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Valon is alive. Kenzo is worried Valon’s after Annika.
And Freya is with her.
My jaw tightens as Kenzo pushes the car faster, the forest around us blurring into streaks of green and black. My mind races, images of Freya flashing through my head—her smile, her laugh, the fire in her eyes. The way she pushes me, challenges me, makes me want things I’ve spent my life avoiding.
In this moment, the fear of losing her is all-consuming.
“Let’s just say he’s not confirmed dead,” Kenzo hisses, gripping the wheel a little tighter as he glances to me. “That’s enough for me to worry when my wife goes for a drive and doesn’t answer her?—”
“KENZO!”
I see the skid marks on the road first. Then the twisted, wrenched metal. Kenzo swears, spinning the wheel to the side and slamming on the brakes. I grit my teeth, gripping the handle of the door as the Porsche goes up on two wheels. The smell of burned rubber fills the air as he jerks the wheel back, getting us back onto four wheels before the car comes to a shuddering stop inches from the mangled pile of wrecked motorcycles.
Oh God…
For a moment, all I can see is fire. All I can smell is smoke as my home burns, mixed with the coppery scent of my family’s blood in the air and the taste of the garden hose in my mouth.
“ANNIKA!”
Kenzo’s roar rips me from the black hole of my past. I lurch out of the car, bolting over to where he’s crouched next to a mangledneon pink, purple, and black bike, the one Annika’s been riding since she got to Kyoto.
Fuck.
“Kenzo!”
Just as my panic soars into the stratosphere, I hear Takeshi’s voice behind us. We both whirl and I see my cousin limping out of the underbrush at the side of the road, bleeding from the shoulder. He’s got his arm around Hana, who’s clutching a hand to a bad cut on her forehead.
FUCK.
Kenzo and I bolt over to them, helping Tak lower Hana to the ground.
“They took her!” Hana blurts, her wide, terrified eyes lifting to Kenzo. “Kenzo, they took Annika!”
“Whodid?!”
“Leka!” Takeshi grimaces. “Kenzo, that fucker is still alive, and he’s got Sota’s business manager Tengen with him.”
It’s not that I’m not worried about Annika. I am.
But there’s someone else filling my every thought as I whip my head around, my eyes darting everywhere, looking for a single trace of her.
Where the fuck is Freya.
My eyes dart back to the bike she was riding, lying mangled and half twisted around the guardrail.
“They side-swiped us with a van, took us all out, and then dragged Annika into it?—”
“Freya!”
The name rips from my throat, haggard and tense. Hana’s eyes whip to mine, worry etched across her face as she points at the guardrail that the bike is wrapped around.
“She went over!”
I don’t hear anything after that. My body moves on instinct, sprinting across the road, leaping over the guardrail, skidding down the embankment, crashing through branches and underbrush.
“Freya!” I shout, my voice hoarse, cracking with fear. “Freya! Answer me!”
No response. No movement. Just suffocating silence.
