You didn’t fail her.
It wasn’t sticking, not with the nauseating dread of her staying unconscious in the backseat on the way back home.
22
KALINA
Araw streak of pain lined my throat. Any time I drew a deeper breath, a searing intensity tightened in my chest. Sharp stabs forced me to cough. And cough.
Until I was gasping and heaving, wheezing and praying the effort of coughing so violently wouldn’t make me vomit. Cramps lined my stomach as I turned on the flat surface.
The cacophony of aches and pains worked together, pushing me further out of this hazy sleepiness.
All at once, I was forced awake.
Instead of lying unconscious and ravaged by the nightmares of the fire, of worrying about Misha and agonizing over whether Alexsei was alive or not, I lived through the cognizant flashbacks of it all.
The flames. The heat. The distress from Misha’s small voice. All the dread and anxiety as I feared we wouldn’t make it out alive. It all rushed through my mind with sickening clarity. Then the horror of that man.
He wanted me alive.
He’d come there to take me alive.
No!
I jerked upright, opening my eyes. The urgent need to see where I was triggered my trauma all over again. How many times I’d hated to be blindfolded, robbed of the right to witness where Erik and Yusef wanted to take me.
It wasn’t a blindfold that covered my eyes now. It was only grit and grime, an irritable sheen of crusty gunk from the smoke.
Blinking once, twice, then rubbing my eyes with my hands, I smeared away the dirty filter that made it seem like nothing was clear.
What happened?
Where am I?
Did they get me?
Am I captive again?
My husband?
The Italians. Erik Yusef.
Who has me now?
Panic pooled in my stomach, and I tried my hardest not to sink into it, to let it consume me and be the switch that would make that shell blanket me. That numbness I’d counted on before, that instinct to shut down while the hell around me took over again.
“Easy.”
I frowned, blinking to understand whose stern voice cut through like that. Not a man, but someone with authority.
But being told to relax almost always caused the opposite. I hurried to sit up more, coughing and rubbing my eyes as I raced to clear my mind.
A dim light was turned on, and I shied away from it at first. A dull ache thundered in my head, and I hated the man who’d struck me with that gun.
He wanted me alive, but beaten.
“Sit,” the woman ordered.
