ABSOLUTE INSANITY: A forbidden bond-Chapter 209: Play him back

Chapter 209

KATYA POV

I stood there for a very long time after the sound of his footsteps faded into the shadows of the basement.

My back was still pressed against the cold steel of the cell door, and my lips... my lips still felt the ghost of his pressure.

I touched my mouth with trembling fingers, half-expecting to find blood there. Instead, I just felt the frantic, uneven rhythm of my own pulse in my fingertips.

Don’t mistake my restraint for weakness.

His words echoed in the silence, louder than the sound of my own heartbeat. I waited for the wave of nausea to hit me.

Waited for the skin-crawling disgust that should come when a man who holds you captive, a man who just killed his own blood, forces himself onto you.

But the disgust didn’t come, there was just this hollow, ringing shock. And deeper than that—something I was terrified to name—was a spark of something that wasn’t anger.

My heart wasn’t racing in protest; it was racing in confusion. What is wrong with you? I screamed at myself internally.

I looked at the keypad next to the door. I wouldn’t be able to get in. I mean he literally caught me trying to sneak into the rooms but he left me.

He knew I would never be able to get into this rooms without a key card. I turned, sighing at my unfortunate life.

Every shadow looked like him. Every flicker of the security cameras felt like his eyes on my skin.

He didn’t kill me. He had a gun in his hand, a bullet wound in his shoulder that I had caused by existing, and a reason to end me, yet he had chosen to do that to me instead.

Why?

The why felt more dangerous than the gun. If he hated me, I knew how to survive. If he wanted to kill me, I knew how to fight.

But this... this curiosity he mentioned... it was a trap I didn’t know how to escape. Was this how it felt in those movies I watched?

No, it doesn’t. This was dangerous, this was stupid and this was definitely going to get me killed.

I stepped into the elevator and watched the basement disappear as the doors slid shut. I was going back to the room he gave me.

The elevator doors opened with a soft chime that felt like a scream in the oppressive silence of the upper floor.

I stepped out, my legs feeling like they were made of lead, my bare feet padding softly against the expensive carpet.

I reached the door to my room—the "Donna’s Room"—and paused, my hand hovering over the handle.

I didn’t open it. I just stood there, staring at the dark wood, my mind a chaotic whirlpool of "what ifs" and "whys."

My lips still felt warm. It was a physical contradiction to the freezing cold of the basement.

I lifted my arm and pinched the sensitive skin on my forearm, hard. I twisted until it burned, my nails digging deep enough to leave crescent-moon marks.

"Wake up," I whispered to the empty hallway. "Wake up, Katya. This is a nightmare. You’re still in the basement. You’re hallucinating."

But the pain was sharp and real. The red mark on my arm didn’t fade. This wasn’t a dream. This was my life.

Maybe this was Adelasia’s doing. Maybe her spirit was already haunting these halls, weaving some dark silk around my brain to make me go mad.

It was a stupid, superstitious thought, but it felt more logical than the alternative. The alternative was a question that flickered in my mind for a split second, unbidden and dangerous.

Does he... like me? The thought was so absurd I almost laughed.

"Don’t be a fool," I hissed. I remembered the weight of his gun. I remembered the cold, dead look in his eyes when he told me I had no use.

I pushed the door open and slipped inside, leaning my weight against it until it clicked shut. I didn’t turn on the lights. I didn’t want to see myself in the mirror. I didn’t want to see how flushed my cheeks were.

I walked to the bed and collapsed onto it. He told me to lock the door.

I looked at the lock. It was a joke. No lock in this house kept Romeo Salvatore out.

If he wanted to come back, he would. If he wanted to finish what he started in the basement, he would.

I curled into a ball, pulling the heavy duvet over my head, trying to disappear. But all I could see behind my eyelids was the way his gray eyes had looked right before his lips touched mine.

"He’s a monster," I whispered into the dark, my voice shaking. "He’s just a monster. This was a new way to punish me." He had always come up with new things, always creative from the moment he injected me that paralyzing syringe.

I looked at the clock, it was seven am now. Time must have moved fast when I was in that basement, smacking lips with my captor.

I remembered how he had treated me like a pawn from the very beginning. A piece of property. Men like Romeo Salvatore didn’t "like" people.

They owned them. They used them. He didn’t save me because he cared. My mind replaying his words on a loop.

No loyalty. No obedience. No use.

"Then why am I still here?" I whispered to the empty air. My voice was a ghostly rasp, barely recognizable.

If I were truly useless, Romeo would have left me in the hallway for Adelasia to finish. He wouldn’t have stepped into the line of fire.

He wouldn’t have wasted a single drop of his blood on an enemy. And he certainly wouldn’t have touched me in the basement with a hand that was trembling from a gunshot wound.

It had to be a game. A new, psychological layer of the torture he started the day he brought me here.

He wasn’t just breaking my body anymore; he was aiming for my mind. He wanted to see me unravel, to see me confused, to see if he could make me forget he was the one who put the collar around my neck in the first place.

But then, a thought surfaced through the fog of my panic. It was cold, sharp, and utterly desperate.

If he thinks he’s playing me... maybe I should play him back. I sat up slowly, the duvet falling to my waist.

I looked at my hands, I couldn’t get back into that basement without that key card and not by sneaking again, the cameras were recording, and Romeo was always one step ahead.

If I got close to him, I was stepping into the lion’s den without a cage. I’d have to touch him, right. Just like that movie? No.

I shivered, my skin crawling at the mere thought. I couldn’t afford to be a victim anymore. I couldn’t afford to be "useless."

If I could get him to trust me—or at least, to be distracted by me—I could find where he kept the key card and save Aria.

"I can do this," I lied to myself.

††

Thank y’all for the power stone for my new book, I saw we reach 20 stones so I will give another bonus Chapter before today ends.

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5 honest reviews to my new book = 1 bonus Chapter to this book!