Page 56 of Captive Promise

With that, I pad over to the closet and pick out my clothes, which may as well be armor. Black leggings, a tank top, an oversized sweater that comes down to my knees that I brought from home.

I braid my wet hair down my back because I cannot make myself do anything else with it.

It comes out a bit sloppy because my hands are shaking while I braid.

Once that’s done, I sit back down on the edge of my bed and I make a decision.

I am not going to let this happen again. I am going to avoid the hell out of Nico Barone. I am going to stay in my rooms as much as I can.

When I have to be out of them, I am going to keep as much distance between us as this house allows.

I am not going to eat meals with him. I am not going to sit in the same room with him.

I am not going to make eye contact with him.

I am not going to give him the chance to look at me the way he looked at me last night, because apparently when he looks at me like that I have the willpower of a wet napkin.

And I do not have it in me to make another mistake.

This is all for Seraphina. Nothing else.

I put my head in my hands again because that’s all I can apparently do right now.

I stay in my rooms for the rest of that day.

I don’t go down for dinner or for breakfast the next morning either. Someone leaves trays outside my door, but I don’t touch them.

Somebody eventually takes them away.

I don’t know who and I don’t really care.

I try to read but I can’t focus on the words. I try to work out because running always makes my mind go blank, but the sight of my bare arms reminds me of his hands on my arms and it makes me fall off the treadmill.

This time, Nico isn’t there to save me so I slam roughly into the ground. And it fucking hurts.

I sit on the floor of that stupid perfect suite in his stupid perfect house, and I whisper to the ceiling, “You stupid, stupid bitch.”

That’s what I am. That’s what I did. I’m a grown woman with two board certifications and I let a mafia captor—an actual, real-life, mafia captor—take me against a counter with my legs around him because he said horribly romantic words and looked at me with his big, sad brown eyes.

Are you actually kidding me right now, Katerina Alexandrovna? Because I don’t know who you are anymore.

My internal voice sounds like my mother.

I’m really fucking glad she’s not here to see me like this because she would have beat me within an inch of my life, and honestly I would deserve it.

My brain won’t stop showing me the kitchen. That hazy, dream-like quality is gone.

Instead every time I close my eyes, the kitchen is there in unbelievable high-definition detail.

I remember everything.

The way his eyes went dark when he looked at me, how he said my name into my mouth, the way I climbed him like a fucking tree.

Worst of all, I remember how he looked at me afterward, like he couldn’t believe his luck that I was here and…his.

God, I want to vomit as I press the heels of my hands into my eyes.

“Stop it,” I order myself, trying to get my brain to heel. But my brain keeps going, cheerful as a mean little slideshow, replaying the literal worst hour of my life. “You don’t want him,” I tell myself as I stagger over to the mirror. My reflection stares back at me in the glass—a tired, hollow-eyed woman with a bad braid and pasty white skin.