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 had already neutralized the poison in her system the moment

and settled her against a tree before coming to

was their next formidable

the display as if

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

her eyes, the silver needles in her hand ready to

alert, determined not to let

as if in

cheek with a soft stroke

she quipped. “This face is all I have left to charm

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

“Frost!”

the skin-blade, and kicked a

gain momentum, Karen accelerated, grabbing a rock and turning it into a projectile. With a

had been tied, while the rock pierced F-Poison’s thigh, embedding itself in the ground and creating a

wound, and

as Vivienne was about to unleash her

in the air—particles that could trigger a violent

no

stood side by side,

leg, threw down a

from the smoke, Karen and Vivienne quickly traced

holding Zelda

you really do?” F-Poison taunted, gripping Zelda’s neck tightly, ready to

of a helicopter’s

would you rather go up or down?

helicopter, Percival aimed his machine gun—not at

step back, pebbles tumbling down the cliff into the abyss below,

stood protectively in

sneered. “Surrender? I’ve heard that before, over a decade ago. Even against many

Over a decade

it be the “Destruction

than Vivienne—how old

grow into this

puzzled, feeling that perhaps F-Poison was not the