Survival Game

Chapter two

The Day

It has finally arrived.

Late felt a rush of adrenaline as she drinks her morning coffee. A plain toast with no butter or cream cheese, just a side of raspberry preserves that goes untouched. There was a glass of juice set on the table too, it was a juice of fresh-squeezed from the orange fruit that the gardener had picked from the tree in her backyard. It was the usual breakfast during the weekday and today was not different from others.

But today, she knew all this would change everything.

" More coffee, Madam? The live-in maid whose name was Maria asked her.

" No, thank you." She laid the papers she was reading aside and headed up the stairs to the bedroom. The house has two large master suites on the first floor. Kate was on the west side, facing the bay, decorated in a blue navy colour that was her favourite. Her husband's suite was on the north wing, a much darker room with a wood-beamed ceiling and an African motif. Kate doesn't like all the dead animals on the walls, so they used his side of the suite whenever he is around.

That had been the arrangement ever since they got married. The arrangement lasted just long enough for Kate to reach her first financial landmark of an elaborate prenuptial agreement.

The marriage has lasted twenty months and each month gives her one billion dollars, amounting to twenty billion dollars, including the house - big money for Kate. She was wise enough not to accept the money in cash but stock from her husband's company which went up and she was suddenly worth a multi-billion

Kate decided to end the marriage, but she would have earned more fr each additional month, and there were certainly worse men to be married to than Richards Lukas. He was rich, a successful businessman who was handsome and caring. He was specifically kind to his young third wife. But Kate wasn't satisfied. The world said she was not happy with her marriage. She never gave her reason for that and never apologise for her actions.

Kate stepped into her dressing room, took off her clothes and stood in silence before the three-mirror. Then she slowly raised both arms, her thirty-year-old body seems to resist the pull of gravity as she turned. In the full-length panel, she saw it, still visible after this time, the two-inch pink scar at the base of her rib cage. She traces the tip of her finger lightly at first, then touching more firmly and suddenly pressed it until it hurt her. as if she were trying to stop the bleeding all over again. After all, this year the scar is still there.

She would have done surgery to erase it but that will only destroy her important daily reminder that she has survived that attack. What makes it sad is that her first marriage did not survive. Another sad thing is that her son did live through the attack.

" Do you need have any chores for me today, Madam?"

She instinctively closed the scar when she heard the maid speak, she was alone in the dressing room. Maria stood waiting for her response on the other side of the closed door.

" I don't think there's any for now," she responded while putting on her robe.

As she heard the sound of the maid's footsteps fading away, Kate opened the door and walked into the bathroom to refresh and make up when she was through she went into the dressing room to get clothes, it took not much time for her to pick her clothes. She chose to wear a blue Chanel suit with a peach blouse and a pair of shoes to go with it. She completed her dressing with pearl and matching earrings.

She decided to go put on her wedding ring from her last marriage because it was going to serve a purpose for her today.

She examined herself one last time in the mirror. She gave herself a good, long look and for the first time in ages, she allowed herself a trace of a genuine smile.

Your look great girl.

She took her purse and headed downstairs, leaving through the front door to the garage where her Mercedes convertible was parked and waiting. Her hair was secure in a pony twist. She gave the dressing, a white scarf and dark glasses. She enters behind the wheels and started the car then followed the brick driveway to the iron gate. It opens automatically and she exited the street. She drove at a leisurely pace through her neighbourhood, warm east Florida sun on her face. It was a loving day, even Miami standards. sixty degrees, moderately low humidity. The cloud was a cloudless blue sky. In her teens, she had always wanted to live in the Venetian islands. They sat side by side in the bay like four giants stepping stones between the mainland and the large island of Miami Beach. Many with drop-dead views of the cruise ships in port and colourful skyline of downtown Miami beyond. technically, it was her dream come true to have a ten-thousand square foot house amid this downtown paradise.

She stopped to pay the toll, then moved across the Venetian Causeway. A couple of people were fishing on the Miami side of the bridge and beneath the sign that says NO FISHING ALLOWED.

She was at the north downtown Miami, not exactly the safest part of town, but it was an area under reform. In the past, she would have avoided driving past this part by driving miles cutting through here. She crosses the road, made a couple of turns and stopped at the traffic light. The entrance slope to the interstate was ahead, the lone escape route to about a dozen East-west lanes perched directly above her. She heard the express traffic, the drone of countless cars and noisy trucks echoing all around her. She usually timed her approach so that she could breeze through with no red lights, especially at night but that wasn't always possible. The homeless guys come out of their cardboard houses beneath the backside. They are armed with tattered rags and plastic squirt bottles filled with dirty water, they seemed determined to clean the world's windshields. There were two of them. One came towards her while the other went to the other SUV in front of her.

The SUV beat the red light, leaving Kate alone at the intersection with the window washers. It was mid-morning but in the dark shadows, it seemed like dusk. Interstate and jumps that fed into it crisscrossed overhead like concrete ribbons, Kate's window washer took a different strategy than the other guy with the SUV, approaching not from the side of the front of the vehicle. She couldn't have run the red light without running him over him.

" No thanks." She shouted

He kept smiling as he approached her while aiming with his squirt bottle. The other washer returned to his home beneath the rump, apparently having conceded the Mercedes to his competition.

" I said, no thanks."

He walks to the front of her car, standing close enough to take off her hood ornaments. Suddenly the darkness seems to break. they were surrounded by scattered beams of sunshine as if the clouds had shifted enough to allow patches of daylight to break through the crevices in the maze-like expressway overhead. The longest, brightest ray seem to fix on her big diamond ring. It was sparkling like fireworks On any other day, she might have discreetly slid her from the top of the steering wheel and dropped the ring in her lap. But not today.

The man was still staring at her through the windshield at her face. She waited for the stream of greasy water to hit the glass, but it didn't come. A moment later she realised that he wasn't holding a squirt bottle.

She froze, her eyes fixed on the black hole at the end of the polished metal gun. It lasted only a split second, but it was as if she was suddenly floating outside her body, watching the scene unfold. In her mind's eye, she could see the flash of steel from the gun. The windshield shatter, her head snapped back, her body slumping forward and spray of blood on the leather seats. She could even hear the horn blasting as her face hit the steering wheel and came to rest there. For the second time in the same day, she saw herself smiling a genuine smile.

The lonely crack of the gun echoed off the concrete, her living nightmare was finally ended.