CHAPTER 209
KATYA POV
I stood there for a very long time after the sound of his footsteps faded into the shadows of the basement.
My back was still pressed against the cold steel of the cell door, and my lips... my lips still felt the ghost of his pressure.
I touched my mouth with trembling fingers, half-expecting to find blood there. Instead, I just felt the frantic, uneven rhythm of my own pulse in my fingertips.
Don't mistake my restraint for weakness.
His words echoed in the silence, louder than the sound of my own heartbeat. I waited for the wave of nausea to hit me.
Waited for the skin-crawling disgust that should come when a man who holds you captive, a man who just killed his own blood, forces himself onto you.
But the disgust didn't come, there was just this hollow, ringing shock. And deeper than that—something I was terrified to name—was a spark of something that wasn't anger.
