Page 170 of Maddening Fixation

Not Raven.

Please...

Not Raven.

My mind drifted backward without permission.

Ten years earlier.

It was my fifteenth birthday, back when my mother still had enough strength to smile without pain hiding behind it.

She had walked into my bedroom carrying a tiny bundle wrapped in a soft cream blanket.

When she peeled it back, two golden eyes blinked sleepily up at me.

The tiniest black kitten I’d ever seen.

“Happy birthday, my strong girl,” she’d whispered, placing the kitten carefully into my arms.

“I thought everyone deserved someone who loves them without conditions.”

I remembered laughing through happy tears as the little kitten immediately climbed onto my shoulder, her tiny claws catching lightly in my shirt.

Mom had smiled.

“She’ll be your shadow.”

She was right.

Raven followed me everywhere.

She curled up beside me while I spent endless evenings buried in books and Bratva financial ledgers.

She greeted me at the front door every single time I came home, no matter how late the hour.

She chased butterflies across the garden while I escaped into novels beneath the old oak tree.

Whenever panic gripped me after particularly brutal family meetings, Raven somehow always knew.

She would climb onto my lap, knead gently against my chest, and purr until my breathing steadied again.

On nights when Father disappeared for days without explanation...

When the house felt far too large and unbearably empty...

She curled against my side and refused to leave until morning.

She wasn’t just a pet.

She had been my comfort.

My safest place.

A tiny piece of innocence that somehow survived inside a family built on violence.

Now...

She was gone.