Page 65 of Twisted Addiction
“You—you left me no choice!” I blurted, my voice trembling.
The words sounded small, fragile, but my eyes burned with accusation.
I couldn’t back down, but every instinct screamed to run.
“I was tortured my whole life by the people who called themselves my parents,” he said, his voice rough, edged with something fragile beneath the steel. “Not just beaten or controlled—they starved me of every ounce of affection until I stopped expecting it. My foster brothers made it their sport to humiliate me, to remind me I didn’t belong, and their parents—those hypocrites—they watched. They smiled as if cruelty were a lesson, as if my suffering was entertainment.”
He took a step closer, his shoe still pressed to the fallen gun, his shadow swallowing mine.
“When I finished school, no university in Italy would touch me. I got an offer from New York University. My foster family... they didn’t want to let me go. Couldn’t bear the thought of losing something they thought they owned. Every day with them was a test—how much they could break me before I cracked. They only relented because they thought distance would keep me under their control. But distance never changed anything. I carried it with me—every insult, every blow, every glance that told me I was nothing.”
He drew a breath, his expression tightening as if the words themselves hurt.
“They wouldn’t let me stay in the dorms,” he continued, stepping closer, his shadow swallowing mine. “I was forced to live with my aunt... in Brooklyn. Right next door to your family.”
My throat went dry.
“I ended up living right next to you. Right next to the one place I couldn’t avoid. I saw you, Penelope. I wanted... no, I needed... a reason to fight against all of them. Against everything that told me I didn’t matter. And I found it in you.”
He continued, his tone softer now, but no less sharp. “You were light in a life that had known only darkness. And it killed me, how bright you were. How easy you made everything look.”
His eyes burned brighter, feverish now.
“We were ghosts back then. Sneaking through nights that weren’t meant for us — your parents asleep, my aunt watching every move I made. The pier by the East River, the rusted fire escape behind the bookstore, that filthy bar on 39th where the floor stuck to our shoes and no one gave a damn who we were. You’d laugh, and I’d forget what it meant to hurt. You’d touch me, and I’d think maybe I wasn’t made of ruin after all.”
His jaw tightened, and the next words came out like a confession he’d been holding too long. “I loved you. Not the way stories teach men to love — but the only way I knew how. Hungry. Desperate. Possessive. I was nineteen, and you were the only thing in the world that didn’t feel like a punishment. And maybe that’s why I broke everything that mattered trying to keep you.”
My breath caught, memories of those clandestine meetings flooding back—his shy smile under the pier’s dim lamplight, the way he’d hold my hand as we whispered dreams on that creaking fire escape, the love letters we’d hide under a loose brick in the alley.
My heart ached, the sweetness of those moments clashing violently with the man before me now.
“So no, I didn’t forget how I felt,” he continued, his voice tightening, bitterness bleeding into every word. “I don’t have your memory gaps, Penelope. But you...” His jaw flexed, his fists curling at his sides. “One night, I climbed through your windowlike I always did—quiet, careful, just to see you—and there you were. Half-naked. With another guy’s hands on you.”
The accusation hit like a sledgehammer, the air leaving my lungs in a ragged gasp.
“I didn’t think my heart could break any further, but it did. Every piece of me shattered.”
“You cheated on me, Penelope.”
The words trembled out of him—not shouted, not cold, but cracked and bleeding. “I learned later about your dissociative amnesia,” he went on, his jaw tightening as if the words themselves hurt, “that maybe you didn’t even remember what you did. But memory loss doesn’t erase the sight of it. I saw you, wrapped around him. In your bra and panties.”
His voice fractured, splintered between fury and heartbreak. “All the years of torment under those people who raised me, all the fists and filth and silence—I survived them. But you—” He pressed a hand against his chest, eyes wild with something too human to be hate. “You were supposed to be my peace. My reason to believe in something good. And you destroyed it. You destroyed me.”
I staggered back, my palms finding the cold marble counter, the room spinning in and out of focus. “I—” My throat locked around the words. “I don’t remember that night,” I whispered, shaking my head as tears blurred my vision. “Dmitri, please... I swear, I would never. Not consciously. I loved you. I still—”
“Don’t,” he cut in sharply, his tone trembling between rage and grief. “Don’t say that word. You don’t get to weaponize it anymore.”
“You did worse things to me, Penelope,” he said quietly. The kind of calm that comes after something breaks.
“Things I can’t even name without feeling sick.” His mouth twisted, a shadow of a bitter smile ghosting his lips. “But youforget what you did. Maybe that’s easier for you. Pretend it never happened.”
He shook his head once, slow, as if even looking at me hurt.
The light caught his eyes—blue, cold, and shimmering with something dangerously human. “It’s hard to believe you don’t remember,” he said. “Or maybe you’re just pretending. You’ve always been good at that.”
He took a step closer.
The kitchen light turned his bandage ghost-white against the blood still drying beneath it. “And your parents,” he added, his tone dropping to a whisper that felt more like a threat than a confidence. “Do you even know what they did to me?”
