Page 149 of Save Me

I head to the kitchen’s sliding glass door and try to open it, but nothing budges.

Like a madwoman, I start trying to open the windows, but they are also locked solid.

Not until I’ve tried every window and door on the first-floor level of this house do I stop, breathing heavily, and say, “This motherfucker locked me in here.”

My breathing instantly quickens. But it’s not panic or anxiousness that I’m feeling.

It’s rage.

Blood red, like the walls of his fucking nightclub, is all I see.

I pick up one of the dining room chairs and toss it with all my might at the sliding glass door in a last-ditch effort to leave this house.

The chair hits the door with a thud, bounces slightly, and then falls to the floor.

There’s barely a scratch on the door. That’s when I remember Dae told me that the doors are made out of bulletproof glass.

A fury like I’ve never felt before overcomes me.

I throw another chair at the damn door, knowing it won’t break it, but because I have no other way to express what’s inside of me right now.

When I run out of chairs to throw, I move on to the stools at the kitchen island. I hear glass shattering around me. It’s not the glass I want to break.

The dining room table, the glass champagne flutes, and other dishes lay in tatters around the floor. My rage so blinds me that I don’t know what I’m destroying.

All I know is that the bastard lied to me. He used my trust against me and locked me in his fucking house.

I charge up the stairs and kick the bedroom door so hard that the wood cracks. It feels good to break at least one door.

I rip drawers and his clothes out of the spacious walk-in closet, spilling over the expensive colognes he uses and the perfumes he bought for me. I tear at the side of the closet he’s designated for me.

Nothing escapes my wrath.

When I go to pull open one of the drawers of the nightstand on Dae’s side of the bed, it’s locked. That doesn’t stop me. I pick the entire thing up and toss it against the wall. The wooden pieces splinter, and the once-locked drawer slides open.

A silk handkerchief and a file of papers fall out. The handkerchief catches my attention. It’s familiar, just like a set of handkerchiefs my parents gifted me for Christmas years ago.

I haven’t seen any of them in years.

I pick it up and look it over. My fingers run across one of the edges, and I stop breathing when I see the initials K.T. in lavender threading in the corner.

This is one of my old handkerchiefs.

“How …” I stop because the memory hits me like a lightning bolt.

My dream.

That day.

Years ago.

In that alleyway.

CHAPTER 43

Dae

When I pull into my driveway again, it’s much later than I planned. Close to nine o’clock in the morning. It took longer than expected for the police to believe that I was just protecting myself from two would-be muggers.

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