Page 108 of Twisted Addiction

I would not acknowledge the power he still held over me.

He had taken his revenge, buried me in that darkness, and now stood before me—unrepentant, unbroken—a living echo of every nightmare he’d forced me to survive.

“Penelope,” he said, voice low, almost smooth. Gentle, like honey laced with steel. “You’re still healing, and you think you can outrun exhaustion? You’ll eat something. You’ll rest. I won’t let you set foot on that plane starving.”

I stayed rigid, jaw tight, eyes fixed on the wall.

My silence was a weapon, a fragile shield against the pull of him.

I could feel him studying me, every inch of me, calculating, weighing.

Chapter 24

PENELOPE

The air in the bedroom felt charged—thick with ghosts, with everything we’d said and everything we hadn’t.

Dmitri moved closer, the mattress dipping under his weight as he sat beside me—too close.

Our arms nearly touched, his presence a heat I couldn’t escape.

He leaned back against the headboard, legs stretched out beside mine. I didn’t flinch, didn’t speak, just sat there—rigid, silent, pretending I couldn’t feel the gravity of him.

No pillow softened the space between us, only the cold stretch of silk sheets and the hard truth of his presence.

I finally shifted, folding my legs beneath me, spine rigid.

He mirrored me, his movements measured, wary, like he was afraid one wrong motion might shatter what fragile civility held us together.

Silence settled like a storm cloud.

Alexei’s words echoed in my mind—Seraphina.His ex-fiancée.The reason for my sudden freedom.

The bile of betrayal rose in my throat, but I swallowed it down. If I provoked him now, if I gave him reason to revoke that plane ticket, I’d lose the one escape I’d fought for.

Then, quietly—like it hurt him to speak—he said, “I missed you.”

The sound of it startled me.

My pulse stuttered.

“Not the woman sitting beside me,” he continued, his voice rough, scraping the edges of confession, “but the girl you used to be.”

His words cut deeper than I wanted to admit.

My hands curled into fists.

“That innocent little girl I thought you were,” he went on, eyes distant, voice softer now, almost trembling. “The one who looked at me like I wasn’t a monster. You made me forget what my world was—a nightmare. You stopped me from putting a blade to my wrists when my aunt’s hands...” His voice faltered, cracked like glass.

He looked away, jaw tight, as if speaking her name might summon her ghost.

My breath caught.

“We’d talk all night under that oak tree behind your father’s estate,” he said finally, eyes flicking back to me. “You’d laugh, and for a few hours, the noise in my head would stop. You were my quiet, Penelope. My only quiet.”

The admission landed like a blade between us—trembling, irrevocable.

He exhaled slowly, eyes dark with memory. “Do you remember your fifteenth birthday? That silver locket?”