Page 125 of Emperor of Havoc

This isn’t a passage leading me to freedom.

It’s a fuckingmaze.

Panic grips me as I look left, then right, my heart pounding.

“You can’t run from me, Marianna!” Jin bellows. “We’re meant to be together!”

I whirl, naked fear clawing up my throat as I hear him right behind me. He follows me through the entrance, his eyes locked on me.

Well, not going that way.

I spin, and without thinking, I bolt to my right.

Blindly.

Heedlessly.

If I want to live, I have to run.

I sprint down one length of the maze before hooking right and bolting downthatpassageway. The hedges are thick and gnarled, and they tower over me, easily three times my height.

Gasping, I crash out of the passageway and into a moonlit clearing. There's an empty stone fountain with a cherub on a Greek column in the middle of it, covered with a dead, gnarled rose bush.

My heart pounds in my chest as I stop to catch my breath for a second. My skin throbs. Adrenaline screams through my veins.

“Marianna!”

His voice is far too close for comfort.

I have to keep going.

Run.

40

TAKESHI

The car rollsto a stop outside the sprawling, decaying mansion just outside Tokyo. The house's silhouette looms spectrally against the dark sky.

The air is heavy with damp earth and the stench of rotting vegetation. I step out, my feet crunching against the gravel as I glance up at the gloomy, crumbling, European-style home.

Ivy snakes up the stone walls, shutters hang loose. The structure itself seems to sag under the weight of time.

“What is this place?” I growl as I turn to Kolya.

He doesn’t look at me as he answers, his gaze remaining fixed on the mansion.

“This was my grandfather’s house.” His tone is clipped, the muttered words laced with disdain. “He built it to escape the chaos of the city.”

I've heard what happened later. How a young Kolya, forged in hardship in brutal Northeastern Russia, returned to Japan after the death of his parents. How Kolya killed his grandfather—theman who banished his mother for falling in love with a foreigner—and reclaimed the empire that was his birthright.

I frown as I study the building. “Why keep it standing all these years, though? Why not just tear it down?”

Kolya’s lips curl into a humorless smile. “Destruction is too quick. Too merciful. I want it to rot. To crumble, piece by piece. I want to spend decades watching it collapse into nothing.” He turns to me, eyes cold. “Thatis my true revenge.”

The chill prickling up my spine has nothing to do with the night air. “You really think they’re here?”

“Yes. Jin loved this house. He…admiredour grandfather in ways I never understood. If he’s not in his apartment, this is where he’d go.”

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