Chapter 13: Chapter 13

Welcome home, Annika…

Drazen’s face is dark and clouded with all the viciousness he’s rumored to be capable of when he says it.

“This isn’t my home.”

“But it was once,” he hisses through clenched teeth.

My mouth purses.

“What the fuck gives you the right to drug and kidnap me?!”

“Drugging has such a vile connotation. I sedated you.”

“I fail to see the difference,” I hiss. “You can’t just sedate people.”

“Would you have come willingly if I’d asked?”

“What do you think?” I snap.

He lifts a shoulder. “You see? You left me no choice.”

I shiver as his eyes sweep over me.

…I refuse to acknowledge the slight flutter in my core, or the way my nipples tighten under my dress.

It’s not just that the man is outrageously good-looking, objectively speaking. It’s the way he’s looking at me, after the raw anger and lethal hatred dissipates. It’s downright predatory.

“People are going to be looking for me.”

He shrugs. “They won’t find you. Not here, at least.”

I shiver.

“In any case, you’re mistaken. No one is looking for you. Because you’re not missing, Taylor,” he growls. “You’re on a much-needed vacation.”

He holds up a familiar-looking phone: my phone.

I shudder. “What’d you do, retina-scan me when I was unconscious and fake-text my friends and coworkers?”

“Precisely.”

My mouth tightens. “What the fuck is this?” I blurt.

His lips curl dangerously. “What do you think it is?”

“I think I’ve seen this movie,” I spit back venomously. “What, I’ve got three hundred and sixty-five days to fall in love with you?”

Drazen smirks. “Not exactly,” he growls.

Suddenly, without any warning, he surges into me, erasing the distance between us as my heart claws up into my mouth. I whimper as his hand wraps tight around my throat, squeezing, making my eyes bulge in terror.

“It’s more like you have three seconds to tell me how you did it,” he snarls like a demon, sending my pulse spiking.

“D-d-id w-what?!” I cry.

“The door, Annika,” he chokes through clenched teeth, his face a mask of fury. I shudder as his hand tightens around my throat again, squeezing harder. “How did you unlock the fucking door.”

“I—I have no idea what you’re talking about!”

“ENOUGH!” he roars in my face.

My legs turn to jelly. Pure terror swallows me whole.

“Enough of the fucking lies!” he snarls. “Tell me how you betrayed me thirty fucking days after our wedding.”

It jolts through me like an electrical current. My vision falters and flickers. A roaring, whining, alarm explodes in my ears as gravity gives way.

I’m watching a scene I don’t remember, featuring strangers’ faces that I remember all too well.

A wedding in a church.

Flowers that sting my eyes.

The rough bite under my bare knees.

My voice croaking “I do”.

Then fire, and screaming, and death.

Suddenly, I’m falling. For real, as the dream evaporates to mist and my legs give out. I topple backward, my heel catching on a divot in the stone floor of the patio. The small of my back hits the edge of balcony and I feel the tug of gravity as my body begins to slow-motion tilt over the edge to the rocks below.

An arm jerks out, strong, tattooed fingers wrapping tightly around my throat.

The world goes still as Drazen and I freeze in that position: me, half-fallen over the balcony, with the roaring waves crashing into the jagged rocks below; and Drazen, standing firmly on the balcony, one hand around my throat, keeping me from falling.

He doesn’t pull me back up.

We stay like that for so many frozen seconds that I can’t count. My pulse thuds hard in my ears, the sensation heightened by the hand squeezing my jugular. My skin crawls and tingles.

“Tell me,” Drazen hisses quietly, his head tilted to the side. “You owe me that much after fifteen years of hell.”

This is insane. He’s insane. I haven’t the slightest fucking idea what⁠—

“Tell me how you knew the code to unlock that door, Annika.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!!” I choke out through my clenched throat, my eyes round and terrified. “I’ve never been here before!! My name isn’t ANNI⁠—”

I scream as his hand lets go. Instantly, it tightens again, grabbing a handful of the front of my dress. The fabric rips a little. Pure adrenaline explodes through my system as I flail and claw to grab hold of his arm.

“Please!” I beg, gasping for air. “Please don’t drop me.”

Another handful of frozen, terrifying seconds tick by. My dress tears a little more.

Suddenly, he yanks hard, ripping the dress half off me as I hurtle forward past him onto the ground, landing sprawled at his feet. I wince at the bite of stone on my bare knees and toes.

“Allow me to refresh your frail memory⁠—”

“Fifteen years ago,” I shriek, turning to lift my face to his, “I was in a fucking car crash!”

“Yes, you were,” he spits venomously. He stabs a vicious finger past me. “Half a fucking mile that way, trying to escape after betraying me and my family!!”

My face pales and drops. My heart twists as something horrible and stabbing cuts into my brain: a flicker of…something. Then it’s gone.

“I grew up in Washington, DC,” I plead. “I⁠—”

“Lies—”

“I DON’T HAVE ANY MEMORY OF BEFORE I WAS EIGHTEEN!!” I scream at him in a blind panic. “Nothing!! Zero!! I have retrograde amnesia!!”

“How very. Fucking. Convenient,” he snaps.

“Trust me,” I spit back through clenched teeth. “It’s not. But I know one thing,” I sneer up at him. “You and I were never married. I doubt even amnesia could erase a horror like that.”

“How very lucky for you that it did,” he replies coldly. “Not everyone has that luxury.”

“Let me be as fucking clear as I possibly can, you fucking psychopath!” I yell through clenched teeth. “I DO NOT REMEMBER MY FUCKING LIFE! But I know one thing for certain: I was never your wife,” I spit. “Nev⁠—”

I whimper, choking as his hand wraps tight around my throat and yanks me hard into his chest and I look up into his brutal, viciously handsome face, twisted in a black, dark rage.

“Don’t. Fucking. Move.”

I shudder as he releases me and storms into the enormous mansion. I stand, turning and hugging myself, shaking as I stare out over the water.

I can still see the little speck of that rowboat, moored in the water…

Heavy footsteps have me whirling as he marches back onto the patio. “How about now,” he snarls, shoving something into my hands. “Ringing any wedding bells?”

An icy feeling crawls up my spine as I stare down at the picture frame in my hands, the corner dented and the glass spiderwebbed, like someone’s thrown it in a rage. It’s tinged with black marks, like it survived a fire.

It’s not the state of the frame that sends a shiver through my very soul.

It’s the photograph in it.

Of me.

A very young, teenaged me, wearing a white wedding dress, standing morosely next to a stern, much younger Drazen in a black suit.

We both look like we’re at a funeral.

“I…”

I blink rapidly, my mouth opening and closing.

“This is faked.”

I mean, it’s me, but also not. I’ve never dyed my hair chestnut brown.

At least…not that I remember…

He snorts coldly. “How long until this gets old, even for you.”

I raise my eyes to his, frowning. “What?”

“The bullshit, Annika,” he snarls. “Or is it that you’ve just spent so long pretending to be Taylor Crown that you’re having trouble dropping the lies and remembering your treacherous, backstabbing self?”

Furious, I wind my hand back and throw the picture as hard as I can at his head. Drazen easily dodges it, and totally ignores the violent smash of glass as it splinters into shards against the wall behind him.

“No,” I choke, shaking my head violently. “I was never your wife⁠—”

“You were, little Annika,” he hisses. “In fact, technically speaking, you still are.”

My heart seizes.

“And you’ll continue to be.” He smiles cruelly. “Before you protest, know that being my wife going forward is the only thing keeping you alive.”

A tremor of fear ripples through me.

“What did I do?” I whisper. “I mean, what do you think I did? Why do you hate⁠—”

“You unlocked a key-coded back door and allowed your father’s men into my home on this very island. It was on the other side, closer to the main bridge.”

Drazen turns to stare out over the water.

“Those vermin slaughtered my entire family: father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, aunt, two cousins, my sister, her husband. My newborn nephew.”

Something horrifying rips through me. My face falls in agony, my hand flying to my mouth.

“Drazen—”

“They held me down and made me watch. Then they torched the house and left me there to die in a pool of my family’s blood.”

Oh my God…

It feels like someone’s just stabbed a knife through my heart. Like I’m breaking in two as I stare at him with a haunted, horrified expression.

“You might not remember the past,” he says, still looking out to sea. “But I can’t forget it. Nor will I ever.”

Without another word, he storms away.