Chapter 42
LAUREL
Ryan’s fingers pressed down, tightening, cutting off my air supply. My eyes went wide with pain and my vision tunneled, the edges turning black.
Oh, fuck. I couldn’t breathe!
I latched my hands onto his wrists to try to get him to let go, and when that didn’t work, I clawed at him. It didn’t change anything—he didn’t seem to mind the way my fingernails scratched and left tracks of red, irritated skin in their wake. His expression was dark and murderous and determined.
As the fight began to slip away from me, a memory flashed in my mind.
It was of my legs kicking underneath me as a man with piercing eyes held me this same way, squeezing the life from my body.
I came out of the memory to stare up at Ryan, their faces blurring together.
He blinked, and his expression quickly filled with horror. He suddenly realized who I was and what he was doing, and the tension in his hands was gone. It let air pour back into my lungs, but he kept hold of me, preventing me from scrambling away.
“Get off of me!” I croaked.
“I’m sorry.” He shifted so he was no longer on top of my body but wouldn’t release me. “Jesus, Laurel. I’m so sorry. Are you all right?”
I writhed, trying to break free, but he was too strong. “Yes . . . but what the fuck?”
“I heard you come in,” his voice was full of shame, “and I thought you were trying to kill me.”
My heart was still pounding, so it took a long moment to process what he meant. He was always on alert, always worried for his life. The cameraman in the square showed he wasn’t paranoid without reason, either.
“I wasn’t trying to kill you,” I said quietly.
I shook in his arms, and he tightened his hold, pulling me against him like he wanted to offer comfort. “What were you trying to do?”
“I didn’t want to be alone.”
“Fuck. I’m sorry.” When I tried to get up again, he wouldn’t allow it. “Stay. Please.”
He sounded rattled, and I hoped it was his desperate tone that got me to stay, and not the voice in my head that commanded it.
His hand caressed up and down my arm, in a gesture that was either absentminded or meant to be soothing.
“You’re shaking,” he whispered.
“Because I had another memory just now, when you—”
“Attacked you?” he said, with disgust. “What was it?”
“I was being strangled in a parking garage. And my nightmare before I came in here,” I swallowed a breath, “I was running from a man with a gun in that same parking garage.”
His arms were gone. He sat up, alarm in every cell of his face. “Did you remember anything else? Like, why he was strangling you?”
I shook my head. How did he know what I was talking about?
“Good.” He relaxed ever so slightly. “There are some memories you’re better off not having. Tonight—or ever.” He leaned over and brushed his fingertips down the side of my face. “There’s a mountain’s worth of trauma pending in here. Shit, I’d keep it from you if I could.”
My head began to ache, but I was able to get it out. “Tell me.”
He didn’t even consider it. “No.”
Before I could argue, he settled back down beside me. He trapped me under his heavy arm, and it quickly became clear he wasn’t going to let me leave. His hold tightened so he could bury his face in my neck, his lips resting a breath away from my skin.
God, I’d been so wrong.
Climbing into this bed had been a terrible mistake, one I suffered through silently while he slowly drifted off. He wasn’t aware how tense I was as I lay beside him, held in the prison of his arm. This man didn’t make me feel safe.
I was sure being in his bed was the most dangerous place of all.
Ryan’s phone, charging on his nightstand, trilled with an alarm while it was still dark outside, stirring him awake.
I wasn’t sure if I had slept at all last night, but I pretended to be deeply asleep when he sat up and silenced his phone.
He slept in the nude. I’d realized it after he’d kicked down the sheet at some point during the night. His naked body headed for the shower, and a faint, dark voice whispered I should follow him.
Not a chance. Last night had been a disaster, and I wasn’t about to confront him naked. Stress only seemed to trigger the worst of the memories and—
Holy shit.
I bolted upright in the bed.
That was what I had been doing on the balcony. I hadn’t been trying to end my life . . . I'd been trying to get it back.
I flung the covers back and sprinted to my room, my hands pulling the robe tight around me and then reaching for the doorknob of the patio door.
It wasn’t as cold as the last time I’d been out here, but my breath was visible in the wind and my bare feet were freezing on the stone. It was safer this way, though. Shoes could cause me to slip when I was on the other side of the railing.
The sleeves of the robe were long, falling past my fingertips. That was why I’d thrown it off that morning. I hadn’t wanted to get tangled while climbing over the railing.
I flung it onto the chair, hoping for a sense of déjà vu, but it didn’t come. Every footstep to the edge of the balcony was shockingly cold, and the railing was even colder when I grasped it.
Not knowing was worse than what I was about to do, I told myself. Answers lay on the other side. I took a deep breath and leaned on my hands, my toes lifting off the stone—
“What are you doing?” Ryan demanded.
My feet dropped back onto the patio, and I spun to face him. He had only a towel on, held closed with a hand, his hair drenched.
“I . . . don’t know,” I lied.
“Come inside now.” He held out his hand, his expression demanding I take it. I grabbed my robe first before reluctantly complying. I was led back to his room like a child he needed to punish.
“I came out of the shower, and you were gone, and then I see you trying to climb over the railing.” He looked and sounded pissed. “Maybe you just stay off the balcony from now on. Understood?”
I nodded, guilty.
“Good, I’ll let Plavko know.”
Then he dropped his towel.
Oh, God. I spun away, shocked.
“We’ll be married in two days,” he reminded.
“I know that.” It came out broken.
“Then turn around.”
I couldn’t. He stepped up against me, dipping his head so his breath was hot on my neck. His tongue traced a line there, up to my ear, and I lurched forward, turning halfway to glance at him. There was that feeling of déjà vu I’d been looking for, but it was horrifying.
His face was dangerous and predatory, forcing me backward and away from him. Away from the pair of eyes I hadn’t seen before.
Once Ryan left for his business trip, there was a countdown clock in my head, ticking down to zero, toward something I found terrifying.
Our wedding? His return? Or both?
I dressed in a pair of black leggings and a black tank top and made my way to the dance studio where the box of ballet shoes had remained. I still couldn’t bring myself to try them out. Instead, I pushed PLAY on the sound system, and classical music filled the space.
I’d been foolish enough to think there was a chance that if I came down here all my memories of dance would come pouring back. But my head stayed as empty as the room.
I pulled the pointe shoes out of the box and found a small canister beneath. It was some sort of blister relief balm, and when I unscrewed the cap, a strong medicine scent invaded my nose.
That smell.
I knew it better than anything. Without thought, I slipped my foot into a shoe, crossed the ribbons, and wound them around an ankle, tucking the knot to the inside. I did the other, moving with confidence. I remember this.
The next two hours in the studio were a blur. Ryan had asked me not to push myself too hard, but it was impossible not to. I was a sweaty, exhilarated mess when the phone he’d left me rang.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I’m horribly out of shape, that’s what’s wrong,” I muttered. In the background, someone spoke German, and he responded in kind. “Where are you?”
“Berlin. We just landed.” He’d given me so few details about his business or this trip, it felt like he was being secretive on purpose.
“How many languages do you speak?”
“I don’t know, five? That’s counting French, which I try not to use because I sound awful.” I pictured him on the other end of the call wearing a displeased look at how out of breath I’d become. “You’re not overdoing it, are you?”
“Nope,” I lied.
“I’m calling because Dr. Vorbusch asked to move today’s appointment to one.”
I glanced at the phone’s screen and annoyance heated inside me. “That’s in thirty minutes.”
“Sorry, darling.” Since he was a thousand miles away, I let my disdain play out across my face. This term of endearment felt off. Wrong. Like it had been forced and not earned.
My hair was wet from my shower when Plavko ushered the doctor into the library and vanished right after. I wondered what he did all day without his boss around—but then Dr. Vorbusch asked me about my progress, and I was more focused on that than my bodyguard.
She was angry when I told her about the balcony and what I believed I had been doing on the wrong side of the railing days earlier.
“I want my memories back,” I said, trying to defend myself.
“And in that process, you lost them all. Do you understand you caused your setback?”
Shit, she was right. My gaze dropped to my lap in shame.
“If you continue to push,” her tone was uncharacteristically harsh and cold, “it will happen again, and all of this work I’ve done will have been wasted.”
All the work she’d done?
I frowned. “I need to know who I am.”
Blackness closed around me. My stomach pitched and rolled, and every inch of my body was cold.
A sound cracked in the darkness. What was that? A gunshot?
I fell out of my pirouette, my gaze scanning the audience in front of me as a woman screamed. The memory rushed along like it was playing at double-speed. I was on the floor, a dying man’s eyes locked onto mine and his blood staining my costume.
I came out of the memory as abruptly as I’d plunged into it, and the sensation had me doubled-over on the couch, the book-lined shelves of the library all around me.
“That is just the beginning,” Dr. Vorbusch snarled. “Do you want to go to the parking garage next?”
“No,” I gasped. I was still trying to recover from seeing the man’s lifeless body, the pained expression fixed on his face. I couldn’t handle anything else right now.
What had she done to me?
She said it with absolute command. “Mr. Juric and I both want you to leave it alone.”
“Who?” I asked, instantly wishing I could take it back. I stood too quickly from my seat and my vision faded, my legs woozy. “I think you should leave.”
When I blinked, the doctor was no longer in her chair. She stood in the doorway, and I lay across the couch, my head heavy and aching. The shadows cast by the window were long, signifying it was late afternoon.
“What the hell just happened?” I demanded.
She simply smiled.
My blood ran cold and my heart raced with panic, and I reached for the only safety I had. “Plavko!”
“There’s no need for that,” Dr. Vorbusch said.
He appeared out of thin air, as if he’d been just outside the door the whole time.
“Get her out of here,” I ordered. “I don’t want to see her again.”
He grabbed her roughly by the elbow, but she shook off his hold as if to say, I’ll go. But not before she hurled her final statement at me. “Good luck, Laurel. You’re going to need it.”
The doctor’s threat affected me long after I’d had her thrown out. I sat on the couch, my throbbing head in my hands, wondering what I was going to do. Ryan had hired this woman. Whatever she’d done to me, it was probably on his orders.
“She is gone.”
I yelped with surprise at Plavko’s deep voice. I hadn’t heard his return, and once again, I was struck by how such a tall, broad man could move with lethal silence.
“Thank you,” I replied.
He lingered in the doorway, unsure if he were welcome to come in. I nodded, and when he stepped inside, I got my first real look at him.
His massive height was overwhelming, but his face .
. . it wasn’t as intimidating as I remembered.
His eyes weren’t as furious in the fading afternoon light.
It was stunning to realize he was actually quite handsome, and I had the weird feeling that he’d spent much of his life trying to keep that a secret.
Ryan had said he paid Plavko to blend in, but this man today? He was striking.
My silent bodyguard’s expression changed like he wanted to say something but didn’t know if he should.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I did not like that doctor. You were right to send her away.”
My pulse quickened. “Why didn’t you like her?”
“She made me . . . what is word? Not easy.”
“Uncomfortable?”
He nodded. “Yes, this is it.”
The air in the room went thin. Dr. Vorbusch made a man like Plavko uncomfortable? Well, that couldn’t be good. In fact, it filled me with all-out dread.