Ghost (Boston Underworld #3) - A. Zavarelli Page 0,16

me, too.

Soon…

“No baths,” Magda destroys my reality with two simple words.

She urges me towards the shower and turns it on for me. And then I watch her remove the razors and anything else I might hurt myself with.

“Once you have washed, I will tend to your wounds,” Magda states.

And with that, she takes a seat in the chair across the bathroom where she can reach me quickly if she needs to. It only confirms that thought echoing through my head.

This man is never going to let me go.

6

Talia

I take my time in the shower, letting my sore muscles soak up the warmth. I cannot remember the last time I felt hot water on my skin. When Karolina bathed me, she spared me no luxuries.

There are a lot of toiletries in this shower. The choices overwhelm me, and pressure builds behind my eyes. The numbness is slipping away from me, and pain is taking a greedy hold of my body and mind. I don’t want this. I don’t want any of this.

I just want to be free. Like them. Like my family.

But he won’t let me.

I reach for a bottle without checking the label and use it on every part of my body. I keep squirting the flowery scented gel into my hands and washing, over and over, but I never get clean. When I blink my eyes open, my skin is raw and I’m shivering.

“That’ll do,” Magda tells me, appearing outside the door with a towel. “You’ve scrubbed too hard.”

When I step outside, my knees nearly buckle. Magda grabs me by the arm and helps me to the chair across the room. She wraps the fluffy towel around me, but it doesn’t help. I’m still shivering. It’s getting worse.

“Miss Talia, are you alright?”

“I n-n-need a pill.” My teeth clack together.

She shakes her head and frowns. “No pills. It will pass.”

“It won’t,” I argue.

She ignores me and gathers a few items from the cabinet before she makes her way back to me. She starts to dab at my wounds. Her touch is gentle, but it feels like fire on my skin. I cry out everywhere she touches, and the pain is unlike anything I’ve ever felt before.

“It hurts,” I tell her. “It hurts so much.”

I know something’s wrong when I blurt those words. My pain tolerance is high. Usually, I can dissociate. Float away to somewhere else. But not now. My heart is racing. I’m sweating. And the room is spinning.

“Give me something,” I beg. “Anything.”

Magda presses her hand to my forehead and grimaces. “You’re burning up.”

She opens a bottle of Tylenol and hands me two. Instinctively, I know they aren’t what I need. But I take them anyway and wash them down with the glass of water that she hands me. And then I promptly heave myself over the toilet and vomit them back up a moment later.

This is when Alexei reappears, frowning at the scene before him. I’m sprawled out on the tile floor, naked and shivering as my brain spews words out of my mouth.

“Just let me die!” I scream. “Give me something. Anything. End it. Please.”

I’m crying. For the first time in too long to remember. There’s no numbness, no comfort for me. I feel everything now. Even the weight of his concerned gaze as I writhe on the floor. I don’t want his concern. I want his mercy.

He takes four quick steps and kneels down to scoop me up into his arms. He clips out something in Russian to Magda before she scurries out of the room to do his bidding.

“You are going through withdrawal,” he tells me. “It will pass.”

I shake my head and sob into his chest. “I can’t. I can’t do it. Please…”

“You can and you will.”

His voice leaves little question. He’s sending me straight to hell.

And then we’re moving. He carries me into the other room and places me into the bed which Magda has prepared just now. The covers are folded down to the end, and he gingerly places only the sheet over my skin. It still feels like knives, so I kick it off, and he doesn’t argue.

“The doctor will be here soon,” he tells me. “It won’t last forever, Solnyshko.”

“I hate you!” I scream in a demonic voice.

He flinches, and it surprises me. There is something on his face that looks familiar. Pain. It hurts him to look at me this way. It hurts him to hear those words. The fucked up part of my brain latches onto that