Apocalypse Queen: My Space, My Rules Chapter 199: No Mercy

Mariella couldn't help thinking of Harvey's apology, and his claim that he regretted not treating her better in their past life. A cold, hollow laugh escaped her before she could stop it.

Lucky for her, she'd had zero trust in this worthless man since she came back. Not a single word out of his mouth had ever been worth believing.

Guilt? That was an emotion that belonged to actual human beings. Harvey wasn't one, not really. He didn't have it in him.

Now that the secret had gotten out, there was only one clean solution: cut the problem out at the root.

Kill everyone who knew it, and the tale would die with the dead men.

They traded one look, swapped their blades for suppressor-fitted AKs, and burst through the entrance like a storm.

Sure enough, Black Bear had sentries posted all around him, and two of them caught the intrusion instantly.

"Who's there?" The two guards drew and opened fire without hesitation, sending a barrage into the shadows that had just torn through the door.

Mariella and Chandler threw themselves behind cover.

But neither of them knew the layout well enough, and the window for a clean kill had already slammed shut. Wiping out every enemy in one swift sweep was no longer going to be simple.

Black Bear had caught on to the ambush and was scrambling frantically to pull his pants on.

Chandler tracked him by sound alone and sent a controlled burst toward his position.

"Ugh! Blast!" Black Bear dropped hard behind the bed and came up with a weapon.

The firefight kicked into full force.

Mariella and Chandler's weapons were suppressed, but Black Bear and his men were firing completely open.

Every shot they fired would draw more condemned raiders in. If they couldn't put every last one of them down, her spatial ability would get out into the open.

Chandler fired, and his target wasn't Black Bear or any of his crew. It was Harvey.

Harvey hadn't even had the chance to get dressed. He was torn apart where he stood, bare and bleeding, and crumpled into a pool of his own blood.

Watching the last breath leave him, Mariella finally let herself exhale.

With Harvey dead, there was no one left to corroborate the truth about her.

Chandler had handled Harvey and swung toward Roxanna next, only to find she'd already wedged herself under the bed.

He pivoted hard and directed his fire toward Black Bear's position.

Black Bear slammed the alarm trigger, and a sharp, piercing wail ripped through every corner of the estate.

Mariella broke suddenly toward Black Bear's position.

It was a reckless move. She'd stepped directly into the line of fire with no cover at all.

Three guns swung toward her at once.

The shots rang out, and Mariella vanished into thin air.

In nearly the same instant, Chandler locked onto the positions of Black Bear's two bodyguards and opened fire.

One round each. Both men dropped in an insant.

Another raider broke for the exit, but he hit the blood-slicked floor the next second and went down hard on his face.

Where did all that blood come from? When did it get there?

He never got the chance to work it out. A bullet finished the question for him.

Black Bear hauled his personal Gatling gun out from behind the barricade and leveled it at Chandler.

Chandler returned fire while pulling back, slipping behind cover just as the barrel swung toward him.

Black Bear wasn't interested in precision. He pointed the barrel at Chandler's cover and prepared to let it go.

A Gatling gun could spit out a thousand rounds per minute. It was built for absolute obliteration.

Standard cover wasn't going to hold against it.

But in the very next second, Mariella materialized less than seven feet from Black Bear.

She hadn't reappeared where she'd vanished. Can she actually teleport?

Black Bear's shock was written all over him. He wrenched the Gatling's barrel around, desperate to cut her down before she could close the distance.

She was beautiful, there was no arguing that. But her combat ability was something else entirely, lethal in ways that defied comprehension. She was the kind of beautiful that got men killed.

No matter how much Black Bear liked women, desire had no room in him right now. He just wanted her dead.

But when Mariella materialized, a gleaming antique dagger had appeared in her hand, and she drove it toward Black Bear's skull with the speed of a lightning strike.

Mariella had appeared less than seven feet from him.

She extended her arm, the antique dagger gripped tight in her fist, and brought it straight down toward the center of his skull.

Black Bear wrenched the Gatling's barrel around, trying to tear her apart before the blade connected.

He wasn't fast enough.

Mariella's knife work was on a level entirely its own. Her strikes moved faster than sight could follow.

The blade caught a cold sliver of light as it carved through the air, and the razor-sharp antique dagger split Black Bear's skull straight down the middle.

The wound ran from his brow through his nose and all the way to his mouth, parting his face like a seam, and blood erupted from it in a sudden, violent torrent.

His eyes stayed wide open. His body went rigid, toppled straight back, and hit the floor.

Almost simultaneously, the condemned raiders answered the alarm and came flooding in.

Mariella had already put Black Bear down, and every member of his inner circle present had been silenced.