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Chapter 4

Penulis: Lovelicious
I did what the girl told me without a second's hesitation and scrambled up off the floor.

Ignoring the shocked cries of the guests behind me, I tore out of that ballroom like a madman.

I had no idea where I was going. All I could do was keep running.

At some point a stiff card had been pushed into my hand.

By the dull yellow of a streetlight, I saw what it was: a one-way ticket south.

The flight left in two hours.

I gripped the only way out I had and reached the gate at the last possible minute.

Then a slender yet strong hand caught my shoulder and held on.

"Gabriel!"

Helena had caught up with me, a breathless Damon at her side.

I held the ticket up high, the one that had come from nowhere, and begged her through my tears.

"Helena, let me go... please.

"If I don't go, I'm going to die."

Helena looked at that ticket she couldn't explain, and something stunned flickered in her eyes.

Maybe the ticket was too real. Maybe the need to leave in my eyes was too absolute.

The hand on my shoulder actually loosened an inch.

For that one instant, she seemed to turn back into the girl who couldn't stand to see me hurt.

"All right. If you want to go that badly..."

Damon caught the regret in her and suddenly grabbed her arm in alarm, his eyes dropping to her stomach.

"Mr. Sloane is disturbed enough to be seeing things that aren't there.

"And if you let him run loose and he comes back, what happens if he hurts the baby?"

The moment she heard him, that flicker of softness in her eyes was gone.

She stopped looking at me, snatched the ticket away, and tore it to pieces right in front of my face.

The scraps drifted down like snow.

She didn't explain herself again. Her voice only dropped lower.

"As long as I'm here, you're not going to die."

...

The iron doors of Crownstead Behavioral Recovery Center slammed shut in front of me.

Then the lock turned.

I looked straight into her eyes and said it one more time.

"Helena, I'm going to die."

But Helena stood on the other side of the observation window and didn't spare me a second glance. She left me one sentence.

"Once I've had the baby, I'll come get you."

Then her footsteps walked away without mercy, echoing down the empty corridor.

I stopped screaming, and I stopped pounding on the door.

Because I knew the girl had been telling the truth.

I was going to die in there.

The motion lights in the hallway started flickering violently, buzzing with current.

Helena hadn't gotten far when a deafening crash went off behind her.

The reinforced iron door holding me in had been kicked out of shape from the inside by sheer brute force.

The translucent girl in the school uniform lifted me to my feet and walked me out, one step at a time.

Helena spun around, and in that one look she saw the thing she'd fear for the rest of her life...

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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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