Page 66 of Monstrous Urges

I blink rapidly, my mouth opening and closing.

“This is faked.”

I mean, it’s me, but also not. I’ve never dyed my hair chestnut brown.

At least…not that I remember…

He snorts coldly. “How long until this gets old, even for you.”

I raise my eyes to his, frowning. “What?”

“The bullshit, Annika,” he snarls. “Or is it that you’ve just spent so long pretending to be Taylor Crown that you’re having trouble dropping the lies and remembering your treacherous, backstabbing self?”

Furious, I wind my hand back and throw the picture as hard as I can at his head. Drazen easily dodges it, and totally ignores the violent smash of glass as it splinters into shards against the wall behind him.

“No,” I choke, shaking my head violently. “I was never your wife?—”

“You were, little Annika,” he hisses. “In fact, technically speaking, you still are.”

My heart seizes.

“And you’ll continue to be.” He smiles cruelly. “Before you protest, know that being my wife going forward is the only thing keeping you alive.”

A tremor of fear ripples through me.

“What did I do?” I whisper. “I mean, what do you think I did? Why do you hate?—”

“You unlocked a key-coded back door and allowed your father’s men into my home on this very island. It was on the other side, closer to the main bridge.”

Drazen turns to stare out over the water.

“Those vermin slaughtered my entire family: father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, aunt, two cousins, my sister, her husband. My newborn nephew.”

Something horrifying rips through me. My face falls in agony, my hand flying to my mouth.

“Drazen—”

“They held me down and made me watch. Then they torched the house and left me there to die in a pool of my family’s blood.”

Oh my God…

It feels like someone’s just stabbed a knife through my heart. Like I’m breaking in two as I stare at him with a haunted, horrified expression.

“You might not remember the past,” he says, still looking out to sea. “But I can’t forget it. Nor will I ever.”

Without another word, he storms away.

14

DRAZEN

Images and articles flicker across the laptop screen. I bring the glass of vodka to my lips, taking a slow sip, scanning the information in front of me.

Taylor Crown has had an illustrious career. Top of her class, graduating magna cum laude from NYU; early, at that. Then on to Harvard Law, where she was, again, the very top of her class—right above her two co-partners at the firm.

I’ve tried digging deeper into her social media. But she hardly has any social presence on the web. What little there is strictly involves her work, which she seems to have been slavishly married to for the last dozen years.

She was a top junior associate at Kramer, O’Donnel, and List. Then they bumped her onto partner track after a few years of, frankly, killing it with them. She received an even better offer from a rival firm…and then two more even better ones from two other rival firms.

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