Alana swiftly evaded the knife, which then fell somewhere in the bushes. Her heart was pounding deeply. The two girls come to a halt when they see more men blocking their way. She stood in front of Lilah, shielding her.

“Who sent you here?” She met the eyes of each man while they stared at her condescendingly.

“Why are you assuming someone ordered us? Can’t we do things out of our own volition?” A man with a scar on his left eye sneered at her.

“You have been following us since we left the hotel.” Lilah tried to step forward, but Alana blocked her. “Out of anyone you can choose, it happened to be us?”

“Oh? That means you have been making trouble with someone you shouldn’t.”

Alana narrowed her eyes. “Who paid you to do this? I can pay you triple times the money they gave you.”

One of the men suddenly stepped forward. His hand moved so fast to grab Alana’s hand that she hid behind her body. Alana, who was trying to use her phone to contact someone, jerked forward roughly. Her finger accidentally pressed the wrong button that a call suddenly connected.

“Alana!” It was Albert’s voice. The phone fell to the ground and its screen broke, but it was still functioning well.

“Are you deliberately humiliating Cecil and me on our wedding day? You are going to pay for this.” The man’s voice was loud, full of anger.

The situation on her side was like this. Since they were in the middle of nowhere, the men also didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry to do whatever they had been ordered to do. However, Albert’s voice had provoked her anger.

“Shut up.” Alana snarled. “When did I fudging ruin your wedding? It was you who did it yourself. Now you tried to fudging kill me because of it?”

“Who is it? Your boy toy?” One of the men said, and the rest laughed.

“What do you mean?” Albert was confused, and also seemed to notice something was wrong after he heard an unknown man’s voice.

“Didn’t you send them to go after me? Don’t pretend that you didn’t do it.” Alana continued in an angry voice. She shushed Lilah, who had been trying to open her mouth since earlier. Her hand felt so painful because of the man’s tight grip and she never allowed any of them to touch Lilah.

“They are stalling for time.” The burly man with a scar on his left eye suddenly spoke, as if a realization dawned on him. “They must have called for the police when they were inside the car. Don’t waste time anymore.”

“Are you not going to take my offer? I can really pay triple times.” Alana tried to pull her hand from the man’s tight grip, to no avail.

“Do you think I’d fall for your scheme? You are going to send us back to prison after this.” They sneered at her words, then ordered the others to tie the two, knocking Lilah unconscious first.

It was a pity that they didn’t really fall to her words. Although there was a flash of greed in their eyes when she mentioned triple pay, they still knew when to stop. Her offer was more risky compared to their current employer.

They didn’t know about Alana’s background, but they heard that her family was pretty good. They wouldn’t end well if there were more power—her family—who went after them. After all, the dead were best at keeping secrets.

“Alana?! What’s happening? Are you playing a trick on me?” Albert’s voice sounded from her phone, laced with annoyance. “Are you trying to make trouble and disturb my time with Cecil?”

“Noisy!” The phone completely died and cracked when one of them stepped on it.

They escorted Alana and Lilah into the car, putting Lilah in the passenger seat beside the driver, while a man sat with Alana in the backseat.

“They are so easy to be taken down. Why need so many of us?” The other two men grunted in annoyance. The car didn’t fit, so they had to wait there.

From their conversation, Alana gained surprising information that they were desperado, criminals who were sentenced to death but successfully escaped. It was no wonder that they acted so recklessly. It also wouldn’t be easy to live with police hot on their heels. They could die any moment. Perhaps their employer had a condition that would solve their crisis besides money.

There were only two men in the car now. One was the man with a scar on his left eye who acted as a leader, and the other was a man with a bushy beard who resembled a bear more. Shortly after, they started the car, and it flew at a fast speed.

“They want us to disfigure her face first.” The man with a bushy beard pointed at Alana. “Should I do it now?”

Alana’s eyes widened, and her heart gripped with slight worry. When she saw a car nearly pass by theirs, she tried to open her mouth to scream for help, but her hope was dashed when she remembered they had stuffed her mouth with a cloth.

“What are you doing? Want to scream for help? None can help you now.” The man with the scar on his left eye laughed, followed by the man with a bushy beard. They had heard her intelligible muffled voice.

“We can disfigure her while we change our car. It would be bad if she struggled a lot and caused the car to break down.” The other man huffed in response.

It wasn’t long before their car started to have problems too, and some minutes later, it completely stopped working. The men grunted, and they tried to start their car again, to no avail.

“Let’s wait, I’ll just inform others to get us here.” The man with a scar on his left eye said, and he exited the car. His full attention now was directed towards his phone.

Meanwhile, Alana was silent, with slightly hunched shoulders and eyes wet with tears. The man with a bushy beard seemed to be satisfied with this look. He suddenly pulled a knife from his pocket and the shiny metal was slowly getting closer to Alana’s face.

The man seemed like a psychopath who liked to torture his victim. The knife was about to pierce her face when something unexpected happened. Alana had slapped the man’s hand so that the knife fell down with a clang, and then she punched his face.

They had been looking down on them so much that they didn’t tie their feet. Without them noticing, she had also silently solved the rope. Alana opened the car door in a hurry, then jumped down. On the other side, Lilah, who had been pretending to be unconscious, also jumped down. She grasped Lilah’s hand, and the two began to run together.

“Help! They are trying to kidnap and murder us!” Lilah screamed, attracting the passerby.

The two men cursed and began to follow after them. Some brave people also tried to block their way, and some pulled their phone to call the police. However, they pulled something from their pockets that caused others to shrink back.

“Who dares to block us? We will shoot you.” They pulled the trigger of their gun and the sound successfully intimidated others that they scattered away. “Pull your phone away or I will also shoot you.”

The two girls’ hearts dropped when they heard the sound of the gun. The two men were still chasing after them with their angry roar. “Originally we want to torture you two first before we kill you, but now we have no choice. Die!”

Alana made herself run one step behind Lilah and hugged her with her back facing these criminals. For a split second, she thought that she would die when she heard the loud sound of the gun for a second time. She also almost thought that in her last seconds of her life, she was hallucinating.

She saw that man again, the person she was last expecting to see. His presence made the memory that was long buried years ago felt as fresh as yesterday; the day she wished to desperately forget.