Page 85 of Twisted Addiction
He believed me.
He’d bought the lie.
But his relief chilled me more than his rage ever had.
I exhaled silently, forcing myself to keep my composure.
I needed to warn Giovanni, to make sure our stories aligned. My escape depended on this lie, on disappearing before my pregnancy became undeniable.
Dmitri bent down slowly, his movements precise, almost ritualistic, and picked the gun off the floor. He turned it in his hand once, checking the chamber, then leveled it at me.
The metallic click of the safety disengaging made my pulse spike.
My heart stuttered.
He had no reason to keep me alive now.
“Before you shoot me,” I said, forcing my voice to steady though it trembled around the edges, “tell me who Seraphina is.”
His eyes flicked up, sharp and dangerous.
“I know she’s not a lie,” I pressed on, my voice rising despite myself. “Antonio told me, Dmitri. She’s real.”
His jaw tightened, his finger twitching near the trigger.
For a long, unbearable second, he said nothing.
Only the sound of rain against the windows filled the silence, soft but relentless, like the ticking of a clock counting down to something inevitable.
Then, finally—
“Move,” he said.
His voice was flat, controlled, but I caught the slight tremor beneath it.
He gestured with the gun toward the hallway.
I slid off the island carefully, my legs unsteady, my body trembling from adrenaline and exhaustion.
The floor was cold beneath my bare feet, glass crunching under my heel as I obeyed.
As I passed him, I felt the heat of his nearness.
Why won’t he tell me?
My chest ached with frustration and fear. He had done this before—when we were newly married, the same questions, the same silence, like some cruel pattern meant to break me.
Was she real? Or had Giovanni been lying, keeping me blind?
My stomach twisted with the thought that maybe Seraphina was more than real—maybe she was here, in his life, in ways I wasn’t meant to know. Maybe he kept her close, maybe as a mistress, maybe something far worse.
In the dim corridor, shadows stretched long and uneven.
I could feel his gaze on my back, burning, dissecting.
As we moved through the mansion, silence thick between us, I could feel the weight of everything pressing in—the ghosts of our past, the storm outside, the gun still in his hand.
My mind raced, mapping every exit, every possible chance to escape.
