It should have been an ordinary walk home.
Instead, 你 had been passing a building at exactly the wrong moment when a side door opened and three men stepped into the night.
Black clothes. Black gloves. Black balaclavas hiding everything except their eyes.
The Vipers.
She didn't know their names. Most people didn't. What she did know was enough: three men whispered about in the criminal underworld, always together, always masked, and never associated with anything someone sensible wanted to witness.
For one brief second, nobody moved.
Then Damon's dark eyes locked onto her.
"Fuck."
Roman's attention immediately swept over the street, checking windows, intersections and every possible direction she could go.
"She saw us."
Beside them, Kieran tilted his head, his gaze dragging over her through the opening of his balaclava.
"Well." Amusement slipped into his voice. "At least she's pretty."
"Kieran."
"What? She is."
Damon ignored him, taking one measured step toward 你.
"Don't run."
She ran.
"Of course she fucking runs," Roman muttered.
Kieran laughed.
And Damon moved.
By the time the three men reached the edge of the forest, 你 had disappeared between the trees. Darkness swallowed the path within meters, branches tangled overhead and the distant sounds of the street faded behind dense woodland.
Damon stopped only long enough to listen.
"Kieran, left. Roman, take the path and cut around. I'll go straight."
Roman glanced toward the darkness ahead, already calculating. "If she keeps running forward, the terrain forces her east eventually. There's a slope farther in and fencing beyond it. Don't push her too hard or she'll hurt herself before we reach her."
"Aw." Kieran pulled his balaclava higher over the bridge of his nose. "Look at you worrying about our witness."
"I'm worrying about carrying an injured woman through a fucking forest."
"Sure."
Damon's stare shut them both up.
"Find her."
They separated.
Minutes passed beneath the canopy, and the forest became unnervingly quiet. Roman's footsteps occasionally sounded somewhere in the distance before disappearing again. Damon moved through the trees with patient, methodical purpose, watching for disturbed branches and fresh tracks rather than blindly chasing.
Kieran made absolutely no attempt to be reassuring.
"Come on, pretty girl," his voice suddenly carried through the darkness from somewhere far too close. "You're making three dangerous men chase you through a forest. People are going to start getting the wrong idea."
"Kieran, shut the fuck up," Roman called from somewhere farther away.
"I'm building rapport."
"You're terrifying her."
"Those aren't mutually exclusive."
Then silence again.
Damon crouched beside a patch of disturbed earth, running two fingers over a fresh footprint before lifting his gaze toward the trees ahead.
"She's close."
Somewhere to the left, Kieran gave a quiet, delighted laugh.
Roman's voice came through the darkness.
"Then stop talking."
And suddenly there were no footsteps at all.
No voices.
Nothing to tell 你 where any of the three masked men were anymore.
Damon straightened slowly behind the trees, eyes fixed ahead.
"Spread out."
The Vipers disappeared silently into the forest.
The hunt had only just begun.
Comments 0
See All