Page 54 of Twisted Addiction

He let out a quiet, humorless breath. “Peace is just what the dead look like when they stop screaming.”

The words hit me harder than they should have.

I drew my hand back, my skin tingling from the contact—as if her pain had seeped through the marble, through me.

“Dmitri...” I said softly, his name barely leaving my lips. “You can’t keep carrying this.”

He turned his head, the corner of his mouth curling, but there was no smile there. “What else is there to carry, Penelope? Guilt? Power? Both come with weight.”

I met his eyes, and for the briefest second, the mask cracked. Beneath it, I saw a boy—lost, grieving, still searching for a mother he could never save.

And maybe that was what terrified me most. Because for the first time since I met him, I didn’t see the monster.

I saw the wound that made him one.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, the words inadequate but all I had.

“I don’t need your pity,” Dmitri snapped, his voice sharp enough to cut through the candlelit silence.

But almost as soon as the words left him, his shoulders sagged, and when he spoke again, it was quieter—broken around the edges.

“Go home, Penelope,” he murmured, not looking at me. “Before I forget who I’m trying not to be.”

His voice—God, it wasn’t just rough. It was ruined, like a man scraping his soul against the edges of his past.

Something in me cracked. I took a step closer, my throat tight, words trembling before they even formed.

“Dmitri—”

He turned then, sudden and sharp, and whatever softness had flickered in his eyes was gone. In its place was devastation held together by rage.

“Your fingerprints,” he said quietly, every syllable, precise, lethal. “They were on her body.”

For a second, I couldn’t breathe. The words didn’t make sense—they hung in the air like smoke that refused to clear.

“What?” My voice fractured, disbelieving. “What are you saying?”

He didn’t move, didn’t blink. “You were there.”

The echo of those three words tore through me.

I staggered back, shaking my head. “No... no, that’s not possible—”

“You suffer from dissociative amnesia,” he said, cutting me off, his tone stripped of emotion, as if detachment were the only way to survive what he was saying. “Parts of your past are gone. You don’t even know they’re missing.”

The world tilted. I gripped the nearest pew for balance, my pulse hammering in my throat. “And you’re sure?” I asked, my voice trembling. “You’re so certain that I—”

“I don’t deal in certainty,” he said coldly, his eyes flicking toward the statue of his mother. “I deal in evidence.”

I stared at him, disbelief curdling into something uglier—hurt, betrayal, fear. “So that’s it?” I choked out. “That’s why you’ve punished me? Controlled me? You think I had something to do with her death?”

His gaze snapped back to me, hard and unyielding. “No.”

The word was quiet—but final.

I laughed bitterly, the sound raw in the hollow cathedral. “No? You’ve destroyed me, Dmitri. You’ve treated me like aweapon that turned on you, like something you couldn’t stand to touch. Don’t stand there and tell me you never hated me.”

He didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Then, softly—so softly I almost missed it—