Didn’t she?
I could howl.
“Tess, where are you?” Even my voice sounds afraid. She can’t have vanished.
There’s a crunch of branches, and my head whips around in time to see Tess sprint from the undergrowth.
My heart drops.
Before I can get my legs moving again, she’s slapped her hand onto the wall.
And the bottom falls out of my world. It’s as though I’m falling, down and down, right into hell itself. My mouth is open, my tongue is dry. Hot and cold shivers rack down my spine.
I stare at Tess, and for a second I can’t believe it.
“I’m here,” she says, panting.
I want another chance, like in a computer game. I need to undo this with Control-Z, so she doesn’t win the chase and leave me.
“I claim my three wishes, Kirill,”
All the blood drains from my body.
I don’t know how this happened. Blyat.Blyat.
I fucked up.
And then I remember the first time we played chase. How she got that look in her eye when I mentioned cheating.
“You…” I croak.
“Yep. I cheated.” The trees are cleared around the wall, so there’s enough moonlight to see her mouth set in a determined line. “No rule against cheating, right?”
I can’t speak. Every part of me is shattering into pieces so small I’ll be eaten by worms. Cold, broken, dead. I’m back at the bottom of the pit, surrounded by decay and black and with only the white flame of gleeful revenge.
This is where I was before I met Tess.
Then certainty flares up.
Tess isn’t leaving.
In a few quick paces I’m in front of her, and I snatch her to me, pulling her into my arms then tossing her over my shoulder.
She squeaks as I crash through the woods back towards the house. This isn’t over. I’m a billionaire vigilante justice killer and the mafia boss of Blackfen. I find the impossible. I steal from the most protected arseholes in the world.
This girl ismine, and I have the strongest need to get her naked and lick her until she forgets any thought she had of leaving.
“What are you doing?” Her confusion when I’m devastated is more than I can bear.
“You think I’d let the woman I love get away from me?” I snarl, and keep moving.
I feel her intake of breath, shocked. Then her arms creep—upside down—around my waist.
“I love you too,” she says in a whisper.
It’s a second before that gets through to my brain.
I stop. Pulling her back over my shoulder, I allow her to slide down my body until her feet are on the ground, but keep her in my embrace as I stare into her face in the darkness, trying to make sense of what’s happening.
