Page 90 of Twisted Addiction
I pressed my back to the wall, trembling, my breath shallow. Exhaustion wrapped around me like chains.
I didn’t know when I slipped under—whether it was sleep or the mercy of unconsciousness—but when I woke, the air was colder.
Footsteps echoed. Slow. Deliberate.
A man’s voice followed, low and sharp, cutting through the dark like a knife.
“Penelope.”
No. No. It couldn’t be—
My father.
The sound of him dragged every nerve raw.
I clamped my hands over my ears, squeezing my eyes shut, but his voice pushed through, closer, louder, like it lived inside my skull.
“You failed us,” he whispered, venom threading every syllable.
My body convulsed with a sob.
“You’re not real!” I screamed, my voice hoarse, breaking on the word. “You’re not real!”
But he stood there, or something like him—his outline flickering in the dark, his eyes twin shards of judgment.
The world fractured, and the memories came, violent and unstoppable.
My father’s hand striking my face.
My uncles’ laughter.
Dmitri’s voice—his fury. Blood on his arm. Seraphina’s shadow behind him.
I couldn’t breathe. The images came too fast, too loud. I clawed at my scalp, my nails tearing skin, desperate to silence it, to end it. My screams tangled with sobs, the sound bouncing off the walls until it didn’t even sound like me anymore.
Then my chest constricted. A sudden, vicious clamp, like someone had wrapped their hands around my lungs and refused to let go.
The asthma attack hit without warning.
I gasped, each breath thinner than the last.
Panic clawed up my throat, my body jerking in reflex as I fell to my knees.
The floor was freezing, the air thick and heavy, impossible to pull in.
I clawed at my neck, at the air, wheezing, my mind screaming breathe, breathe, but my lungs refused.
The room spun. My vision fractured into specks of light and black. My fingers fumbled against the floor, searching for the inhaler that wasn’t there.
“Help...” I rasped, barely a sound. “Please...”
No answer. Only silence.
My chest burned.
My heart slammed against my ribs, each beat slower than the last. The world tilted—then folded.
And the darkness devoured me whole.
