The Million-Dollar Heart by Rebecca Ryan

With a thunderous bang, Diana’s gun fired, but the bullet whizzed past Vivienne’s ear, barely grazing a hair.

Unfazed, Vivienne did not even flinch.

Diana, panic-stricken, stared at the figure before her, feeling her wrist trapped as if in an iron vise, pain radiating through her bones like a fracture in progress.

“You… you’re Sasha!”

Karen’s gaze was heavy, a mix of the strange and the familiar.

She had never imagined that the story behind her kidnapping was so convoluted!

Clenching her fist, Karen threw a punch that landed squarely in Diana’s gut with the force of a sledgehammer.

“Touch my daughter, and you’re dead meat!”

Diana’s punch could take down a full-grown mastiff, but Karen’s blow could kill a full-grown bull.

The difference in strength was enormous.

Diana felt as if her insides had been rearranged, her nerves and flesh overwhelmed by pain. It was as if she was about to be ripped apart. The agony was excruciating!

Karen then slapped Diana’s face repeatedly, and in no time, Diana’s once delicate features swelled up like a balloon.

Diana tried to steady herself, to take another look at her adversary, but her swollen cheeks pressed so tightly against her eyes that they would not open!

Lifting Diana off her feet, Karen’s fingers flew, sending needle after needle into Diana’s scalp.

“Ah!”

Diana fell to her knees, screaming in torment.

The pain was unbearable!

Rolling on the ground, Diana banged her head against rocks as if the blunt trauma could somehow dull the sharper pain within.

Even as her head was bloodied and bruised, Diana hardly noticed.

the anger boiling inside Karen was far

herself. Karen had already neutralized the poison in her

side, who was still bound, and

F-Poison was their

watching the display as if

I wonder if all daughters look like their mothers.” Wearing Gillian’s face, she sipped a glass of red

eyes, the silver needles in her hand ready to

alert, determined not

you F-Poison?” Karen asked softly, as if in casual conversation, “You

caressing her cheek with a soft stroke

all I

F-Poison ripped off her mask and flung it towards Karen and Vivienne, the skin transforming mid-air into a whirling blade aimed at

“Frost!”

ducked, narrowly missing the skin-blade, and kicked

and turning it into a projectile. With a burst of

buried itself in the tree where Vivienne had been tied, while the rock pierced

from F-Poison’s wound, and Karen’s breaths

to unleash her poison, Karen raised

something invisible in the air—particles that could trigger a violent explosion upon contact with poison. It

there’s no

Vivienne stood side by side, united against

leg,

eyes from the smoke, Karen and Vivienne

holding Zelda at

me together, but with this hostage, what can you really do?” F-Poison taunted, gripping Zelda’s neck tightly, ready to snap

a helicopter’s rotors sliced through the

you rather go up

machine gun—not at F-Poison, but

cliff into the abyss below, but no echo came.

Surrender now!” Karen stood protectively in front

decade ago. Even against many more enemies back then, I didn’t surrender. What makes you think I

frowned. Over a

be

than Vivienne—how old was she

to grow

was puzzled, feeling that perhaps F-Poison was not the person before them