Page 7 of Unraveled Love

I blew out a breath. “Thank you…thank you for saving me.”

“That,” he responded with the return of a hardened gleam in his eye, “was my pleasure.”

Because he’d gotten to kill people?

Good God. How had this become my life? And when would I stop asking myself that question?

My legs still trembled while I walked through the bedroom to the bathroom. After closing the door behind me, I collapsed against it. Vaguely I was aware that the room I was in was a suite, an upscale hotel not unlike what I would have stayed in when I traveled with my family. Only the best for us—except now, what family did I have if my dad would be a part of this vile business?

Memories rushed through, making my hands shake and my chin quiver.

No crying, dammit.I avoided looking at myself in the mirror. My bones ached, my wrists and ankles screamed with pain, and there was still the lingering burn beneath my chin from MaryAnne.

I needed to be clean. Fromallof it.

To think…I’d come minutes away from being returned to Daniel.

This would not break me. This would not end me. I would survive this like I’d survived everything else I’d been through.

I quickly stripped and jumped in the shower.

Water pelted me, coming at me from three different directions in the mammoth shower, and I put my back to one spray and scrubbed my scalp. Fire burned my wrists and my ankles as the water ran across open wounds, and still I kept my eyes closed. The less I saw, the better I could get through this.

I reached for the small bottle of shampoo and filled my palms with it. Thin rivulets of blood wrapped around my ankles, and a ball lodged in my throat.

You can’t ignore this.

My teeth ground together so hard it was a wonder I didn’t break any, but I needed to do this. Ihadto do this. While I massaged the shampoo into my hair, I focused on the wall in front of me.

Three breaths. Inhale. Exhale. Repeat. Every breath sped my pulse and made my knees wobble until I was at risk of passing out.

No. I looked down. Streams of pink wrapped around my feet and my toes before twisting and turning into the drain.

Blood.My blood.From my wrists. Ankles. Chin. Where else was I hurt?

A sob tore through me. They’d made me bleed. Drugged me. Hit me. Tied me and held a gun to me.

All of it flashed in my mind. There was no escaping this, no escaping what had happened.

It raced laps around my mind faster than horses at the Kentucky Derby until my head spun and I fell into a heap on the shower floor, fingers digging into my hair as I propped my elbows on my knees, bending them until I was curled into a ball.

Red flashes. Gunshots. Screams and shouts and more gunshots and a pistol to my temple. I couldn’t escape the memories.

MaryAnne’s nails became claws and knives, tearing through my throat and my stomach. Daniel’s face morphed into a demon as he threw me against a wall, slamming my cheek into it.

My dad lay there, lifeless in front of me.

Everything twisted, came so hard, so fast, reality becoming fiction, fiction becoming reality. Twisting in my mind like a cyclone and I was paralyzed, unable to escape it.

Water became blood, pouring down on me in a flood.

Hands grabbed me and I screamed, flailed, and slapped at them.

“Addi!”

My name barely penetrated and I scrambled to the corner. Away from the blood. The pain. The echoing of gunshots still vibrating in my ears.

“Addi! It’s me!”

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