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.

boiling inside Karen was

Karen had already neutralized the poison in her system the moment she touched

side, who was still bound, and settled her

was

watching the display as if enjoying

look like their mothers.” Wearing Gillian’s face, she sipped a glass of red wine with a smile, as if the

her eyes, the silver needles in her hand ready to

determined not to let F-Poison

asked softly, as if in casual conversation, “You seem… younger than

chuckled, caressing her cheek with a soft stroke as if indulging in a

is all I have left to charm the

off her mask and flung it towards Karen and Vivienne, the skin transforming

“Frost!”

the skin-blade, and kicked a

and turning it into a projectile. With

skin-blade buried itself in the tree where Vivienne had been tied, while the rock pierced F-Poison’s

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

her poison,

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

there’s no escape

and Vivienne stood side by side, united against

wounded leg, threw down

their eyes from the smoke, Karen

the smoke cleared, they saw F-Poison holding Zelda at the cliff’s edge,

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

from above, the sound of a helicopter’s rotors sliced

faintly. “F-Poison, would you rather go up or down? Either way,

his machine gun—not at F-Poison,

pebbles tumbling down the cliff into the abyss below, but no echo came. Clearly, the height

Karen stood protectively in front of Vivienne,

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

Over a

it be

looked barely older than Vivienne—how old

trained to grow

feeling that perhaps F-Poison was