Twisted Addiction: Chapter 17

The night was a shroud of misery, wrapping around me like wet cloth as I stumbled through the rain-soaked streets of Brooklyn.

My body ached with every movement, each step a dull echo of the torment I’d endured at my foster aunt’s hands—her punishments laced with sedatives that blurred the edges of my mind, that left me floating between pain and paralysis.

She’d locked me in her basement earlier that night, her touch a desecration I could never cleanse, her drugs a leash meant to keep me docile.

But she underestimated the one thing she could never drug out of me—my will to reach Penelope.

I’d broken free while she slept, slipping through a cracked window, barefoot and half-dazed, rain biting into my skin like penance.

The city stretched before me, endless and uncaring, but somewhere beyond the darkness, she waited—my only light, my reason for breathing.

Every Friday at 9:00 p.m., we met beneath the gnarled oak tree in the forgotten corner of her father’s estate, the one patch of earth untouched by his guards.

The tree’s twisted branches were our roof, its roots our altar. It was where her laughter softened the noise in my head, where her hands steadied the trembling that no one else could see.

Tonight, though, the rain came down in sheets, the wind howling like some vengeful spirit.

My thin jacket clung to me, heavy and useless, the cold biting straight through to bone.

The drugs still clawed at my system—making my vision tilt, my legs betray me—but I kept moving. I had to. I needed to see her. To remind myself that something in this world still felt like mercy.

When I finally reached the oak, its bark slick beneath my palms, I pressed my forehead against it, panting, half-delirious.

Rain trickled through the canopy, soaking my hair, my face, my clothes, until I couldn’t tell where the storm ended and I began.

Ten minutes passed.

Then twenty.

Then thirty.

Penelope was never late. She’d always come running—hair unbound, eyes bright, her laughter breaking through my darkness like light through a cracked door.

But tonight… nothing.

An hour dragged by, each second a knife.

The cold gnawed at my bruises until I could feel the shape of every blow my aunt had left on me. My fingers went numb. My body shook. Still—no sign of her.

That was when the thought slipped in, sharp and poisonous.

Maybe she wasn’t coming.

Maybe she’d finally realized what I was—broken, tainted, unworthy of her world.

Maybe I’d never been anything more than a secret she’d outgrown.

Desperation clawed at me like a living thing. I couldn’t wait any longer—not with the rain turning my clothes into a second skin, not with the drugs still fogging my veins, making the world sway at the edges.

I had to see her. To know she hadn’t forgotten me. That she hadn’t turned away.

Her father’s estate loomed ahead—a fortress of marble and iron, walled in by wealth and guarded by men who’d kill without hesitation.

Every light in that mansion was a reminder of how unreachable her world was, how far above mine she lived. But I didn’t care. If I had to bleed to reach her, I would.

The night pressed close, thunder rolling like the growl of some unseen beast.

I stuck to the shadows, my soaked shoes silent against the mud, my pulse hammering so loud I was sure the guards could hear it.

The Romano men patrolled in pairs, rifles glinting beneath the porch lights, their voices muffled by the storm.

I moved with them—like prey that had learned to mimic the hunter.

The rain blurred my outline, masking my ragged breathing, my trembling limbs.

I found the section of the wall I’d memorized from weeks of watching, the place where ivy climbed high enough to give me leverage. My fingers slipped against the wet stone, skin tearing, blood mixing with rain, but I kept climbing.

When I dropped into the garden, I landed hard, the breath knocked out of me.

I crouched behind a hedge, muscles burning, eyes darting toward the moving silhouettes of guards.

I waited. Counted their steps.

Their routines were mechanical—five seconds between each turn, a pause at the archway, then the soft scrape of boots against gravel.

I’d studied them for months. The pattern was my only chance.

When the moment came, I ran. Low, fast, my body screaming in protest but my mind locked on one thing—her window.

The second one from the east balcony. The one with the lace curtains she said reminded her of me because they were “soft but never still.”

Lightning flashed, painting the mansion white for an instant. I saw my reflection in the glass—half-soaked, half-mad, eyes too bright.

I barely recognized myself.

Still, I reached up, tapping lightly against the windowpane.

Once. Twice. Three times.

Our signal.

No answer.

I hesitated, the rain whispering against the glass, the world holding its breath with me.

Then, slowly, I slid the window open.

The frame groaned, soft but sharp enough to slice through the night. I froze, listening—no footsteps, no alarm. Only the muffled hush of the storm and my own ragged breathing.

I peered inside.

And everything in me died.

She was there—Penelope. My Penelope. The girl who had once trembled in my arms under this very window, who had whispered that she loved me more than her own breath.

Now she was curled against another man.

His arm draped over her bare waist, his fingers splayed where mine used to rest. Her hair spilled across his chest, her lips parted slightly in sleep, their bodies tangled in the soft sheets like something holy and obscene all at once.

My body went cold. Not just from the rain—but from the realization that every reason I’d kept living had just turned to ash.

The world blurred.

My vision tunneled until there was only that bed, that skin, that betrayal. I pressed a hand to the windowsill to steady myself, the wood cutting into my palm.

I didn’t feel it. Couldn’t.

I wanted to scream. To shatter the glass, to drag her awake, to demand an explanation that could never exist. But no sound came. Only the storm outside, howling on my behalf.

A tremor ran through me—rage, heartbreak, disbelief all twisted together until I couldn’t tell one from the other.

I stumbled back, nearly slipping off the ledge.

Rage boiled under my skin until I could taste iron.

My fists clenched so hard my nails bit into my palms and the pain sang me back from the edge of something monstrous. Every sane, civilized muscle in me wanted to snap — to drag that man off the bed and smash his skull against the wall until the room was cleaned of him and the image with it. I wanted him to stop existing.

But I didn’t move. I forced myself to breathe, to hold back the animal that wanted immediate blood.

Restraint felt weaker and meaner than mercy: proof that she’d been right to laugh at me as a secret, a foolish boyfriend with no future. She’d chosen him. She’d betrayed me.

The thought coiled through me, cold and bright — not an accident, not a mistake, but a decision.

That knowledge burned hotter than any blow.

I stared one last time, forcing the image into memory, into something that would haunt me long after the rain stopped.

Then I climbed down, one hand slick with blood from a torn palm, the other clutching the trellis as if it were the only thing keeping me alive.

By the time my boots hit the ground, I wasn’t the same person who had climbed that wall.

Something had broken—quietly, completely—and there would be no fixing it.

Rain sluiced the glass in long, furious lines.

My chest split open and I could feel the pieces cutting into my ribs. I pinched my arm until the pain was sharp enough to prove I wasn’t dreaming. It wasn’t a dream. Her shape on that bed was obscene in its calmness—Penelope, vulnerable and alive and folded into another man’s arms.

Anger detonated inside me. I slammed my fist into the window; the sound of cracking glass was like a gunshot. It spiderwebbed across the pane.

Blood slicked my knuckles, hot and real.

She was fifteen—too young for this, or so I thought—and there she was, every memory of secret letters and stolen nights collapsing into one filthy, intimate heap.

We’d never spoken of sex, our love pure, built on dreams of a future together, whispered promises of marriage and children under that oak tree.

We had promised each other a thousand small things beneath that oak tree; we had sworn we were each other’s only.

I’d sacrificed everything to see her, defying my aunt’s cruelty, sneaking out despite the risk of her wrath. And this was my reward? Her, in another’s arms, willingly curled against him, no sign of coercion in the way she nestled into him.

The betrayal was a knife, twisting deeper with every breath.

I had believed in her like a prayer.

Now the prayer was profane.

“Maybe not today, Penelope,” I whispered, each syllable a blade, “but someday, you’ll pay for shattering my heart.”

I stared at her window one last time, pain chewing through me from the inside out, then tore into the night, heedless of her father’s guards.

The rain lashed my face, cold needles against burning skin, and the full moon glared down like a mocking witness as I sprinted back toward the oak tree—our sanctuary, now the grave of everything I’d ever believed in.

I collapsed to my knees, the mud swallowing me whole, and the sound that ripped out of me didn’t sound human. It was a howl, low and broken, torn from someplace deep in my gut.

The storm drowned my sobs, but I screamed anyway, until my throat felt flayed raw.

Tears and rain blurred together as I slammed my fists into the earth, over and over, the bark and stones slicing my knuckles open. I welcomed the sting, needed it—because it was real, because it couldn’t lie to me the way she had.

“Penelope…” I gasped, the name tearing from me like a curse. “You betrayed me. You betrayed my love… my everything.”

The oak loomed above me, the same tree that had once hidden our whispered vows, now an unmarked headstone for what used to be my heart.

I hit it again, again, until the pain numbed and all that was left was emptiness.

Then—

A voice, soft but clear, broke through the storm.

“Dmitri?”

I froze. My head jerked up, breath ragged.

A figure stood a few paces away, half-shrouded by rain and moonlight. She held an umbrella, her coat glistening, her hair plastered to her face. Her eyes—there was something painfully familiar about them.

“Who the hell are you?” I rasped, my voice shredded from crying. “Get away from me.”

She took a tentative step forward. “I’m your mother.”

The words didn’t land—they detonated. For a moment, all I could do was stare, the world tilting under me.

“My mother?” I laughed, bitter, hollow. “She’s dead. She died years ago.”

Her chin trembled. “No. Those people in Italy… they’re not your parents. They’re your foster family. You were stolen from us in Moscow when you were five. I’ve been looking for you ever since.”

Rain roared between us. My heart stuttered, half-believing, half-breaking all over again.

“No,” I whispered, shaking my head. “No more lies. No more ghosts.”

But even as I said it, something deep inside me—a wounded, desperate part that had never stopped hoping—wanted to believe her.

She took a step closer, desperation flickering in her eyes. “Dmitri…”

“Stop.” I sliced the air with my hand, shaking my head. “I don’t want your story. You’re just another liar with good timing.”

“Look at me,” she pleaded. “You have my eyes. My son—”

“I don’t believe you,” I said, voice raw, but even as I spoke a sliver of doubt skated across me.

The papers I’d found hidden in the attic hadn’t lied about a thing: the family I’d lived with wasn’t mine. They’d made that very clear. They’d made me nothing.

She didn’t flinch. Her eyes were enormous in the downpour, bright with a danger that felt like truth. “You have to believe me,” she said, urgency cutting through the rain. “Your father and I—we’ve been looking for you for years. We spoke to people, paid people, begged people. The Romanos finally told us where you were.”

At the name, something cold uncoiled in my gut.

The Romanos. Penelope’s family.

“Where’s my father?” The question burst out smaller than I wanted, and I hated that it did.

She swallowed hard.

Her face crumpled. “He’s dead,” she whispered, the words muffled by the rain. “Murdered.”

The world went stupidly quiet at the edges.

Rain turned to sound.

My hands — the same hands that had learned to stay clenched — curled tighter, nails carving crescents into torn flesh.

“By who?” The words scraped out of me, too small for the storm tearing through my chest.

“Your foster parents,” she whispered, her voice cracking on the confession. “They found out we were searching for you. They warned him to stop, said you belonged to them now.” Her throat worked, a sob caught halfway. “But he wouldn’t—he said he’d rather die than let you rot in that house.”

A pause. The rain filled it.

Her gaze met mine, wet and trembling. “So they made sure he did.”

For a second I wanted to laugh — a bitter, hollow sound. Then the laugh turned into a sound that was closer to a growl.

“They killed him.” The phrase looped like a curse.

The rain prickled my face, but it could not wash anything away.

My chest hitched; fury pooled and flared.

She stepped closer, water soaking through the hem of her coat. “We have a hotel waiting. I can get you papers, a ticket. Tonight. We go back to Russia, Dmitri. We leave before they can do anything more.”

I looked at her. Her hands trembled, but there was steel in the set of her jaw.

She was trying to become a rope thrown into my chaos. For a beat I wanted to spit on her rope. I wanted to curl into the hollow that had kept me alive and refuse any help that smelled of pity.

Instead, the words came out like iron. “You said ‘we.’”

The laugh that followed was bitter and very small. “You don’t know what you’re asking. You don’t know what it costs to step into my life.”

Her fingers closed around mine before I could think it through — firm, warm, an accusation and a promise all at once. “I don’t care what it costs,” she said. “We leave tomorrow. The Romanos will cover whatever we need. But you must move now. Your foster aunt will notice you gone and they won’t let it slide.”

“I’m not a boy to be rescued,” I said.

It was less truth and more armor.

I’d learned to survive alone, to take what had to be taken. But the thought of home — of a place that might actually be mine — scraped at the scabs on my heart until they bled.

She didn’t flinch. “Then come as the man you want to be,” she said. “Or come as you are. I don’t care how broken, how angry—just come with me, Dmitri. Please. Let me save what’s left of you.”

My breath caught in my throat, suddenly too tight to form a sound.

She hesitated for the briefest second, then slipped a hand inside the pocket of her soaked coat.

Her fingers closed on something small and warm.

When she brought it out, it looked ordinary at first — a tarnished silver locket on a thin chain, the metal nicked from years of handling.

But when she opened it, the hair on my arm rose like static.

Inside, on a scrap of vellum, a single name was written in a looping, familiar script: ДМИТРИ (Dmitri).

Not the casual transliteration I’d seen in dossiers or printed papers — my name in the language I’d never thought would be spoken to me again. The letters were smudged from years and rain, but there they were, undeniable.

She held it to my face.

The chain smelled faintly of chamomile—the same soft, honeyed scent Penelope loved.

The familiarity hit like a blade under the ribs, the memory of her splintering through me. My chest clenched, heartbreak surging anew, raw and needled, like pressing on a wound that refused to close.

“You keep that with you?” I asked, breathless, half-command and half-hope.

“My mother gave it to me the night you were born,” she said, voice low. “She kept a record of your name. She carries things in Cyrillic so only family will recognize it. If you doubt me—read it.”

My fingers hovered over the locket, clumsy with cold.

When I touched the paper inside, the ink smeared slightly, and that small, messy imperfection made it feel less like a prop and more like proof.

I heard the dumb, stupid part of me — the part that had learned to distrust everything — whisper that any mark could be forged. But beneath that whisper there was something harder: recognition.

A memory unspooled — a lullaby in a language I had listened to once and then locked away, the cadence of a woman humming by a bedside; a name spoken in the dark as if saying it could hold someone back from the world.

I followed her at last, the weight of her words settling unevenly in my chest—half hope, half disbelief, all exhaustion.

The rain didn’t let up; it hammered the pavement like a warning. By the time we reached her car—a dull gray sedan crouched beneath a dying streetlight—I was shaking from more than cold.

She slipped behind the wheel, movements quick, practiced.

I slid into the passenger seat, the leather groaning beneath my soaked clothes.

My knuckles stung, the cuts splitting open again as I clenched my fists.

She started the engine, and the windshield wipers carved furious arcs through the downpour, slicing the world into broken flashes of light and shadow.

I stared out the window.

Brooklyn was just a blur of wet neon and ghosted reflections—Penelope’s name, my foster father’s threats, my mother’s face—all bleeding together until I couldn’t tell which wound hurt more.

The locket hung heavy against my chest, cold and real, proof of something I’d spent my whole life denying.

Russia awaited, she said. A new beginning. Maybe even revenge. But the road ahead was nothing but darkness, and I knew one thing with bone-deep certainty—whatever boy I’d been tonight, he died under that tree. What got into that car was something else entirely.