would know. She would have felt something. He was still alive.
Strangled by her own thoughts, she rose from the bed and lost her balance immediately. She got up again, fighting through the burdensome fog which dragged her down and made her want to go back and sleep.
She forced herself to move. Staggering to the door on legs that felt as if she were wading through mud, blind. Trying her damnedest, she turned the knob of the door, which kept slipping from her grasp. Crying in frustration, she finally got a firm enough hold and turned, only to find the door had been locked.
Weakly, she banged on the door, her throat hoarse as she screamed for help.
Even she knew the dungeon was soundproof. She could scream until the day she died, and no one would hear her.
Weakened now, and even more angry at herself for not being able to overcome it, she slid to the floor in a pathetic heap.
Kade had shot Liam.
She hadn't hallucinated that. She had seen Kade pull the trigger and then as if she could had seen the bullet sail through the air in slow motion and hit Liam. She screamed painfully in horror as she saw in her mind's eye, Liam go down.
Then Kade grabbing her. A needle he administered piercing her skin. By the time he stealthily carried her out of the theater in the midst of all the chaos, she was already out.
She banged the floor as her foggy brain accentuated her helplessness.
She needed to get her strength back. Water. She rose, and holding on to the furniture, she went back to the bed. With a shaky hand she poured some from a pitcher left by the bedside. She also observed two tablets laying on the small table. She recognized them as painkillers she had herself taken when she had a headache. She needed to dredge through the thick, painful sludge in her head and downed both pills with the water.
Exhausted, she sat down on the bed. Tears rolled down her face.
Liam. Liam. Liam. Was he dead?
Oh God, help her.
What had she done? How had she fallen in love with two men only to have one of them shoot the other.
No. Liam wasn't dead. She sat up straighter. The pain tablets already starting to work in easing the load off her head and shoulders.
He wasn't dead.
She would have felt it. She would have known. He was still alive. And she had to get to him.
With more energy now, she tried the door again, then frantically searched for something she could use to break it open despite understanding that her attempts were futile.
Why would Kade do this?
The full scale of what had happened opened up on her. Her thoughts finally connected the events in all its cruel reality.
She howled with pain so choking, it took her breath away.
Liam could be dead.
And she was stuck in his invincible Black Room, cut off completely. There was no way she could get out.
With wrecking sobs which drained her soul, her gaze landed on the bench they had placed her on when they issued their most embarrassing punishment on her. Her attention then shifted to the bed on which they had taken possession of every part of her.
She grabbed the freshly laundered covers, bunched them up and flung them to the floor. She grappled with the sheets, banging her fists on the mattress. Wishing she could erase the night before when she had fully allowed them the use of her body. Where she had given herself to them when the truth now screamed at her punishingly that she was never meant to love two men with an equalness that seemed to be have been set since the beginning of her time.
It was all her fault. Liam could still be alive.
If only she had been stronger, and not revealed Kade’s affect on her. Every time she added on more evidence that he affected her, Liam closed the distance between them until Kade was touching her, kissing her, fucking her.
If only she hadn’t shown Liam her weakness for Kade, he wouldn’t have invited him into their lives, into her body. And maybe she could have prevented this from happening.
It was all her fault. All her fault for loving two men. She sagged in the middle of the bed. She had killed Liam.
Oh God.
Panting heavily, her eyes wild, she reached breaking point, but at that very moment the door opened and Kade stepped in.
All her rage triggered at the sight of him.