Chapter 209
KATYA POV
I stood there for a very long ti after the sound of his footsteps faded into the shadows of the basent.
My back was still pressed against the cold steel of the cell door, and my lips... my lips still felt the ghost of his pressure.
I touched my mouth with trembling fingers, half-expecting to find blood there. Instead, I just felt the frantic, uneven rhythm of my own pulse in my fingertips.
Don’t mistake my restraint for weakness.
His words echoed in the silence, louder than the sound of my own heartbeat. I waited for the wave of nausea to hit .
Waited for the skin-crawling disgust that should co when a man who holds you captive, a man who just killed his own blood, forces himself onto you.
But the disgust didn’t co, there was just this hollow, ringing shock. And deeper than that—sothing I was terrified to na—was a spark of sothing that wasn’t anger.
My heart wasn’t racing in protest; it was racing in confusion. What is wrong with you? I scread at myself internally.
I looked at the keypad next to the door. I wouldn’t be able to get in. I an he literally caught trying to sneak into the rooms but he left .
He knew I would never be able to get into this rooms without a key card. I turned, sighing at my unfortunate life.
Every shadow looked like him. Every flicker of the security caras felt like his eyes on my skin.
He didn’t kill . He had a gun in his hand, a bullet wound in his shoulder that I had caused by existing, and a reason to end , yet he had chosen to do that to instead.
Why?
The why felt more dangerous than the gun. If he hated , I knew how to survive. If he wanted to kill , I knew how to fight.
But this... this curiosity he ntioned... it was a trap I didn’t know how to escape. Was this how it felt in those movies I watched?
No, it doesn’t. This was dangerous, this was stupid and this was definitely going to get killed.
I stepped into the elevator and watched the basent disappear as the doors slid shut. I was going back to the room he gave .
The elevator doors opened with a soft chi that felt like a scream in the oppressive silence of the upper floor.
I stepped out, my legs feeling like they were made of lead, my bare feet padding softly against the expensive carpet.
I reached the door to my room—the "Donna’s Room"—and paused, my hand hovering over the handle.
I didn’t open it. I just stood there, staring at the dark wood, my mind a chaotic whirlpool of "what ifs" and "whys."
My lips still felt warm. It was a physical contradiction to the freezing cold of the basent.
I lifted my arm and pinched the sensitive skin on my forearm, hard. I twisted until it burned, my nails digging deep enough to leave crescent-moon marks.
"Wake up," I whispered to the empty hallway. "Wake up, Katya. This is a nightmare. You’re still in the basent. You’re hallucinating."
But the pain was sharp and real. The red mark on my arm didn’t fade. This wasn’t a dream. This was my life.
Maybe this was Adelasia’s doing. Maybe her spirit was already haunting these halls, weaving so dark silk around my brain to make go mad.
It was a stupid, superstitious thought, but it felt more logical than the alternative. The alternative was a question that flickered in my mind for a split second, unbidden and dangerous.
Does he... like ? The thought was so absurd I almost laughed.
"Don’t be a fool," I hissed. I rembered the weight of his gun. I rembered the cold, dead look in his eyes when he told I had no use.
I pushed the door open and slipped inside, leaning my weight against it until it clicked shut. I didn’t turn on the lights. I didn’t want to see myself in the mirror. I didn’t want to see how flushed my cheeks were.
I walked to the bed and collapsed onto it. He told to lock the door.
I looked at the lock. It was a joke. No lock in this house kept Roo Salvatore out.
If he wanted to co back, he would. If he wanted to finish what he started in the basent, he would.
I curled into a ball, pulling the heavy duvet over my head, trying to disappear. But all I could see behind my eyelids was the way his gray eyes had looked right before his lips touched mine.
"He’s a monster," I whispered into the dark, my voice shaking. "He’s just a monster. This was a new way to punish ." He had always co up with new things, always creative from the mont he injected that paralyzing syringe.
I looked at the clock, it was seven am now. Ti must have moved fast when I was in that basent, smacking lips with my captor.
I rembered how he had treated like a pawn from the very beginning. A piece of property. n like Roo Salvatore didn’t "like" people.
They owned them. They used them. He didn’t save because he cared. My mind replaying his words on a loop.
No loyalty. No obedience. No use.
"Then why am I still here?" I whispered to the empty air. My voice was a ghostly rasp, barely recognizable.
If I were truly useless, Roo would have left in the hallway for Adelasia to finish. He wouldn’t have stepped into the line of fire.
He wouldn’t have wasted a single drop of his blood on an enemy. And he certainly wouldn’t have touched in the basent with a hand that was trembling from a gunshot wound.
It had to be a ga. A new, psychological layer of the torture he started the day he brought here.
He wasn’t just breaking my body anymore; he was aiming for my mind. He wanted to see unravel, to see confused, to see if he could make forget he was the one who put the collar around my neck in the first place.
But then, a thought surfaced through the fog of my panic. It was cold, sharp, and utterly desperate.
If he thinks he’s playing ... maybe I should play him back. I sat up slowly, the duvet falling to my waist.
I looked at my hands, I couldn’t get back into that basent without that key card and not by sneaking again, the caras were recording, and Roo was always one step ahead.
If I got close to him, I was stepping into the lion’s den without a cage. I’d have to touch him, right. Just like that movie? No.
I shivered, my skin crawling at the re thought. I couldn’t afford to be a victim anymore. I couldn’t afford to be "useless."
If I could get him to trust —or at least, to be distracted by —I could find where he kept the key card and save Aria.
"I can do this," I lied to myself.
††
Thank y’all for the power stone for my new book, I saw we reach 20 stones so I will give another bonus Chapter before today ends.
Bluey star thanks for the review.
5 honest reviews to my new book = 1 bonus Chapter to this book!
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