Lahat ng Kabanata ng Waking up to my sin: Kabanata 71 - Kabanata 80

​The guest wing was no longer a sanctuary of silence; it was a kill zone, a narrow marble corridor transformed into a theater of visceral retribution. The air was thick and heavy, saturated with the acrid, metallic tang of spent gunpowder and the sharp ozone of the flickering red alarm lights that pulsed like a dying sun. Silas had vanished into the shadows of the corridor with the cowardice of a man who only knows how to lead from behind a wall of human shields, leaving his high-priced mercenaries to do the bleeding and the dying for him. But those men didn't realize they weren't just fighting a vengeful girl and a confused amnesiac—they were fighting the Beast and the Huntress, two souls finally operating on the same lethal frequency.​"Left!" Leona barked, her voice a whip-crack that cut through the roar of the alarms.​I didn't think; I didn't hesitate. I dived into the deep alcove of a marble statue just as a frantic spray of submachine-gun fire chewed into the expensive silk wal

The French Riviera was nothing more than a jagged line of orange fire against the black velvet of the midnight sky as the small, high-powered skiff cut through the choppy Mediterranean waves. The roar of the outboard engine was a steady, vibrating thrum that echoed the frantic rhythm still pulsing in my veins. Every time a wave slammed against the hull, sending a spray of icy, salt-laden water over the gunwale, I flinched, my hand instinctively dropping to the Glock 17 resting heavy and cold on my lap.​The adrenaline was starting to recede, leaving behind a hollow, aching exhaustion that threatened to pull me under. But I couldn't sleep. Not yet.​I turned my head away from the burning horizon to look at the man sitting at the helm.​Malakai looked like a phantom. He had stripped off the silk robe of his captivity, replaced by a dark, stolen tactical fleece that hugged the massive breadth of his shoulders. His face was a map of the war we had just fought—smudges of soot on his high c

The rain in Ireland didn't fall; it attacked. It was a cold, horizontal sheet of gray needles that turned the narrow coastal road into a slick, treacherous ribbon of black glass. I gripped the wheel of the stolen sedan, my knuckles white, my eyes darting between the rearview mirror and the dark abyss of the cliffside. ​Behind us, four sets of high-intensity LED headlights sliced through the storm like the eyes of predatory wolves. The High Council’s "Cleaners." They had found us faster than I anticipated. My contact in Dublin had been compromised, or perhaps the Vanes had left a digital breadcrumb in my subconscious that I hadn't yet scrubbed. ​It didn't matter. The time for calculations was over. The time for the "Death" had arrived. ​"Malakai, they’re gaining!" Leona shouted over the roar of the wind and the frantic slap of the windshield wipers. she was leaning over the seat, a submachine gun in her hand, her face a mask of fierce, maternal terror. "

The scent of Madagascar vanilla bean and burnt sugar was my sanctuary. It was a thick, fragrant veil that I pulled over my life every morning at 4:00 AM, a cloak designed to hide the iron-filing scent of gun oil and the cold, metallic tang of a past that refused to stay buried. ​To the residents of Oakhaven, a village so quaint it felt like it had been carved out of a postcard, I was Leo Thorne. I was the quiet, industrious widow who owned The Queen’s Crumb. I was the woman who donated day-old sourdough to the church raffle and never missed a parent-teacher association meeting. They saw a woman with flour-dusted cheeks and a gentle smile; they didn't see the woman who slept with a combat knife taped to the underside of her headboard or the woman whose eyes never stopped tracking the exits of every room she entered. ​Ten years. ​Ten years since the bridge. Ten years since the fire. Ten years since I had watched the only man I ever loved turn into a fireb

​The interior of the hijacked SUV smelled of high-grade leather, ozone, and the violent, metallic tang of the blood still drying on my knuckles. I pushed the engine to its absolute limit, the speedometer needle dancing toward 120 mph as the narrow, winding roads of the English countryside blurred into a green-and-gray smear. ​In the passenger seat, Leona was a statue of lethal grace. She held the Glock 19 in her lap, her eyes fixed on the side mirror, watching for the headlights of the High Council’s secondary response team. She didn't look at me. Not yet. But I could feel the heat radiating off her—a mixture of adrenaline and a cold, simmering fury that I knew would eventually burn me to the bone. ​In the back seat, there was a silence so heavy it felt like a physical weight on my shoulders. ​I risked a glance in the rearview mirror. Kai was sitting perfectly still, his small hands gripped tightly around the straps of his gear bag. His gray eyes—my eye