The Moon Goddess, who'd spent thousands of years guarding her lonely palace in the sky, finally got bored.

She insisted on dragging me down to the mortal world for a full-immersion experience of the twenty-first century.

She wore me down until I had no choice but to say yes.

The moment we crossed into the mortal realm, she was reborn as the long-lost true heiress of a wealthy elite family, and I became the precious baby girl of an underworld kingpin who'd gotten his miracle child late in life.

When the Harding family took Amy back, I warned her: if those people give you any trouble, we dust off our hands and head straight back to the Ninth Heaven.

She laughed and said no birth parents would ever mistreat their own child, and besides, the fake heiress had been nothing but sweet to her. She told me not to worry.

I couldn't talk her out of it, so I let it go.

Then came the day I was about to queue up for my next match, and I felt Amy's divine soul shatter.

——

"Double Kill!"

Kill effects blazed across my monitor.

I was reaching for the Enter key to trash-talk the enemy team when a bolt of white-hot agony ripped through my chest.

This pain didn't belong to a mortal body.

It struck straight through to my divine soul.

I shoved the keyboard away, one hand pressed to my chest, my face drained of all color.

Amy Harding.

My best friend, the Moon Goddess herself, the one who'd talked me into descending for this so-called trial of tribulation.

Before we left the Ninth Heaven, we'd exchanged Life Talismans. If either of us faced mortal danger, the other's divine soul would receive a distress signal.

Right now, the talisman bound to her was cracking apart, fracture after fracture, splitting faster than I could breathe.

Amy Harding, the girl who'd sworn up and down that "no birth parents would ever mistreat their own child," was dying.

I kicked the gaming chair out of my way, snatched the car keys off the desk, and bolted.

"Nat Driscoll! Brick Abbott!"

I stood in the hallway and roared.

The entire Dunn mansion erupted.

In under thirty seconds, dozens of thick-necked men in black suits poured down from every floor and lined up in front of me, shoulder to shoulder.

"Boss!"

My father, Nelson Dunn, was the most powerful crime lord in the city. He'd been going legit the past few years, but the ruthlessness in his bones kept every last person in line.

I clenched my jaw. Murder lived behind my eyes.

"Gear up. Every brother you can reach, get them here. Now."

"Tonight, we're tearing the Harding estate to the ground."

Brick hesitated. "Boss, the Hardings are old money. Top of the social ladder. If we roll up there guns blazing..."

"I said go!" My palm cracked against the doorframe so hard the solid wood splintered.

"Anything goes wrong, it's on me!"

Fifteen minutes later.

Ten black armored SUVs tore down the highway like a convoy of war machines, blowing through every red light, aimed straight at the Harding estate.

In the back seat, I white-knuckled my phone and dialed Amy's number.

Dead.

Still dead.

The tearing sensation in my divine soul grew worse by the second. Her life force was draining fast.

"Faster!" I screamed at the driver.

The Harding estate sat halfway up the hillside, its twin copper gates sealed shut, four uniformed guards standing post.

The driver slowed and reached for the horn.

I grabbed the wheel out of his hands and floored the gas.

"Ram it."

Metal shrieked against metal as the armored SUV smashed the copper gates wide open.

Alarms tore through the estate grounds.

The SUV drifted hard and skidded to a stop right in front of the main house.

I kicked the door open, jumped out with a solid-steel baseball bat in my fist.

Brick and Nat poured out behind me with over a hundred men, fanning out until the Harding mansion was surrounded on every side. Not a gap left.

"Smash it."

On my word, the ground-floor windows exploded under a hail of baseball bats, glass raining down like shrapnel.

The Harding servants and bodyguards scattered like rats, arms over their heads.

I followed the pull of my divine soul and strode toward the basement level of the Harding estate.

The iron door to the underground was sealed with a coded lock.

I stepped back.

Brick pulled out the hydraulic cutter he always carried. One clean snap, and the lock sheared apart.

I kicked the door open.

The smell hit me first. Blood, thick and metallic, layered over the sharp sting of disinfectant.

The moment I saw what was inside, my vision went red.

This wasn't a storage room. It was a fully equipped sterile operating theater.

Amy Harding. My best friend. The goddess who had once stood serene and untouchable in the Moonlit Palace.

She was strapped to a freezing surgical table.

Her face was the color of ash. Her eyes were shut, and her breathing was so faint it barely registered.

Her back had been cut open. A tube as thick as a grown man's forearm was jammed into her spine.

Dark red bone marrow was being siphoned out of her body, inch by inch, through that tube.

On a second bed beside her, plush and pristine like something out of a luxury recovery suite, lay the Harding family's fake heiress.

Lena Harding.

Lena's cheeks were rosy. She was propped against her pillows, watching a variety show on a tablet, giggling every few seconds.

Georgia Harding sat at the edge of Lena's bed, spooning bird's nest soup into her mouth one careful bite at a time.

"There's a good girl, eat up. Once they finish extracting your sister's marrow, you'll be completely cured."

The private doctor in a white coat frowned and spoke up. "Mrs. Harding, Miss Amy's vitals are dropping. The volume of marrow extracted has already far exceeded the safe limit. If you continue, she will die."

Georgia didn't even look up. Her voice dripped with impatience.

"Her worthless life, traded for my Lena's health? She should count herself lucky."

"Increase the dosage. As long as it cures Lena, even if she dies on that table, consider it her filial duty to the Harding family."

Filial duty?!

Something inside my skull snapped clean in two.

"Filial duty my ass!"

CRACK.

I brought the rod down on the extraction machine with everything I had.

Sparks exploded outward. The machine shrieked, shorted, and went dead.

The crash sent the bowl of soup flying from Georgia's hands. It shattered on the floor.

"Who are you?!" Georgia shrieked, scrambling to her feet, staring at me in terror.

Lena burrowed under her blankets like a frightened animal.

I didn't spare either of them a glance. I grabbed the doctor by the collar with one hand, lifted him clean off his feet, and slammed him into the wall.

"Who gave you the guts to extract her marrow?!"

He was shaking so hard his teeth chattered. He pointed a trembling finger at Georgia. "It was... it was Mrs. Harding's orders! I was just doing what I was paid to do!"

I drove my knee into his stomach.

He screamed, crumpled to the floor clutching his gut, and retched up bile.

Brick and Nat stormed in with the rest of the crew and locked down the operating room in seconds.

I rushed to the surgical table and fumbled with the restraints buckled around Amy's wrists.

Deep purple welts had been gouged into her skin where the straps had bitten in.

When my fingers touched her, she was cold. Not cool. Cold. The kind of cold that doesn't belong to the living.

"Amy! Amy, wake up!" I patted her cheek. My voice was shaking and I couldn't stop it.

Her eyelids fluttered open, barely. Her pupils were unfocused, drifting.

When she recognized me, her cracked lips pulled into the ghost of a bitter smile.

"Pansy... you came..."

"Mortals... are truly terrifying..."

My tears fell before I could hold them back.

I was the Storm Goddess. A deity with rank and reputation in the Ninth Heaven. And I'd let my best friend suffer like this in the mortal world.

"Don't be scared. I'm taking you home."

I eased the tubes from her back as carefully as I could, then pressed sterile gauze hard against the wound.

I'd barely gathered her into my arms when a stampede of footsteps erupted outside the door.

"Nobody move!"

Harold Harding, the eldest son of the Harding family, stood in the doorway flanked by a small army of bodyguards in full tactical gear.

He wore a tailored suit and gold-rimmed glasses, his eyes cold and imperious behind the lenses.

The moment he saw me holding Amy, his brows knotted into a vicious scowl.

"Pansy Dunn? A thug from the underworld, and you have the nerve to break into my family's home?"

"Do you have any idea what you've done? One phone call. That's all it takes to wipe every last one of your father's operations off the map."

I let out a cold laugh and passed Amy to Brick, who stood right behind me.

"Brick, get Amy to the car. There's a first-aid kit inside."

Brick took two steps toward the exit, Amy cradled against his chest, but Harold's bodyguards closed ranks and blocked him.

Harold slid his hands into his pockets, voice dripping with arrogance. "Put her down. She belongs to the Harding family. If she dies, she dies here."

"Pansy, I don't care what kind of stunt you think you're pulling. Take your little gang of lowlifes and get the hell out."

Before I could respond, Lena, lying on the hospital bed, suddenly burst into pitiful sobs.

She threw off the covers, didn't even bother with shoes, and ran barefoot to Harold's side, clutching his arm.

"Harold, please don't blame Pansy. This is all my fault!"

"I shouldn't have gotten sick. I shouldn't have needed Amy's bone marrow. If Pansy insists on taking her, then just let me die!"

Tears streamed down her face like rain on pear blossoms, her body swaying as if she might collapse at any second.

Harold immediately wrapped a protective arm around her, his glare sharpening to a razor's edge as it swung back to me.

"You hear that, Pansy? Lena is this kind and selfless, and your precious best friend is that selfish! It's just a little bone marrow, and she goes running to the mob to cause a scene!"

Georgia found her voice too, jabbing a finger at my face and shrieking.

"Where is that ungrateful little wretch? We searched for her for twenty years! Fed her, clothed her! All we're asking is that she repay us for raising her, and she plays dead!"

"Nobody takes her out of here until we've gotten every last drop of marrow we need!"

I looked at this shameless family and laughed. The kind of laugh that comes when rage circles all the way back around.

"Repay you for raising her?"

I stepped forward and raised my hand.

Crack!

One sharp, ringing slap landed square on Lena's sanctimonious face.

I put everything I had into it.

Lena flew back a full six feet, slammed into the hospital bed, and crumpled. Her lip split on impact, blood pouring down her chin.

"Ahhh! My face!" She clutched her cheek and screamed.

Dead silence.

Harold's eyes went wide, as if he couldn't process that someone had just struck a blow on his turf.

"Pansy! You're dead!" He lunged at me with a roar.

I drove my foot straight into his kneecap.

A clean, wet snap of bone, and the mighty Harding heir dropped to his knees in front of me.

"You want to talk rules with me?" I grabbed a fistful of his hair and wrenched his head back, forcing him to look up at my face.

"Let me teach you how we do things in the underworld."

I backhanded him across the mouth. Half a tooth skittered across the floor.

"Nat! Anyone gets in the way, break their legs!"

"Yes, Boss!"

The Dunn crew drew their weapons in unison, eyes sharp and merciless.