Page 126 of Twisted Temptation

Such a simple gesture, but it tells me everything I need to know right now. That I am finally safe.

Like a levee bursting, all the emotion I’ve buried since fleeing California comes pouring out of me. Everything I’ve kept buried. Every morsel of pain, fear, and hopelessness.

I turn around, melt into him, and come apart with my face pressed into his chest, letting it all pour out of me at once.

Because finally, finally, I have somewhere safe to let it out.

Dante holds me through all of it.

The sobbing. The shaking. The ugly words that belong to an ugly story.

He wraps both arms around me as he listens to every gruesome detail, holding me in the shelter of his body.

He doesn't tell me it's okay. He just stands there under the warm water with his arms around me, making himself the safe place I’ve needed for a very long time.

I let it all out, and he swallows every last drop of my pain like it's his now.

“So where is he?” I ask, leaning against the kitchen island, a cup of coffee warming my hands.

“Below the casino is a room.”

“What kind of room?”

“The kind people don’t walk out of.”

I nod slowly as another piece of the puzzle that is my husband falls into place.

“You don’t need to see him,” Dante says. “You never have to see him again. But this choice belongs to you now. So I’m asking you what you want done to him.”

For a moment I let the nightmare back in. I let myself remember because it feels safe to.

“I want him stripped of everything,” I say, my anger unfurling in my chest. “The way he stripped me. I want him powerless and terrified. I want him trapped in a room where no one is coming to save him, because that is what my apartment felt like for the nine hours he had me trapped there. I want to see him bleed. I want to hear him beg.”

The more I speak, the hotter my pain burns in my chest. It’s not fear. It is rage and heartbreak. It is the woman who had her voice taken from her, standing up and saying no more.

“I want to see him,” I say.

Dante studies my face and then holds out his hand. “I’ll be beside you the whole time. Nothing in that room can hurt you.”

I take his hand.

We ride the elevator down to the basement. My heart pounds against my chest, and my pulse roars in my ears. I’m about to face the man who set fire to my world. The memory comes fast. Him pushing me through the front door, the struggle that followed inside, his hand cracking across my face, the blur of pain as he overpowered me. The nine hours in my apartment that followed, where he did the things only the depraved desire.

I let the memory come, letting it fuel me.

So when I walk into the room and see him, I feel nothing but cold numbness.

Jeremy is zip-tied to a chair. One eye is swollen shut, and silver tape covers his mouth. Blood runs down his face, drying in patches over bruised skin.

He’s sagging in the chair. Exhausted, hunted, and stripped down to nothing.

He looks small. And that feels best of all.

I walk toward him, and his good eye finds me. But there isn’t fear or shame in it. Only the darkness that lives inside him, itching to get out.

I cross the room and rip the tape off his mouth. It pulls some of the skin from his lip, and he hisses. But then he grins at me through the blood and opens his mouth to say something.

But I slap the tape back over his mouth before he can, pressing my palm flat to seal it. Then I rip it off again, taking more skin.