Page 144 of Ruthless Addiction

As if she still couldn’t quite believe she had won.

The warehouse doors groaned open, light flooding in briefly, blindingly—and then they closed again.

She was gone.

Free.

The silence that followed was absolute.

Something inside me caved in completely.

Vanya.

My breath hitched violently at the thought of him. My sweet boy with his lopsided smile and clever questions. Who would tuck him in tonight? Who would kiss his curls and tell him stories? Who would explain why Mommy never came home?

Would he wait for me by the door?

Would he stop asking after a while?

Would he grow up believing I left him—chose not to return?

The thought hollowed me out more thoroughly than fear ever could.

And me—what would become of me?

Shipped across borders like cargo. Locked in some concrete room in the mountains. Stripped of my name, my past, my body. Passed from man to man until pain was the only language left. Until Penelope meant nothing. Until Pen vanished. Until Maliya became a ghost in every sense of the word.

A sob tore out of me, raw and broken.

Why?

Why had he chosen her?

He hated Seraphina. He’d said it. Sworn it. Promised war before ever touching her again. So why?

Strategy? Mercy? A lie meant to buy time?

Or had I—after all this time, all that history—meant so little that sacrificing me was easier?

The Albanian woman approached, her presence soundless, her black robes whispering as she moved. She crouched in front of me, eyes dark and unreadable behind the veil.

Her gloved fingers brushed my chin, lifting my face despite my resistance.

“Don’t fight, little one,” she said in broken English, her voice soft, almost kind. “It’s time to go... to your new home.”

Her hand dropped.

She straightened and turned away, already finished with me.

I closed my eyes.

Tears slipped free, hot and relentless, soaking into my hair, my skin, the ropes biting into my wrists. My body shook, exhaustion and terror finally overwhelming whatever strength I had left.

And for the first time in years, I prayed.

Not for rescue.

Not for miracles.

Not even for Dmitri.

I prayed for it to end quickly.

Because whatever waited for me in Albania—

I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to survive it.