Page 135 of Twisted Addiction

He crossed the room in seconds, falling to his knees beside me.

His arms came around me, trembling but careful, pulling me against his chest as if I were made of glass.

His fingers brushed my abdomen, sticky with blood, then moved up to my face, tracing the outline of my father’s violence.

His eyes—dark, wild, human for once—locked on mine. “Who did this to you?”

I tried to speak, but my throat closed. The only sound that escaped was a ragged sob.

He didn’t need my answer.

The fury in his gaze turned to ice as he rose, every inch of him dangerously calm.

He pulled his gun from his holster with a smooth, practiced motion. The metallic click of the safety releasing was the loudest sound in the world.

“Dmitri—” I rasped, but he didn’t look back.

He aimed straight at Marco Romano.

My father, unflinching, reached into his jacket. In one heartbeat, his own pistol gleamed in the fluorescent light, aimed squarely at Dmitri’s chest.

Time fractured.

Two worlds—two monsters—stood across from each other, and I was the fragile thread between them.

“No!” The scream tore through me before I could think.

I lurched forward, my body a rebellion against every instinct for survival.

Two gunshots erupted at once—

A deafening, shattering sound that ripped through the sterile quiet.

Pain bloomed in my chest—white-hot, consuming.

I stumbled, the world dissolving into fragments of light and color. The floor rushed up to meet me, blood spilling warm and thick down my gown.

Somewhere, I heard Dmitri shout my name. “Milaya!” His voice was cracked open, raw, almost boyish in its terror.

He caught me before I hit the ground fully, his arms wrapping around me, pressing hard against the wound. “No, no, no...” he murmured frantically, his voice trembling. “Stay with me. You’re not allowed to die on me.”

His hands were shaking, slick with my blood.

I could feel the panic in him—the man who’d ruled empires reduced to a desperate, trembling lover.

“How dare you take a bullet for me?” he whispered hoarsely, as if scolding me, as if the weight of it was too much. “You hear me, Penelope? You’re not dying. I won’t let you.”

My lungs seized; each breath was wet and shallow.

Blood bubbled at my lips. I could barely see his face through the haze, but I found it anyway, memorizing the shape of his mouth, the tears streaking down his cheek.

“You...” I managed, the taste of iron spilling over my tongue. “You sent me away...”

My vision blurred, but I fought to keep my eyes open—to see his blue eyes one last time, the same eyes that had once felt like home.

The world blurred, red and white and pain.

Tears burned down my cheeks like fire that couldn’t be put out.