Then, his hands are on me again. I don’t even have a second to think.
He grips my hair tighter and shoves me under the water again. Panic surges through me. My lungs burn once more.
I thrash around, swallowing mouthfuls of dirty water as my body cries out for air. My limbs grow heavy. The world dims and my mind spirals into darkness.
I wake up coughing, sputtering. Pain radiates through my entire skull.Not dead? Fuck.
The floor beneath me is hard and cold. A damp chill creeps up my spine. I blink against the low light, forcing my sluggish brain to process where I am.
Bars. It’s the first thing I see.
A fucking dungeon? Really?
I shift, a rough blanket slipping from my body.My very naked body.Great. Freezing to death before Dominic kills me. This just keeps getting better and better.
Sadness coils around me like a second skin. I curl into myself, trying to breathe through the sorrow.My Dominic.He would've never done this to me. I broke him and in the process, I broke myself.
The cell door creaks open, jolting me out of my pitiful state.
Dominic steps inside. He looks like a true fortress of muscle and bone-chilling fury. His once-warm eyes are now black voids, ready to swallow me whole. A cold fire burns in them, like he’s already imagining me reduced to nothing but ash. I remember that he used to look at me with so much love. That he used to smile so easily, so freely. I stole that from him. I stole it from both of us.
He tosses a loaf of bread and a wedge of hard cheese into my lap.
"Eat." His voice is empty, stripped of anything that could pass for emotion.
I look up at him, searching for something, anything, of the boy I once knew.
"Why didn't you kill me?"
A slow, terrifying grin spreads across his face, making my blood freeze inside my veins.
"I have plans for you, adorable."
He spits the nickname with venom and it shatters another piece of my already broken heart.
"You're a disease," he says, his tone matter-of-fact. "And I'm going to cure my life of you. For good."
I swallow hard. "Ghost... I didn't have a choice. They were going to kill Liz."
His jaw tightens, eyes narrow. "I know about the threat. What I can't forgive is that you had me and my entire club at your disposal. You could've told me. We would've protected you. Instead, you chose to betray me."
I shake my head. "I couldn't risk it. I didn't have enough time. It was all too fast."
"No." His eyes burn into me. "What youcouldn'tdo was trust me. I get it. At first. But for six months, I gave you nothing but honesty. Love. And you still condemned me."
His voice is raw, filled with something I don't dare name. "All while lying about how much you fucking loved me."
"I did love you!" My voice cracks. "I fell for you in a day! I was nineteen, I panicked! I —"
"You're still lying," he spits and shakes his head. "You never loved me. You were a cold, calculated bitch from the start. Truth is, you just wanted to be rid of me."
I suck in a sharp breath.
"I could've understood about Liz," he continues, his voice tight with rage. "Forgiven you. But then —then— not even two months after I got locked up, you marriedhim."
Fuck. Fuck.FUCK.
"You don't know what really happened."
