Page 72 of Craving Dahlia

“She’s been taken. By—” My throat tightens.

Dimitri’s face softens suddenly, concern in his eyes. “Alek. Why would you think she’s beentakenby someone? The Crows are no longer a problem, and I have treaties with the other families—” He glances back at the bed again, and then steps quickly out into the hall to join me, closing the door carefully behind him. “What’s going on?”

I feel that familiar sense of panic at the idea of telling him the truth, the cold resistance in every part of my mind and body at the thought of going back and revisiting all that happened. But it’s followed me here, and now it’s threatening someone who had no part in any of it. A woman who, for all our fights and conflicts, is my wife. The mother of my child.

Fear and anger twist through me at the thought of anything happening to her. Worst of all, something happening to herbecauseof me.

I look back at my brother, a sudden resolve settling over me.

“Come downstairs with me. There’s things I need to tell you. About…about what happened.”

25

DAHLIA

Istill don’t know how much time has passed. When I wake up again, I lie shivering on the bed, keeping my eyes closed. It’s the third—maybe the fourth time I’ve woken up since that first time, but I don’t know how long it’s been between each. Twice, I’ve been knocked out again, when the man who came to question me the first time—whose name I now know is Ivan…or at least the name he gave me is Ivan. Once, or maybe twice more, I’ve fallen into a disjointed kind of sleep. I don’t feel like I’ve entirely bounced back from whatever they keep drugging me with—I still feel foggy and heavy, like I’m not entirely sure if my limbs would cooperate if I tried to escape.

The baby. I’ve tried not to think about what might have happened to my baby. At least once, one of the men who Ivan brought in to try to force me to answer his questions has punched me in the ribs. The drug alone might have harmed the baby, but I have no way of knowing any of that. So I force myself not to think about it, because there’s nothing I can do. It will only drive me crazy. And I feel like I’m hanging onto my sanity by a shred as it is.

The last time Ivan came in to question me, he brought two men with him. One to hurt me every time I refused to answer, and another to stand just behind the chair, commenting on all the things he’d like to do to me. All the things the other men have talked about doing to me. And, according to Ivan, the next time he comes in here, if I refuse to talk, he’ll let them. One by one, until I talk, or he starts letting them use me in pairs. In groups. Until I tell him what he needs to know to get to Alek.

How long can I hold out on this?I don’t want to betray Alek. There’s no part of me that wants that. But I can only endure so much. I’m not some kind of soldier, trained to endure torture and pain. I’m just one woman, and, I can admit, one who has been fairly spoiled throughout her life. I’m tough in my own ways, and I’m stubborn, and I can handle myself in normal circumstances.

These aren’t normal. Not by any stretch of the word.

I close my eyes again, wanting to fall back into the blissful ignorance of sleep. I know they’re keeping me drugged, in the water they’ve given me intermittently or the bland food I was given once and barely managed to choke down before it threatened to come back up again, but that thought flits away, difficult to hold onto as I start to drift off again.

When I’m jolted awake again, the first thing that hits my consciousness is a sharppop.I hear it again,pop, pop, pop—and I faintly think that it sounds like gunshots. Like the sound of the guns in Sal’s parking lot, when Alek came out and rescued me. Like the sound of the times my father would take me to the firing range back in D.C., telling me I should know how to use a gun to protect myself.

I’ve never owned one. Never wanted one. But I know how to shoot one, for all the good it’s done me now.

I hear the dull sound again, trying to pull myself out of the fog of sleep.They did drug me, this last time they brought mewater,I think. They must have. Maybe that was Ivan’s plan, to bring his men in here and let them have their way with me while I was half-conscious, thinking that the next time I had my faculties, I’d be eager to answer his questions.

The thought sends a shudder through me, bile burning the back of my throat. I hear footsteps somewhere outside the locked door of my room, loud and harsh, like someone is running. There are more of those same sounds, the dull gunshots, and then the door to my room slams open, crashing into the wall behind it.

I think I see Alek through my blurred vision, standing in the doorway, his sandy blond hair plastered to his head with sweat and a gun in his hands. I could swear I see Dimitri and other men behind him, out in the hall, looking back and forth. But I’m hallucinating. I must be.

I close my eyes, wanting a different dream. One that won’t hurt so much when I wake up again and I’m alone. But the dream persists, even with my eyes closed. I feel something thrown over me, slick and cool like the lining of a jacket, wrapped around me as arms slide under me. There’s a a warm, broad surface against me, and the familiar scent of Alek’s skin, cedar and leather, envelops me.

Maybe I do want this dream. Even if it will hurt when I wake up, it feels good now. I lean into the strong arms holding me against his chest, opening my eyes only briefly as I feel him carrying me out of the room. What I’m seeing can’t be real. Bodies on the floor, blood pooling around them, spattered on the walls. A scene of brutal carnage, as if Alek and Dimitri tore their way through this building to get to me, killing everyone in their path.

I know I’m dreaming. This is what I’d dream about, isn’t it? My husband cared enough to come for me, carrying me awayafter rescuing me from the men who wanted to hurt me. Safety. Warmth.Love.

A cracked sound bubbles from my lips at that last thought. Alek doesn’t love me, and I don’t love him. I don’t. That’s not a part of our story, and it never will be.

My last thought, as I feel cool air hit my clammy skin and hear the creak of a door, is that this dream feels more real than I ever thought a dream could.

That I wish I could stay in it, instead of waking up again.

—

When I wake again,I feel very, very different.

The first thing I think is that the air smells familiar, like lavender. Everything around me feels soft and warm, and I don’t feel foggy any longer. My eyes feel a little sticky, my mouth a little dry, but I’ve lost that sensation of being held underwater, like I can’t fight my way out of a fog.

When I open my eyes, I’m in my room at the mansion. I recognize it immediately—that I’m back in my bed, in my room, and I’msafe. I wasn’t dreaming—or I still am.

For a moment, my head swims, fear gripping me and clogging my throat. If the first dream would have been painful to wake up from, this one would be unbearable. To be safe again,reallysafe, away from the horrors that Ivan and his men wanted to inflict on me, and then to wake up and find that it isn’t real might break me.

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