Ghost (Boston Underworld #3) - A. Zavarelli Page 0,1

organizing my thoughts. I’m at war again. In my mind. Looking for demons in everyone the way that I always do. I told myself that I wasn’t going to do this anymore. I told myself that I was going to forget the past.

“You trust me, don’t you?” Dmitri asks.

I look up at him and give him a nervous smile. Half of me is screaming no while the other half nods on autopilot.

“Good,” he says. “Because you know I’d never do anything to hurt you, Talia. I’d never put you in danger. You have nothing to worry about when you are with me.”

I allow his reassurances to calm me as the car pulls to a stop. But one look outside the window, and all of his words mean nothing.

There isn’t time to protest or question him. When I turn back, there’s a flash of movement in which the only thing I see is his fist. Flying at my face. And then blackness.

Only blackness.

When I wake again, I am naked. And my senses are distorted. I’m dizzy and confused by the overwhelming sense of dread coursing through my body. There is vomit lying next to my face, which causes me to wretch. But nothing comes up. And I realize, it is mine.

And then I realize something else. When I feel movement on top of me. Inside of me.

There is a man’s face above me. One I do not recognize.

I try to move. But my body isn’t cooperating. It’s sluggish and heavy. Something is wrong with me, but I don’t know what it is.

There is a low murmur. And some movement. Hands on me, shifting me around. There is shock and pain at another intrusion. From behind.

There are two of them now. Two strangers inside of me.

And then I hear Dmitri’s voice. My confusion and panic halts for a split second in which I believe that he’s going to fix this. That he’s going to make it right.

But when he enters my blurred vision, distorted from my swollen face, I remember the car. His fist. The place he took me to.

He’s in front of me now. Expressionless as he unzips his pants. It isn’t the same man that I knew. The same man that I’ve spent the last month with. He rubs himself on my face, and I try to pull away when he seizes my hair and slaps me in the same spot he hit me before.

The shock of pain causes my mouth to fall open, and he shoves inside, gagging me.

“You better get used to it, kitten,” he tells me. “The pain is your new best friend. This feeling is what you will know now. The only thing you will know. It is better to accept it than fight it.”

I can’t move. I can’t fight back. They’ve drugged me with something, I realize, as Dmitri watches the tears spill down my cheeks. He knows my resistance is futile as well. And he doesn’t care.

“Now give me one more gift,” he says as he uses my mouth. “For old times’ sake.”

He is rough with me. Rougher than he’s ever been. And when he finishes, he does it on my face, smearing the liquid around with his palm before he spits on me and rubs that in too.

And then he’s kneeling in front of me. Patting me on the cheek.

“It’s just business,” he tells me. “That’s all, kitten. Don’t make it any harder on yourself.”

He disappears from the room, and from my life, as another man takes his place. It hurts for a long time. But the lines are blurred and I can’t be sure if it’s the physical or emotional. It never seems to end.

I don’t know how many there are. I don’t know anything but the pain.

And when I close my eyes, I try to find a way to transcend it. Thinking that it will help. But the only thing I can see is Mack’s face. My best friend and my sister and the only person on this earth who loves me.

She doesn’t know where I am. Because I was too angry to tell her the truth.

There’s a well-known saying about everything becoming perfectly clear in hindsight.

In hindsight, I never realized exactly how pivotal that moment was. My best friend and I, sitting in a café together, eating lunch. About to have one of our many arguments. It was the last time I saw her.

People always say they wish they’d known what was about to happen before disaster strikes. I would