Page 13 of Phantom Flower

Dimitri clicked his tongue, shaking his head slowly.

That smile never left his face.

“You’re running out of time.”

I swallowed hard. My mind raced for anything else to say, anything that might stop this madness.

“Dimitri—”

He lifted the gun, aiming it somewhere just past my shoulder. The click of the safety disengaging sounded like a gunshot already.

“I am giving you a head start, love.”

I opened my mouth to argue, to curse him - whatever might work - but the look in his eyes told me he was serious.

Deadly serious.

The sun disappeared completely behind the trees, plunging the forest into darkness.

So I turned and ran.

***

Branches hit my face and arms as I pushed through the bushes, and my heart pounded so hard it hurt while I ran with no idea where I was going, deeper into the woods and away from him. Tears made my eyes blurry, but I kept going anyway.

The memory stayed like poison in my head, showing me my dad’s broken body, the smell of blood, and the silence after.

I could not die here, not like this.

Behind me I heard him in the trees.

“Better run faster, little fairy. I’m feeling generous tonight… but that can change.”

His footsteps echoed somewhere in the distance. He wasn’t even rushing.

He knew he didn’t have to. The bastard was enjoying this.

Hunting me.

I pushed harder even though my legs burned and my lungs hurt, and I knew with a sick feeling that I was completely at his mercy. The worst part was that some twisted part of me knew this was only the start of whatever sick game Dimitri had planned for me.

I did not know how long I ran, whether it was minutes or hours, but my legs hurt and I could not stop. Gunshots cracked behind me, one after another.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Each one rang so close I felt the air displace near my ear, my shoulder, my thigh. They kept missing, but barely. The sound was deafening up close, nothing like the distant pops I’d heard in movies.

These were real. Meant for me.

I should have been pissing myself. I hated guns. I hated everything they represented. But right now, my heart was hammering so hard it might explode, and underneath the terror there was this twisted, fucked-up sense of… safety?

Yeah. I knew how insane that sounded. I was being hunted through the woods by a goddamn mafia heir, bullets flying around me, and part of me thought I was safe.

But this was Dimitri Morozov.

The bastard was legendary with a gun. They said he never missed. Not once.

The Void Kings didn’t leave loose ends, and Dimitri was their deadliest weapon. If he wanted me dead, I’d already have a bullet in the back of my skull.