Mason POV
The gunshot never came.
Instead, the garden erupted in motion—Chen's men sprinting toward the house, their boots tearing through the mud, their shouts overlapping in a language I didn't understand. The floodlights swung away from us, their beams carving arcs through the rain and darkness, illuminating the Gothic facade of the house that had been my prison and was now, impossibly, my only refuge.
Luna didn't hesitate. She grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the hedge, toward the gap I hadn't seen, the gap she had known was there all along. We slipped through the thorns, our clothes tearing, our skin bleeding, and emerged onto the service road where a single car was parked—an old Volvo, rusted, forgotten, the kind of vehicle that belonged to a gardener or a caretaker rather tha
