Twisted Addiction (Doomed Vows #2)

by O.S. Feathers

“You think this is hate?”

“Hate doesn’t look like this. Hate doesn’t hurt like this.”

“Punishment,” he said. “For both of us.”

“I tried to forgive you,” he said, his voice splintering. “I tried to pretend you weren’t the reminder of everything I lost. But every time you

breathe next to me, every time you look at me like I’m still the boy you knew—” He broke off, his hand tightening at my jaw. “It feels like betrayal.”

“You think it’s betrayal to still love you?” I demanded, the words trembling but fierce. “You punish me for what you can’t forgive yourself for. You want to bury me in your pain because you can’t crawl out of it alone.”

“You’re not punishing me, Dmitri. You’re punishing yourself. And if this—” I gestured weakly between us, to the invisible chain binding us together “—if this is what’s left of love for you, then maybe I’d rather be hated.”

“You said I’m yours,” I whispered. “Then be a man and choose what that means. Possession or love. Control or forgiveness. You can’t keep breaking me to prove you still feel.”

“When I’m done with you, Penelope,” he growled against my lips, his voice dripping with obsession, “you’ll never speak of leaving again.”

“You think you can erase me with ink on paper? You’ll remember who you belong to—here, now, in every life after this one.”

“Trust? You’ve built this prison around me, and I won’t stay just because you claim it’s yours. If someone can help me crawl out of this cage you built, I’ll take it.”

He’d played me—used the heat, the want, the illusion of tenderness—to remind me that he could take what he wanted, when he wanted, and I’d always yield.

“Don’t pretend this is about love,” I hissed, my breath ragged. “You want control, not me. You’d rather play God than be a husband.”

“If it kills me, so be it.”

“You think I’ll let you die?” he asked, his voice dropping to a near whisper. “I’d set the world on fire before I buried you, Penelope. You’ll live. Even if it means killing what’s inside you.”

“You won’t shoot me,” he repeated, his voice low—almost reverent. “Because even now, even hating me, you still want to save me.”

“I don’t fear death, Milaya,” he whispered. “But I do fear you leaving me again. So if I have to be the monster that keeps you breathing, then so be it.”

He stumbled back, more surprised than hurt, and then steadied as if the wound were an inconvenient detail.

“You will not make this choice for me,”

“Not now. Not ever. This is my body. My child. My decision.”

“Start what?”

“We stage the abortion,”

“Make Dmitri believe it’s done. Paperwork, a doctor’s signature, falsified tests — enough to qui...

“He’ll back off—temporarily. It’s not the heir he’s terrified of losing so much as you. After his mother died, he learned what it is to lose something that mattered to him. He’s brutal, but he’s also cowardly about certain losses. Make him think the pregnancy is gone and he’ll retreat into control instead of pursuit. It gives you space to disappear.”

“I ended up living right next to you. Right next to the one place I couldn’t avoid. I saw you, Penelope. I wanted... no, I needed... a reason to fight

against all of them. Against everything that told me I didn’t matter. And I found it in you.”

“You were light in a life that had known only darkness. And it killed me, how bright you were. How ea...

“We were ghosts back then. Sneaking through nights that weren’t meant for us — your parents asleep, my aunt watching every move I made. The pier by the East River, the rusted fire escape behind the bookstore, that filthy bar on 39th where the floor stuck to our shoes and no one gave a damn who we were. You’d laugh, and I’d forget what...

“I loved you. Not the way stories teach men to love — but the only way I knew how. Hungry. Desperate. Possessive. I was nineteen, and you were the only thing in the world that didn’t feel like a punishment. And maybe that’s why I broke everything that mattered trying to keep you.”

“So no, I didn’t forget how I felt,”

“I don’t have your memory gaps, Penelope. But you...” His jaw flexed, his fists curling at his sides. “One night, I climbed through your window like I always did—quiet, careful, just to see you—and there you were. Half-naked. With another guy’s hands on you.”

“I didn’t think my heart could break any further, but it did. Every piece of me shattered.” “You cheated on me, Penelope.”

“I learned later about your dissociative amnesia,” he went on, his jaw tightening as if the words themselves hurt, “that maybe you didn’t even remember what you did. But memory loss doesn’t erase the sight of it. I saw you, wrapped around him. In your bra and panties.”

So how can you hate her when you know she has this!

“All the years of torment under those people who raised me, all the fists and filth and silence—I survived them. But you—”

“You were supposed to be my peace. My reason to believe in something good. And you destro...

“Dmitri, please... I swear, I would never. Not consciously. I loved you. I still—”

“Don’t say that word. You don’t get to weaponize it anymore.”

“You did worse things to me,...

“Things I can’t even name without feeling sick.” His mouth twisted, a shadow of a bitter smile ghosting his lips. “But you forget what you did. Maybe that’s ...

But she underestimated the one thing she could never drug out of me—my will to reach Penelope.

she waited—my only light, my reason for breathing.

The drugs still clawed at my system—making my vision tilt, my legs betray me—but I kept moving. I had to. I needed to see her. To remind myself that something in this world still felt like mercy.

I had to see her. To know she hadn’t forgotten me. That she hadn’t turned away.

She was there—Penelope. My Penelope. The girl who had once trembled in my arms under this very window, who had whispered that she loved me more than her own breath.

She’d chosen him. She’d betrayed me.

We’d never spoken of sex, our love pure, built on dreams of a future together, whispered promises of marriage and children under that oak tree.

We had promised each other a thousand small things beneath that oak tree; we had sworn we were each other’s only.

“Maybe not today, Penelope,” I whispered, each syllable a blade, “but someday, you’ll pay for shattering my heart.”

“Penelope...” I gasped, the name tearing from me like a curse. “You betrayed me. You betrayed my love... my everything.”

I could see her again—curled in another man’s arms, the rain beating against the window behind her. She had promised me forever. I could still hear her laugh under the oak tree, the way she’d traced my palm and said she wanted to grow old with me.