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Chapter 3

Penulis: Lovelicious
I couldn't sleep that night.

At some point Helena was standing beside the bed, staring at the nightstand with a complicated look on her face.

Every knife in the house had been destroyed, and yet a carefully peeled apple sat there.

The peel had come off in one unbroken spiral.

That was the kind of patience only the girl of sixteen had ever had.

I thought she'd come to see me again while I was asleep.

I sat straight up, threw my arms around the figure from behind, and buried my face in her neck.

"You peeled the apple and left. I thought you weren't going to stay with me today."

Helena's body went stiff, like my sudden hug had left her with no idea what to do.

After a long silence, she patted my back, almost against her own will.

The motion was stiff, testing.

"Gabriel, did you have another nightmare?"

The moment I heard the grown woman's voice, I screamed and shoved her off, backing into the foot of the bed.

"Get away from me. You're not her."

The shadow came closer, and Helena went down on one knee beside me.

She looked into my frightened eyes and stroked my cheek with her thumb, her voice gentler than it had been in a long time.

"There's no one else here but me.

"I know you're upset about the livestream tonight, but I swear, once I've had this baby and paid Damon off, I'm coming home and I'm going to take care of you.

"Come to the family dinner with me tomorrow. All right?"

Her grip on my wrist slowly went slack, like she was waiting for my answer.

I lifted my head and begged her through the blur of tears.

"Helena, let's get divorced."

The warmth that had just come into her eyes died instantly.

For a second I felt her anger, and a second after that it turned into something almost sick with possession.

She pulled me hard against her, like she was terrified of losing something.

I forgot to struggle, until a hot tear landed on the back of my hand.

Through the blur, I thought I saw the teenage Helena crying over me, whispering that she'd never let herself leave.

My hand shook as I raised it to wipe that tear away.

My fingertips touched the woman's warm skin, and I spoke like I was coaxing a dream that might shatter.

"All right... I won't go. I'll come with you.

"Helena, stop crying."

The next day, Helena took me to the family dinner.

She'd barely turned away to work the room when Damon came at me with a glass in his hand.

He leaned close to my ear, smiling like a dare.

"Mr. Sloane, I really do envy you. You lose your mind and she still keeps you in the house.

"By the way, I never wanted that junk foundation of yours. Things dead people leave behind are bad luck.

"Ms. Ashbourne couldn't be bothered with it. She said the sight of it annoyed her, so she handed it to me to get rid of."

I stared at those thin lips opening and closing.

The last thread holding my mind together snapped.

"You have no shame."

I looked at his open contempt and couldn't take it anymore. I put my hand out.

There was almost no force behind that push.

But Damon let out an exaggerated cry and went over backward.

The champagne tower behind him came down.

The crash was like a demolition, and it rang through the whole ballroom.

"Gabriel! Have you completely lost your mind?"

Before I could react, a hand came at me with all her fury behind it.

After the crack of the slap, the room went dead silent.

It was heavy enough that blood filled my mouth at once.

A single drop slid slowly from the corner of my lips.

I sat down in the broken glass, and the shards laid my palms open.

I couldn't feel any of it.

Because right then, Helena was carefully helping Damon up off the floor, and she never once looked my way.

With everyone in that room watching, the girl in the school uniform came stumbling toward me again.

She dropped to her knees, desperate to pull me up.

But her fingers went through my body, again and again.

She sobbed like her heart was tearing, her voice breaking apart under the noise of the crowd.

"Stop it! Helena, you bastard! Don't hit him!

"Run, Gabriel!

"The Helena standing there doesn't love you anymore! She's going to kill you!"

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  • The Promise She Broke   Chapter 10

    Winter in Mist Harbor always came with more rain than anything else.There was none of Crownstead's gilded excess here, and none of the gossip that used to choke me.I had on a heavy cream cashmere coat, and I was carrying a bunch of chamomile I'd just picked up at the market.The flowers were small and beaded with rain, and they matched the way I felt.A mild kind of quiet.I walked into an old tavern at the end of a lane.There was a fire going in the hearth, oak crackling under the sound of a slow fiddle, and the warmth wrapped around me the second I was through the door.I breathed it deep into my lungs and felt a little more of the cold that used to live in my bones get pushed out.There was a time my hands shook too hard to hold a fork. Now I was greeting the round little owner like I'd done it a hundred times."The usual. Hot milk, no sugar."Nora Kessler handed it over with a smile and mentioned it in passing."By the way, that woman from Crownstead came by again tod

  • The Promise She Broke   Chapter 9

    The air went dead for a full half minute.Celia shut her eyes, pulled in a long breath, and finally, reluctantly, took half a step back.She pulled away from Helena's still-shaking hand with open disgust."You are pathetic, Helena."The brutality had gone out of Celia's voice. What was left came out flat."Now you know what pain is? Now you know what regret is?"When he was begging you in that psychiatric hospital to let him go, what were you doing?"Helena shook all over, and the tears wouldn't stop coming."I was wrong. I know I was wrong, I really do..."Celia looked at her coldly and took another breath."I brought you here to die today."I'd already had the hole dug to put you in."Helena's head came up fast, her eyes hollow.Celia paused, and something very complicated came into her voice."But my brother said..."He said to leave you alive."The second she said it, a flare of hope came up in Helena's eyes."Gabriel still cares about me, doesn't he? He couldn't s

  • The Promise She Broke   Chapter 8

    Crownstead's world changed overnight.Helena Ashbourne, the famous head of Ashbourne Holdings, vanished out of her own heavily guarded home.There was no ransom call and no ransom note.There was only one chilling rumor circulating inside Ashbourne Holdings: this had come from somewhere above them, and nothing could be done about it.An invisible hand had wiped away every trace of Helena and hadn't broken a sweat doing it....When Helena woke up, she was looking at an abandoned old building.The paint was peeling off the walls, and a cold wind blew through the rooms carrying the first real cold of fall."Awake?"A frigid voice came out of the empty space.Helena couldn't move. Her arms had been tied behind the chair.She struggled to lift her head and, against the light, made out the woman standing in the shadows.She was young, in a black trench coat.The instant Helena saw her face, her pupils contracted.The eyes, the bones of her face, they might as well have come ou

  • The Promise She Broke   Chapter 7

    Helena stood in the middle of the empty living room and looked around.Not one thing in the house had changed, and yet the place felt terrifyingly hollow.Every light was burning, and none of it reached the black hole at the bottom of her."Gabriel?"She tried calling his name.Nobody answered.Only the echo came back off the cold walls, and the emptiness of it was frightening.Days of holding everything in, of wearing herself down to nothing, came over her all at once, tangled up with the strange fragility and ache of being pregnant.Helena stumbled over to the liquor cabinet, looking for something to steady the churn inside her, but there was no strength left in her fingers. She had barely touched the bottle on the shelf when her arm swung wide and the bottle came down hard against the marble counter, and the liquor poured out across it.She couldn't hold herself up any longer. Her back slid down the cold face of the cabinet until she was sitting limp on the floor, holding w

  • The Promise She Broke   Chapter 6

    It was the third day since Gabriel disappeared.Helena had nearly turned all of Crownstead upside down looking for him.She pulled every connection the Ashbournes had and burned through enormous favors to get lawful checks run on the transportation systems.Airports, rail terminals, highway exits, even every camera around the psychiatric facility from that night.There wasn't a single record of him anywhere.The man the black-clad team had carried out was like a drop of water going into the ocean. He was gone without a trace.Only then did the fear finally catch up with her and set her heart pounding.It was as though somebody had cut a piece out of it while she was still alive and left a hole that wouldn't stop bleeding.In her office, the skin under Helena's eyes had gone dark, the careful makeup was long since ruined, and her hair hung loose and tangled.She paced back and forth like an animal caged and going out of its mind."Ms. Ashbourne, we still... can't find anything

  • The Promise She Broke   Chapter 5

    As the dust cleared, the corridor lights sputtered twice.Then they settled back into a dead, sickly white.The girl's apparition, who a second earlier had carried enough fury to level the building, went transparent the instant she crossed the threshold.Like a handful of sand nobody could hold on to, she scattered slowly and finally sank, gently, into Gabriel Sloane's body.Helena stood frozen, her pupils blowing wide.A suffocating emptiness was still lodged in her throat.But there was no one in front of her, only Gabriel, unconscious on the floor.Only that badly warped iron door, hanging off its frame and ready to fall."That... that student in the school uniform. Did you see her?"Helena's voice shook, and she grabbed Damon's arm and wouldn't let go.Damon had already gone white with terror. He fought his way out of her grip, close to tears."What student? Helena, have you lost your mind?"That door blew open by itself! This place is cursed. I'm getting out of here."

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