My Best Friend Was Tortured,But I'm the Goddess of Thunder

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.