Page 70 of Twisted Addiction

“Where’s my father?” The question burst out smaller than I wanted, and I hated that it did.

She swallowed hard.

Her face crumpled. “He’s dead,” she whispered, the words muffled by the rain. “Murdered.”

The world went stupidly quiet at the edges.

Rain turned to sound.

My hands — the same hands that had learned to stay clenched — curled tighter, nails carving crescents into torn flesh.

“By who?” The words scraped out of me, too small for the storm tearing through my chest.

“Your foster parents,” she whispered, her voice cracking on the confession. “They found out we were searching for you. They warned him to stop, said you belonged to them now.” Her throat worked, a sob caught halfway. “But he wouldn’t—he said he’d rather die than let you rot in that house.”

A pause. The rain filled it.

Her gaze met mine, wet and trembling. “So they made sure he did.”

For a second I wanted to laugh — a bitter, hollow sound. Then the laugh turned into a sound that was closer to a growl.

“They killed him.” The phrase looped like a curse.

The rain prickled my face, but it could not wash anything away.

My chest hitched; fury pooled and flared.

She stepped closer, water soaking through the hem of her coat. “We have a hotel waiting. I can get you papers, a ticket. Tonight. We go back to Russia, Dmitri. We leave before they can do anything more.”

I looked at her. Her hands trembled, but there was steel in the set of her jaw.

She was trying to become a rope thrown into my chaos. For a beat I wanted to spit on her rope. I wanted to curl into the hollow that had kept me alive and refuse any help that smelled of pity.

Instead, the words came out like iron. “You said ‘we.’”

The laugh that followed was bitter and very small. “You don’t know what you’re asking. You don’t know what it costs to step into my life.”

Her fingers closed around mine before I could think it through — firm, warm, an accusation and a promise all at once. “I don’t care what it costs,” she said. “We leave tomorrow. The Romanos will cover whatever we need. But you must move now. Your foster aunt will notice you gone and they won’t let it slide.”

“I’m not a boy to be rescued,” I said.

It was less truth and more armor.

I’d learned to survive alone, to take what had to be taken. But the thought of home — of a place that might actually be mine — scraped at the scabs on my heart until they bled.

She didn’t flinch. “Then come as the man you want to be,” she said. “Or come as you are. I don’t care how broken, how angry—just come with me, Dmitri. Please. Let me save what’s left of you.”

My breath caught in my throat, suddenly too tight to form a sound.

She hesitated for the briefest second, then slipped a hand inside the pocket of her soaked coat.

Her fingers closed on something small and warm.

When she brought it out, it looked ordinary at first — a tarnished silver locket on a thin chain, the metal nicked from years of handling.

But when she opened it, the hair on my arm rose like static.

Inside, on a scrap of vellum, a single name was written in a looping, familiar script: ?????? (Dmitri).