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.

inside Karen was

Karen had already neutralized the

bound, and settled her against a tree

F-Poison was their

the display

two really do look so alike. I wonder if all daughters look like their mothers.” Wearing Gillian’s face, she sipped a glass of red wine with a smile, as if the battleground was a

eyes, the silver needles in her hand ready to

high alert, determined not to let F-Poison slip away

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

caressing her cheek with a soft stroke as

isn’t easy,” she quipped. “This face is all

swift motion, F-Poison ripped off her mask and flung it towards Karen and

“Frost!”

the skin-blade, and kicked a

Karen accelerated, grabbing a rock and turning it into a projectile. With a burst of energy, she

buried itself in the tree where Vivienne had been tied, while the rock pierced F-Poison’s thigh, embedding itself in the ground

from F-Poison’s wound, and

Vivienne was about to unleash her poison, Karen

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

no

stood side by side, united

wounded leg, threw

the smoke, Karen and Vivienne quickly traced F-Poison’s escape

they saw F-Poison holding Zelda at the cliff’s edge, a hostage in

you really do?” F-Poison taunted, gripping

from above, the sound of a

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

his machine gun—not at

pebbles tumbling down the cliff into the abyss below, but no

protectively in front of Vivienne,

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

frowned. Over

be

older than Vivienne—how old was

grow into this role

that perhaps F-Poison was not the person before