Chapter 27 #2
She fled back down the corridor like something was chasing her.
I stood before that cold iron door, taking a deep breath. My palms were slick with nervous sweat. I raised my hand and pushed hard.
The hinges shrieked. Inside, the storage room was vast, packed with sheet-covered shelves and massive camphor chests. The air reeked of mold and dust. Darkness everywhere except for one dim bulb hanging from the ceiling.
"Roman?"
I stepped over the threshold, calling out tentatively. My voice echoed through the cavernous space. No response.
Just as unease crept over me at the emptiness—
A deafening crash exploded behind me. That heavy iron door had been slammed shut from outside.
I spun around, whole body jolting.
Two crisp, merciless sounds of metal locks engaging came from beyond the door. It had been bolted from the outside.
"Who's out there? Open the door!" Panic seized me instantly. I threw myself at the iron door, bandaged hands pounding the cold metal. "Roman! Is that you? Open this door!"
No response. Only deathly silence.
Then the worst happened.
A soft click, and the single dim bulb overhead died without warning.
Like someone had severed the power with one brutal cut. Thick, suffocating darkness crashed over me like an avalanche, swallowing me whole.
"No..."
Pure terror coiled up my spine like a frozen snake, wrapping tight around my throat.
"Open the door! Please, please open the door!"
I screamed, hands clawing frantically at the smooth iron. The hastily wrapped wounds tore open instantly, gauze soaking red with blood. My nails scraped against metal with a teeth-grinding screech. Several nails bent back and snapped. The searing pain couldn't touch the fear.
"Roman... Roman, please help me..."
I slid down the door onto the cold, damp floor, hands clutching my own throat. The air seemed to be sucked from my lungs by some invisible pump. I gasped desperately but only felt the suffocation tighten.
My heart slammed against my ribs. Cold sweat drenched my clothes.
Why? He said he wanted to settle things. Why torture me like this—the cruelest way, targeting my worst fear? Was this because I pushed Vera? Did he want me to experience despair here, slowly suffocate to death in the dark?
Just as oxygen deprivation and panic dragged my consciousness toward collapse, as I felt the whole world crumbling—
A faint light pierced the darkness.
My phone in my pocket. The screen glowed ghostly blue in the pitch-black basement, vibrating urgently.
That sliver of light was a life raft to a drowning woman. I scrambled across the floor like a madwoman, hands and feet scrabbling, until my bloody, filthy fingers closed around the phone.
The screen flashed a name that stopped my heart: Roman.
It was him! He hadn't abandoned me! Maybe he just wanted to scare me. He was calling now. He must be right outside. Any second he'd kick down this door like he did during that blackout and save me.
I answered without hesitation, pressing the phone to my ear, crying out with desperate hope.
"Roman! Roman, help me! I'm in the basement... It's so dark, please just open the door. I'm sorry, I'll give up everything, just let me out, please..."
But the voice that came through wasn't that low, rough one I'd craved.
Instead, fabric rustled. Then came a breathy, suppressed moan.
"Ah... Roman... go easy..."
Vera's voice.
My blood turned to ice. The phone burned against my ear like a hot brand, but I couldn't move, couldn't pull it away.
"Mmm... but your phone's ringing..." Vera's tone dripped with coy protest, accompanied by unmistakable wet sounds. "I think... it's Nadia calling. Aren't you going to answer?"
A man's low groan came through. Clothes being torn. I knew that sound too well—he'd made the same sounds in my ear during those nights in the Bahamas.
Then I heard Vera laugh softly into the receiver, her voice dripping with mockery and venom.
"See that, Nadia? This is what you get. To him, you're worth nothing."
The call ended.
The basement plunged back into death-like darkness and silence. Only the phone's faint glow illuminated my chalk-white, tear-streaked face.
I knelt there on the freezing floor, the phone slipping from my bloody hands and clattering to the ground.
Vera's manipulation. Vera's setup. Vera deliberately calling from Roman's phone.
All the malice, the days of manipulation, these days of imprisoned despair, and now the claustrophobia attacking full force—combined with that brutally intimate phone call—crashed down like a collapsing mountain, crushing the last shred of self-deception I'd clung to.
Where was he?
While I was locked in this lightless basement, while my claustrophobia was suffocating me to death—where was he?
In bed with a woman named Vera. Tangled with his white moonlight while she used his phone to flaunt her victory, while I was discarded in the deepest darkness with no one coming to save me.
"AHHHHHHH—!"
I grabbed my head and screamed—the sound of a dying animal, desperate and shattered.
Pain. Such overwhelming pain. That bone-deep betrayal hurt ten thousand times worse than suffocation.