Page 98 of Reckless Seduction
Cruel.
“Oh,” she says, standing slowly, deliberately, like she has all the time in the world. She steps closer, the click of her heels measured, predatory.
She hands me the tablet she is scrolling on.
“I think you do.”
The screen lights up my face, harsh and unforgiving.
And I… God, I wish I could say she was wrong.
FORTY
The room is steepedin a heavy, suffocating quiet, the kind that presses in from all sides until it feels like the walls themselves are breathing. The thin mattress beneath me sags in the middle, its surface rough against my skin, carrying the faint, lingering scent of bleach that never quite masks the deeper odors soaked into it. Sweat. Fear. Desperation.
I don’t remember when I fell asleep. Only that I fought it.
Exhaustion won anyway. It always does.
The dream clings to me when I wake, not as a single image but as fragments that refuse to let go. A flash of red. The sharp echo of something striking flesh. Hands, too many hands, grabbing, pulling, holding me down. My lungs burn as if I’ve been drowning, and somewhere in the chaos, there’s a voice. Cold. Familiar.
Lina.
I wake with a strangled gasp, my body jerking violently as if I’ve been dragged back from the edge of something dark and endless. My chest rises and falls too quickly, breaths coming shallow and uneven, each one catching painfully in my throat.
“No…”
The word breaks apart before it fully forms, dissolving into a sob that I can’t quite contain. I curl onto my side, pulling my knees in tight, wrapping my arms around myself as though I can physically hold the pieces of me together.
It’s not real.
I repeat it in my head, over and over, like a fragile mantra.
It’s not real.
But my body doesn’t believe it. My skin still feels wrong, my muscles tight and trembling, as if the nightmare has followed me out of sleep and settled into my bones.
Tears slip silently from the corners of my eyes, trailing into my hairline as I press my fist against my mouth to stifle the sounds threatening to escape. I can’t let anyone hear me. I can’t risk it. Not here. Not after today.
The memory of Giuseppe’s hands—rough, bruising, lingering where they shouldn’t—makes my stomach twist violently. My throat tightens as I swallow back the nausea that rises with it.
Breathe.
Seamus’s voice surfaces in my mind, calm and steady.
I should hate it. But I don’t.
Find something. Focus.
I try. I latch onto the faint crack running along the ceiling, tracing its uneven path with my eyes, forcing myself to follow it, to anchor myself to something real.
But the silence presses harder.
The room feels too empty. Too still.
And then, the mattress shifts.
It’s subtle, almost imperceptible, but I feel it immediately. My body goes rigid, every muscle locking as fear floods my veins.
