared outside. My heart skipped cause It knew it was Dave

I turned, heading to the bedroom. My suitcase was already packed, waiting. I carried it out, my whole life shrunk into one bag.

But Nathan stepped in front of the door, blocking me. His voice dropped, thick with rage.

“You’re making the biggest mistake of your life.”

I tried to push past him, but he slammed his hand against the doorframe.

“You’ll regret this, Rachel. You’ll regret leaving me. Better you apologise now, beg, crawl. Maybe I’ll forgive you.”

I stared into his eyes. For the first time, I saw nothing, not even a drop of love or remorse.

“No. I will never beg you again.”

His face twisted. “Ungrateful slut. Without me, you’re nothing.”

Tears burned my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. I pushed past him, yanking the door open. His voice roared after me.

“You’ll regret this! You’ll regret walking away from me!”

I didn’t turn back.

Dave’s car was waiting, engine humming. The door opened, and his hand reached for mine. Warm. Steady.

I stepped in, suitcase on my lap, my chest breaking and mending all at once.

Nathan’s shadow filled the doorway behind me, but I didn’t look.

I whispered to myself, voice shaking but certain.

“It’s over.”

Dave drove, and with every mile, I felt chains fall away, leaving nothing but scars and fire.

The drive was silent at first. My hands trembled. Dave glanced at me, his jaw tight.

“You really did it.”

“I had to,” I whispered.

His fingers tightened on the wheel. “He’s going to come after you.”

“I know.”

“Do you regret it?”

I turned my face to the window, watching the city blur past. My voice cracked.

“I regret loving him.”

Dave reached over, his hand brushing mine. “You’re free now.”

Free. The word felt foreign. My chest ached, my tears spilling silently.

I closed my eyes, hearing Nathan’s voice in my head, spitting insults, tearing me apart. Deaf liability. Kidney. Bullet. Trash.

But then I heard my own voice, loud and clear: I will never beg you again.

For the first time in years, I believed myself.

The night seemed endless, until suddenly, it wasn’t.

A flash of blinding headlights appeared out of nowhere. My body tensed before my mind even caught up. A black SUV shot across the lane, too fast, too close.

“Dave!” I screamed, my hands flying forward against the dashboard.

He slammed the brakes. The sound tore through the night, shrill and violent. The car lurched. My body jerked. The SUV hit us with brutal force, metal crashing into metal, the scream of destruction ringing in my ears.

My head whipped sideways. Pain shot down my neck. My own scream broke free, raw and ragged, but the sound drowned beneath the chaos.

Before I could even catch my breath, a deeper roar came, shaking the ground. I turned my head, heart slamming in my chest.

A truck. A monster of steel bearing down on us, unstoppable.

“No—no, no, no!” My voice cracked into sobs.

The impact was worse. Crushing. The world twisted, flipped, and broke apart. I slammed against the seatbelt, the pressure biting deep into my skin. Shards of glass rained like stars around me, the smell of smoke filling my lungs.

I couldn’t breathe. My ears rang. My thoughts scattered.

“Dave!” I choked out, reaching blindly through the smoke. His hand found mine, weak, trembling.

I tried to hold on. Tried to keep my grip. But everything was slipping—his strength, my vision, the world itself.

Somewhere far away, sirens wailed, growing louder, closer.

I closed my eyes, praying to wake up from this nightmare. But darkness was faster.

The night filled with chaos—flashing red and blue lights, paramedics rushing with stretchers, firemen prying open twisted metal. The car was barely recognizable, crushed between the SUV and the massive truck that had ploughed into it.

“Two survivors, critical!” a paramedic shouted, voice hoarse from urgency.

Rachel was pulled out first, limp, blood smeared across her pale skin. Dave followed, his chest barely rising, his face slack.

“Stay with us!” Another medic barked, pressing oxygen masks over their faces. The sound of the hydraulic cutters slicing through steel drowned beneath the steady, unrelenting cry of the sirens.

In minutes, they were loaded into the ambulance. Doors slammed. Engines roared.

Inside, chaos continued. A medic pressed hard on Dave’s chest, counting compressions. Another tried to stabilize Rachel, inserting lines, shouting numbers. The air was thick with the smell of antiseptic, fear, and sweat.

At the hospital, doors burst open. Gurneys wheeled fast down stark white halls. Doctors shouted orders, nurses rushed with IV bags and machines.

“Code blue, multiple trauma patients—get the crash cart now!”

The fight stretched for hours. Tubes, machines, electric shocks, desperate hands pressing on unmoving chests.

Dave’s heart stuttered, returned, and then failed again. Rachel’s pulse flickered weakly, then faded into silence.

The doctors didn’t stop. Not until the exhaustion showed in their movements. Not until the monitors flatlined and stayed flat, the beeping replaced by a long, merciless tone.

Finally, one doctor whispered the words everyone dreaded.

“Time of death: 2:17 a.m. Rachel Williams.”

Minutes later.

“Time of death: 2:24 a.m. Dave Marshall.”

The next morning, the world learned what the night had stolen.

“Breaking News,” the anchor’s voice carried across millions of screens, firm but tinged with disbelief. “A fatal accident occurred late last night involving the CEO of Carewell Cosmetics, Dave Marshall. Marshall was travelling in his private car alongside Rachel Williams, the wife of Nathan Williams—CEO of CloudTech and Carewell’s biggest rival in the cosmetics and tech industries.”

The camera cut to footage of the mangled car, now barely more than scrap metal. Sirens still flashed in the background as investigators surveyed the scene.

“Reports confirm both Dave Marshall and Rachel Williams were pronounced dead at the hospital despite hours of medical intervention. Sources say their vehicle was struck by a black SUV before a speeding truck crushed the car in a second impact.”

The anchor paused, her lips tightening before continuing.

“This tragedy raises questions, both about the accident and the circumstances surrounding why Marshall and Rachel Williams were together that night. But what remains certain is this: the business world has lost one of its most formidable figures, and a family has lost a wife, a daughter, or a sister. The rivalry between Carewell and CloudTech now enters uncharted territory, shadowed by grief and speculation.”

The screen filled with their photos—Dave, smiling in a crisp suit, and Rachel, her beauty captured in a frozen frame of life.

Below, the headline scrolled in bold letters:

“Carewell CEO Dave Marshall Dies in Fatal Crash—Alongside Rachel Williams, Wife of Rival Nathan Williams.”