Page 55 of Run, Little Rabbit

I nod, my stomach souring as I realise what this all means. I’m a Quinn, and they’re Volkovs. This can never be anything more than whatever this game of cat and mouse was. Maxim is going to have to let me go, and I’ll have to do my best to leave them behind.

Unless I want to start a war.

The question is, though, are they worth going to war for? “Maxim, I—”

There’s a sharp whistle followed by a thud, and Niki’s body jerks next to me.

Everything freezes for a moment as blood starts to pour from a bullet wound just above his hip.

Angel is the first one to move as he lunges for Niki, immediately seeing to the wound. I jump out of Maxim’s arms and frantically search the woodland for signs of our attackers. I can’t see anything; whoever this is, they’re hidden somewhere beyond the tree line.

“Angel, get him to the summer house,” Maxim barks.

“It’s just a scratch,” Niki says, but his fingers tremble as he signs, contradicting his words. He tries to shake off Angel’s ministrations, but the doctor won’t let him walk away.

“Don’t be an idiot!” Angel yells. “It’s more than a fucking scratch.”

Maxim grabs my hand and pulls me to the left, dragging me behind him as bullets start flying past us.

Tree bark explodes around us, and I have to wonder who this is that’s firing at us. Other than the bullet that grazed Niki, the rest have all missed us.

Deliberately so.

Veon.

“Max, stop.”

He carries on dragging me behind him, the branches pulling at Niki’s shirt and my hair.

“Max!” I twist my arm out of his grip, and he turns on his heel, pulling to an immediate stop in front of me.

“What?”

“I know who this is.”

But I’m not given a chance to explain. A man dressed in black slams into Maxim, tackling him to the ground. I dart forward, but strong hands grab my arms and haul me backwards. “No! Let me go!”

And then the world goes black.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Veon

Iwas going to kill them. In the most brutal way that I could think of.

Maybe I should just chuck them out of the car and drive over their bodies, leaving them broken for the foxes and the rats to feed on.

I could set up a camera feed just to watch them slowly decompose and become nothing more than bones and dust, and it would be the most satisfying—

Kai thuds my chest, cutting off my little murderous fantasy. “What’s got you all grouchy?”

I clench my fingers around the steering wheel so that I don’t reach for my gun.

“He’s probably planning murder,” Sphinx pipes up from the back seat, his words scarily accurate. It annoys me that Sphinx can read me so well.

I take a deep breath and exhale with a growl. “We’re five minutes out.”

I picked a spot a mile away from the property boundary so we could go in on foot. Less noise that way.

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