Page 65 of Monstrous Urges

This is insane. He’s insane. I haven’t the slightest fucking idea what?—

“Tell me how you knew the code to unlock that door, Annika.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!!” I choke out through my clenched throat, my eyes round and terrified. “I’ve never been here before!! My name isn’t ANNI?—”

I scream as his hand lets go. Instantly, it tightens again, grabbing a handful of the front of my dress. The fabric rips a little. Pure adrenaline explodes through my system as I flail and claw to grab hold of his arm.

“Please!” I beg, gasping for air. “Please don’t drop me.”

Another handful of frozen, terrifying seconds tick by. My dress tears a little more.

Suddenly, he yanks hard, ripping the dress half off me as I hurtle forward past him onto the ground, landing sprawled at his feet. I wince at the bite of stone on my bare knees and toes.

“Allow me to refresh your frail memory?—”

“Fifteen years ago,” I shriek, turning to lift my face to his, “I was in a fucking car crash!”

“Yes, you were,” he spits venomously. He stabs a vicious finger past me. “Half a fucking mile that way, trying to escape after betraying me and my family!!”

My face pales and drops. My heart twists as something horrible and stabbing cuts into my brain: a flicker of…something. Then it’s gone.

“I grew up in Washington, DC,” I plead. “I?—”

“Lies—”

“I DON’T HAVE ANY MEMORY OF BEFORE I WAS EIGHTEEN!!” I scream at him in a blind panic. “Nothing!! Zero!! I have retrograde amnesia!!”

“How very. Fucking. Convenient,” he snaps.

“Trust me,” I spit back through clenched teeth. “It’s not. But I know one thing,” I sneer up at him. “You and I were never married. I doubt even amnesia could erase a horror like that.”

“How very lucky for you that it did,” he replies coldly. “Not everyone has that luxury.”

“Let me be as fucking clear as I possibly can, you fucking psychopath!” I yell through clenched teeth. “I DO NOT REMEMBER MY FUCKING LIFE! But I know one thing for certain: I was never your wife,” I spit. “Nev?—”

I whimper, choking as his hand wraps tight around my throat and yanks me hard into his chest and I look up into his brutal, viciously handsome face, twisted in a black, dark rage.

“Don’t. Fucking. Move.”

I shudder as he releases me and storms into the enormous mansion. I stand, turning and hugging myself, shaking as I stare out over the water.

I can still see the little speck of that rowboat, moored in the water…

Heavy footsteps have me whirling as he marches back onto the patio. “How about now,” he snarls, shoving something into my hands. “Ringing any wedding bells?”

An icy feeling crawls up my spine as I stare down at the picture frame in my hands, the corner dented and the glass spiderwebbed, like someone’s thrown it in a rage. It’s tinged with black marks, like it survived a fire.

It’s not the state of the frame that sends a shiver through my very soul.

It’s the photograph in it.

Of me.

A very young, teenaged me, wearing a white wedding dress, standing morosely next to a stern, much younger Drazen in a black suit.

We both look like we’re at a funeral.

“I…”

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