Page 26 of Devil’s Night (The Shadows of Darkness Universe #3)

Chapter twenty-one

Who Is Really The Monster?

Echo

W hat the fuck have I done?

The thought hits like a hammer to the skull, again and again, as I pace the narrow confines of the observation room, my fists clenching at my sides until my nails draw blood.

The goddamn key ring. I left it out. Left it in plain fucking sight like a rookie, like some lovesick bastard too caught up in her scent to remember that monsters like Nikolai don’t die easy, they wait.

They watch. I should have known. I should have seen it coming.

That little shit had eyes even when his mouth was bloodied shut.

And now Katya’s paying the price for my weakness.

“She hasn’t said a word since we brought her in,” Noah says beside me, voice flat, almost clinical.

I can’t answer. I don’t have the words. I’m too focused on the image in front of me, her, on the other side of the glass. Bruised. Silent. Bound to a steel chair like a prisoner of war. Her wrists are still red from the cuffs, her face swollen where my fist met her chin, where I put it there.

I want to throw myself through the glass. I want to grab her, cradle her face, apologize with every breath I have left. I want to beat myself bloody for what I did. For what I didn’t stop.

She hasn’t looked up once. Hasn’t moved. She just sits there, a shadow of the girl I had in my bed, the one I fucked into oblivion and called mine like I had the right. She’s not screaming. She’s not crying. That silence is worse. She’s gone inside, and I did that. Me.

If I had been honest with Roman from the beginning, maybe I’d be locked in that cell beside her right now, stripped of every right I once held, but at least I’d be close.

At least I’d know she wasn’t alone. That no one else would hurt her.

That I could watch. Protect. Bleed if she needed me to.

But now? Roman’s watching me like I’m next in line to be interrogated, and maybe I should be.

I tortured them both. That’s the truth. And I didn’t stop when I should’ve. I didn’t want to.

“How long?” Roman asks, his voice sharp.

“Long enough,” I mutter, jaw tight, refusing to look away from the glass.

“Why the hell would you do it in your own home?” he snaps, pacing now, frustrated beyond measure.

Because no one would stop me there. Because the walls knew the screams. Because I could make it something else entirely.

“The kind of torture they deserved…” I start, voice low, weighted with things I’ll never admit.

Roman turns toward me, brows furrowed. “What does that even mean?”

I close my eyes, jaw trembling with the war I’m still fighting inside myself. The kind of torture I gave them, gave her, wasn’t just blood and bruises. It wasn’t just pain for pain’s sake.

It was intimate. Controlled. Slow. The kind of torment that had her trembling, not from fear, but from how badly she wanted more. I touched her like a weapon. I used my mouth like a blade. I broke her down, inch by inch, and instead of begging me to stop, she opened her legs wider.

“Beyond our capabilities here,” I finish, and the words taste like sin. Because they are.

Roman recoils slightly, not fully understanding, and I hope he never does.

Because if he knew, if anyone knew, what I did to her, how I needed her, how I fucked my obsession so deep into her body she moaned my name through pain… they’d bury me beneath this building.

And the sickest part?

I don’t regret it.

I only regret that it ended like this.

Why hasn’t she said anything?

Why hasn’t she asked for me?

The silence from the other side of the glass is more deafening than the scream she let out the first time I laid hands on her.

I can still hear that sound. Still feel it etched into my skin like a scar that never healed.

But now… now there’s nothing. No glance.

No glare. No whispered plea. Just silence.

“She stopped Nikolai from harming you,” Roman says, pacing like a caged animal. His voice grates against my nerves. “She stopped him from putting a bullet through one of us.”

He pauses, eyes narrowing on me, dragging his gaze across my posture like he’s peeling back layers. “Was she in your room?”

The question is accusatory.

My jaw tightens.

“Interrogation,” I mutter. “One-on-one. Let her feel like she could trust me. Let her think I was someone safe. Someone close.”

It’s a lie.

A flimsy, transparent fucking lie. And he knows it. I know it.

But it’s the only version I can say out loud.

Because the truth is worse.

The truth is, I was someone she could trust. I never should’ve been, but I was.

I held her when she cried. I kissed her wrists where the shackles dug in.

I watched her fall apart and I let her, because I was there to catch her.

I didn’t knock her unconscious. Not at first. Not until the line blurred so badly I couldn’t see straight.

It wasn’t just business. Maybe at the start, but not after the first time she touched me like I was more than a monster. Not after the first time she moaned my name like a prayer and a curse all at once.

I let it go too far. And now I don’t know how to undo it. I don’t even know if I want to.

“She was protecting her captor,” a voice cuts in sharply.

I turn, facing Ana, Noah’s fiancée.

She steps into the room like she belongs here, neck bruised, throat purpled and swollen from what Dimitri’s men did to her. And yet, her voice holds no weakness. Only sharp, clinical certainty.

“Her savior, ” she adds, eyes narrowing as she stops beside Roman.

My stomach churns.

“Stockholm Syndrome,” she clarifies, nodding toward the girl on the other side of the glass. Katya. Still unmoving. Still silent. Her head bowed beneath the flickering fluorescent light, hair tangled around her shoulders like a veil.

“No,” I breathe, shaking my head. “No. That’s not it.”

“It is ,” Ana snaps. “You don’t see it because you don’t want to see it.”

I move closer to the glass, fists clenched at my sides, trying to will her to look up. To see me. To say something. But she doesn’t move. Doesn’t flinch.

“Katya Romanov is a killer,” Ana continues. “A killer who knows nothing but vengeance. The only thing she’s ever known is blood, control, and power. You had her unchained. Untethered. Free in your home. And she didn’t hurt you.”

“She protected you,” Roman adds, arms crossed. “And now she’s shutting down. That gives me all the answers I need.”

I can barely breathe. The walls feel like they’re closing in.

“She feels betrayed,” Ana says, more gently now, as if offering an autopsy rather than a judgment.

“Whatever fucked-up manipulation you used on her, it worked. You convinced her you were something else. Something better. And then you hit her. You threw her back in a cell. You proved every lie right.”

I press my palms to the glass.

“She’s not broken,” I whisper. “She’s not-”

“She’s hurt, Echo. She’s confused. And right now, she thinks you are the enemy. And the only person she might talk to is the one who shattered her.”

I watch her.

Blank. Emotionless.

Her head hangs low, too heavy for her neck to hold. Her arms rest limp at her sides, fingers twitching only slightly when she exhales. She’s not screaming. Not resisting.

She’s gone.

And I don’t know if I’ll ever get her back.

“And my car?” I ask, though I already know the answer. The question’s a formality, something to say while my mind races, while guilt coils tighter in my chest.

“Just as you suspected,” Roman says, folding his arms across his chest like he’s holding the whole damn world together by sheer force of will. “At Dimitri’s estate. Nikolai ran straight to the Romanov manor.”

Of course he did. Straight home. Straight into the arms of the devil who made him.

Just perfect.

“We’ll make sure there’s extra security at your place,” Roman adds, his voice clipped. “Let them think you’re still there. We’ll keep Catalyst quiet.”

“Good,” I reply, already strategizing. “Let them believe I’m home. Let them waste their energy hunting shadows. I’m staying here tonight.”

I don’t even look at Roman when I say it.

“Here?” he repeats, eyes narrowing. “With her?”

“Yes,” I snap. “Nikolai thinks she’s still at the house. Dimitri made threats. It’s about time we start making a few of our own.”

More lies.

Layer after layer, burying me in the hole I dug with my own hands. This whole operation is rotting from the inside out, and I’m the infection that spread it. But the worst part is, I don’t care. Not enough. Because she’s still here, and if staying by her side is a risk, I’ll take it.

God help me, Catalyst is the safest place she can be now.

And that says everything.

My gaze drifts to the glass. She hasn’t moved in hours. Her head hangs low, shoulders slumped, wrists limp in the restraints. But then, slowly, deliberately, her head turns. Her bloodshot eyes lift, locking on the one-way mirror like she can feel us watching.

“Is he in there?” she whispers.

The first words she’s spoken in hours. Her voice is like sandpaper, raw, scraped clean from the inside. It’s not a question meant to be answered. It’s a death sentence, waiting to be carried out.

Roman presses the mic button, his voice steady as ever. “You’ll have to be more specific, Ms. Romanov.”

Her eyes don’t blink. Her gaze burns.

“How many of you are watching me?” she mutters. “How many of your people are you letting watch me, Echo?”

The way she says my name twists something inside me. It used to sound like a secret. Now it’s venom.

I move forward, nudging Roman aside.

“Answer their questions, Katya,” I order, voice hard. “Behave.”

She laughs. The sound is hollow.

“It was all a game,” she whispers, her lips curling into something between a smile and a snarl. “Wasn’t it?”

Her shackles rattle as she shifts, her bruised wrists pulling against the restraints.