Twisted Addiction: Chapter 18

The hotel room was a dim cocoon, the faded wallpaper and heavy curtains swallowing the weak glow of a single lamp.

My mother—my biological mother, a stranger just hours ago—slept fitfully on the narrow bed, one hand clutching the edge of the blanket, her breath shallow and uneven, her face carved with years of loss.

The silver threads in her hair caught the light, fragile and human, and for the first time I saw not the mystery of who she was, but the weight of what she had endured.

I sat motionless in the corner, knees drawn up, my back pressed against the wall as though I needed the cold to remind me I was still alive, listening to her shallow breaths mingle with the muffled hum of rain outside.

She’d said we would talk in Russia, that her heart couldn’t rest until we were safe on her soil.

But waiting felt like torture.

A thousand questions gnawed at me—about her, about my biological father, about the years that had been stolen. Yet, as I watched her, exhaustion dulled the storm inside me.

What I felt now wasn’t anger. It was something rawer. Protective.

“Mom,” I whispered, the word strange and fragile on my tongue. “I may not have power or money yet… but I swear, you’ll never know pain again. Not while I breathe.”

The vow hung in the dark between us—quiet, absolute.

Her face softened in sleep, the lines of grief easing as if she’d somehow heard me. And in that small, rented room, I felt something I hadn’t in years.

Belonging.

My foster parents had made my life a private hell—locking me in a damp for days without food or light, the air damp with rot and the sound of dripping water my only company.

They called it “correction.” The belts they used left welts that healed into scars.

Their sons—spoiled, sneering devils—would burn my arms with cigarettes, laughing while I bit my tongue to keep from crying.

I learned early that silence was safer than tears.

But silence had its price. It turned every scream inward. It made a cage of your own ribs.

Now I knew they had done worse than beat me.

They had killed my father. Maybe they had tried to kill her too. I saw it in the way she’d looked over her shoulder in the rain — the haunted flicker in her eyes every time the headlights from the street below passed across the curtains, the tremor in her hand when she reached for her tea.

She’d lived years in fear, searching for me in shadows, and still she came. Still she found me.

And I… I was a boy made of bruises and mistakes, sitting in a cheap motel room, unable to sleep beside the only blood family I had left.

She wasn’t safe here. None of us were.

I kept vigil that night, my body still, my mind wide awake.

My gaze drifted between her sleeping form and the cheap digital clock glowing on the nightstand. 3:07 a.m. In a few hours, dawn would bleed into the city, and we’d be gone—on a plane to Russia, leaving behind everything I’d ever known.

New York. The house of ghosts.

And Penelope.

Her name alone was enough to reopen the wound, sharp and merciless.

I could see her again—curled in another man’s arms, the rain beating against the window behind her.

She had promised me forever.

I could still hear her laugh under the oak tree, the way she’d traced my palm and said she wanted to grow old with me. And then I’d seen her — skin against skin with another boy, the light catching the curve of her smile. Not fear. Not regret. Only comfort.

The betrayal wasn’t sharp anymore. It was dull and endless, like a wound that refused to clot. I wanted to hate her, but my heart kept dragging me back to the memory of her voice, the way she’d whispered my name like it meant something.

I pressed my palms into my eyes until I saw stars. The pain did nothing. The ache was deeper.

Maybe it wasn’t her fault, a small voice said.

Maybe it was mine — for believing someone like her could love someone like me.

The thought tore something loose inside me.

I stood abruptly, the chair scraping against the floor. My mother stirred but didn’t wake. I went to the small desk near the window, its surface scarred with cigarette burns and coffee stains. The lamp flickered as I turned it on, throwing pale light across the paper pad and pen.

For a long moment, I just stared.

My reflection ghosted faintly in the window, eyes hollow, face pale and bruised. I didn’t recognize the boy looking back.

And then, with hands that wouldn’t stop shaking, I began to write.

PENELOPE,

You were the only good thing I ever believed in.

When I told you I loved you, it wasn’t teenage nonsense. It was the only truth I had. You were the pulse that kept me from ending it all on the nights my foster family decided I wasn’t worth feeding. You were my reason to crawl out of basements and blood. You were my proof that something gentle could survive inside me.

And you destroyed it.

I’ve tried to tell myself it was a mistake, that maybe I didn’t see what I saw — but the mind is cruel, Penelope. It replays things in perfect detail when you most want to forget. The shape of your body under his arm.

I can’t unsee it. I can’t unhear it.

You taught me love could hurt more than fists.

You taught me that light can lie.

Still, even now, I wish I could hate you the way I should.

You used me, played me for a fool, your promises as empty as the wind.

Every letter we hid under that loose brick, every whispered vow, was a lie. You were my light, my only refuge, and you extinguished it without a care.

You promised me, at twenty-five, you’d be my bride, your words a melody that soothed my battered soul. I believed you, Penelope, with every fiber of my being.

But you were a mirage, a cruel illusion cloaked in love’s guise.

While I risked everything—sneaking past my aunt’s iron grip, enduring her vile punishments to steal moments with you—you gave your heart, your body, to another.

At fifteen, you lay with him, your skin pressed to his in a betrayal that sears my memory.

I wish your name didn’t taste like prayer when I whisper it. I wish your memory didn’t feel like home. But I’ll carry you with me, even when I try to bury what’s left of that boy you once loved.

You’ll remember me one day — not as the broken foster boy who worshiped you, but as the man your betrayal created.

I leave for Russia now, to reclaim a life stolen from me, but know this: I will return. Someday, when the world has reshaped me, I will make you feel the weight of this betrayal. You will pay, Penelope, for the heart you shattered, for the love you defiled. Until then, I carry the wreckage of us, a wound that will never heal.

Dmitri.

The words didn’t come out neat. They came in bursts—jagged, uneven, like a confession carved from flesh.

Ink bled across the page, mixing with the rain that still clung to my sleeves, each line a wound I couldn’t close.

I didn’t write to be forgiven. I wrote because silence was killing me faster than any bullet could. Because she had to know what she’d done to me—how loving her had both saved and destroyed me.

By the time I stopped, the clock glowed 4:02 a.m. My hand throbbed, the paper marred with smears of blood and tears.

The hotel room felt too small, too quiet, the kind of silence that mocked grief.

My mother slept only a few feet away, her breathing steady, unaware that the son she’d just found was already slipping away again.

I folded the letter, my fingers trembling as if they knew this was a goodbye.

My chest burned, not with anger anymore, but with something colder—grief calcified into resolve.

The reunion with my mother had stirred something fragile, almost human, but Penelope’s betrayal still burned beneath it, a fire that refused to die.

I couldn’t leave without facing her.

Not after everything.

Not after the way she laid so comfortably with him, like I’d never existed.

I needed her to see what she’d done—to hold the letter and feel the weight of what she’d broken. Maybe I wanted her to hurt. Maybe I just wanted proof that I’d once mattered enough to hurt her back.

My mother murmured something in her sleep as I rose from the chair, but I didn’t stop.

I grabbed her car keys from the desk, my heartbeat pounding in my ears, and slipped out of the room, closing the door with a soft click.

The hallway smelled of stale cigarettes and bleach, the flickering lights throwing shadows that followed me like ghosts.

The elevator was too slow, so I took the stairs, my footsteps echoing in the narrow shaft.

Every step felt like a countdown.

Outside, the night greeted me with cold rain, heavier now, blurring the city into streaks of color and grief.

The drive to the Romano estate was a fever dream.

When I reached the estate, I killed the engine and sat in the silence, listening to the tick of cooling metal.

The Romano mansion loomed beyond the wrought-iron gates, beautiful and merciless. A fortress guarded by men who’d shoot first and question later.

Sneaking in was madness.

But love had always been my favorite form of insanity.

I slipped from the car, the rain plastering my hair to my forehead, and crept toward the gates.

My heart thundered as I traced the shadows along the outer wall, the air thick with the scent of wet earth and danger.

I knew the rhythm of their patrols by heart—the blind spots, the lazy turns, the seconds between flashlights. I’d mapped them long ago, back when every trespass had been for love, not vengeance.

Now, it was just for closure.

Or maybe punishment.

I wasn’t sure which anymore.

The perimeter wall loomed before me, slick with rain, its crown of razor wire catching the moonlight like silver fangs.

I scaled it, my fingers scraping the stone, my muscles screaming from my aunt’s earlier assault.

The sedatives still dulled my limbs, but pain was the only thing keeping me focused.

I dropped into the garden, landing hard among the rosebushes. Their thorns bit into my jacket, snagging at me as though the earth itself wanted me to stay down.

The guards’ voices drifted through the storm—gruff, careless, the language of men who thought no one would dare come here.

Their flashlights sliced across the manicured hedges, pale arcs of danger in the dark. I pressed myself into the wet soil, heart pounding so violently it hurt.

Bootsteps drew closer—two of them, boots crunching over gravel. I froze, the rain trickling down my face, tasting of iron and fear.

“Heard something,” one muttered.

My pulse thrashed in my throat.

The flashlight beam swept over the hedge, close enough to bleach the color from my skin.

“Probably a raccoon,” the other said, his tone dismissive.

The light passed. Their footsteps faded.

I didn’t move until I couldn’t hear them anymore.

Then I crawled from the shadows, keeping low, every nerve alive.

The garden stretched before me like a battlefield—floodlights sweeping, statues glistening, fountains whispering.

I darted between them, the night alive with the sound of my own ragged breathing.

A guard dog stirred nearby, its chain clinking softly.

I stilled, whispering a prayer I didn’t believe in, until it settled again.

Every inch brought me closer—to the house, to her.

To the wound that would never close.

At last, I reached Penelope’s window.

The glass was still fractured from before, the cracks catching the light like veins of ice.

I peered inside.

The room was empty—no movement, no sound. Just the disheveled bed, the pale curtains stirring with the draft, and the faintest trace of her perfume, warm and floral even through the rain.

Relief hit first. Then disappointment.

And then—the voice.

“Freeze!”

I spun around. A guard stood ten paces away, flashlight blazing, gun raised.

The light seared my vision, but I didn’t need to see his face to know what came next.

My body moved before my mind caught up.

I hurled the letter through the broken pane—watched it tumble into her room like a dying bird—and ran.

My feet pounded the wet grass, thorns tearing at my clothes, lungs burning as shouts erupted behind me.

“Stop! Stop, or I’ll shoot!”

I vaulted the hedge, slipped on the slick stones, caught myself, kept running.

The rain roared in my ears, drowning out everything—my fear, my guilt, the echo of her name.

The only thing that existed was forward, the need to escape, to survive long enough for her to find that letter.

It was all I had left to give her.

And all she’d ever have left of me.

The guard’s whistle cut the night like a blade.

I ran—no thinking, only motion—launching over a garden bench, slaloming past a marble cherub, my jeans catching on a jagged stone.

A gunshot cracked somewhere behind me; I flinched and that half-second cost everything.

A boot slammed into my face and the world inverted.

I hit the ground, mud and rain in my mouth.

Ten shadows closed around me, teeth and boots and hands that moved like a single animal.

They didn’t ask questions. They answered with fists.

A kick to the ribs folded me; another to the groin took the breath from me and left me raw and howling.

They kept coming—pummeling jaw, stomach, legs—each strike a punctuation to the single, burning image in my head: her, in someone else’s arms.

“Penelope knows me,” I coughed through blood, tasting metal. “Ask her—she—”

They spat at me and kept moving.

Two grabbed my arms like I was nothing and dragged me across the manicured lawn. The cold pooled under my back as they dumped me by the estate gates. One of them leaned down, sneered in my face so I could see the wet glint in his teeth.

“You’re alive only because the Romanos don’t want a war with the Volkovs,” he said. “Step foot here again and we’ll kill you.”

A final boot slammed my ribs; knives of pain lanced through my side.

Then they left me there, rain washing new blood into the earth.

I lay under the downpour and counted my wounds: ribs that burned with each breath, a nose that would be a crooked ruin, skin torn raw where stone had met bone.

Pain mapped my body—bruises, cuts, every inch a ledger of brutality.

I dragged myself up, fingers slipping on wet stone, hands trembling.

I didn’t know if the letter would ever reach her hands. Maybe she’d ball it up and throw it away. Maybe it would burn unread in some drawer. None of that mattered now the way it used to.

The pain of being left, of being seen as nothing more than a secret—those were the things that would shape me.

I tasted rain and copper and a promise I could not take back.

The rain-soaked earth clung to me, cold and heavy, like the world itself was trying to pull me under.

Every breath was a knife between my ribs; every heartbeat, a reminder that I was still alive when I didn’t want to be.

Blood ran in ribbons down my face, warm against the freezing rain, my clothes torn to ribbons by the estate’s jagged stones.

Penelope’s betrayal burned hotter than any wound.

The image of her in another man’s arms replayed behind my eyes, cruel and endless.

I’d risked everything—my life, my sanity—to bring her that letter, to make her see what she’d done to me. Now I was nothing but wreckage, a boy stripped bare by love and violence, clinging to the faint, trembling thread of hope that my mother was still waiting for me.

I couldn’t die here. Not like this.

Not in front of the house of the girl who had destroyed me.

I tried to walk.

Pain flared through my left leg—white-hot, grinding bone on bone—and I almost screamed.

My right leg held, barely, just enough to drag me forward.

Each step was a war.

My blood marked a trail behind me, crimson smears on the pavement like a signature I didn’t mean to leave.

The car came into view at last. My lifeline. My escape.

I staggered toward it, half-falling, catching myself on the hood with a gasp. My reflection stared back at me from the window: swollen eyes, split lip, a stranger’s face twisted with loss.

“Just hold on,” I muttered, unsure if I meant my body or my heart. “Just a little longer.”

I gripped the door handle, my hands slick with blood, and hauled myself inside.

The seat’s cracked leather swallowed me, and for a brief, shaking second, I let my head fall against the steering wheel.

The sound of rain against the roof became a lullaby—a cruel one, but it kept me breathing.

I had to get back to the hotel. To her. My mother would know what to do, how to quiet the chaos clawing at my chest.

She had to.

I leaned to one side, favoring my less-damaged leg, my body shaking from both the cold and the pain.

The engine coughed to life beneath my trembling hands, and the vibration seemed to echo through every fracture and bruise.

The world beyond blurred.

My vision swam, each blink heavier than the last, my head fogged by pain and exhaustion. I could barely tell where I was driving, only that I had to keep going.

Mom won’t recognize me like this, I thought, the words bitter in my mind.

A rough, broken sound escaped me—half laugh, half groan.

My reflection in the rearview mirror was unrecognizable.

My hands looked worse—raw, trembling, split open across the knuckles from the oak tree, from the glass of Penelope’s window, from the guards’ boots.

The pain was a steady thrum, but beneath it was something worse—emptiness.

I gritted my teeth and pressed harder on the accelerator, the engine’s roar drowning out the pain clawing up my leg.

The tires hissed over the slick asphalt, water spraying up from the gutters as I tore through Brooklyn’s deserted streets.

The city lights blurred into ghostly trails.

My chest tightened.

Every turn of the wheel felt like it could be my last, but stopping wasn’t an option. I had to see her. The woman who’d called herself my mother—the only person left who’d chosen to find me.

By the time I reached the hotel, I could barely feel my legs.

I pulled into the underground garage too fast, the tires screeching against the wet concrete.

My head slammed against the headrest, stars exploding behind my eyes. For a second, I just sat there, slumped forward, the world spinning in and out of focus.

Then I forced the door open.

The cold air hit me like a slap.

I stumbled out, my left leg almost giving way, and caught myself on the side mirror.

My blood left smeared handprints along the car as I pushed off it and started toward the elevator.

Each step was a battle—my body lurching, my breath wheezing, the sound of my shoes squelching on the floor like wet cloth.

I left a trail of crimson footprints behind me, a breadcrumb path of my suffering.

The elevator ride felt endless.

The metal walls seemed to close in around me, the flickering overhead light pulsing in time with my heartbeat.

My reflection in the steel door stared back—a ghost in a soaked jacket, eyes wide and feverish.

I wanted to close my eyes, to rest for just a moment, but I knew if I did, I might never wake again.

When the doors finally slid open, I stumbled into the hallway, my body scraping the wall for balance.

The carpet absorbed the sound of my limping steps.

I reached our door, fumbled with the keycard, dropped it once, twice—my blood-slicked fingers refusing to obey. When the light finally blinked green, I shoved it open, breathless and shaking.

“Mom,” I whispered, voice cracking. “I’m back—”

The words died in my throat.

The room was dark.

The air was colder than it should’ve been.

Something in the silence was wrong—too heavy, too still. My stomach twisted as my eyes adjusted.

The bed was empty. Sheets torn. A lamp on the floor.

And that faint, unmistakable scent—

chamomile,

and blood.

Blood smeared the floor, stark against the faded carpet.

Her clothes lay in tatters—her raincoat ripped, her blouse shredded, her underwear discarded like a cruel afterthought.

Scratch marks clawed the bedstand, the headboard, the floor, as if she’d fought desperately against an unseen force.

My heart seized, a cold dread sinking into my bones.

She was gone.

Taken.

The fear in her eyes earlier, her nervous glances in the rain—it hadn’t been paranoia.

Someone had come for her, and the signs screamed of violation, of rape, of a fate too horrific to name.

My foster parents—those monsters who’d killed my father—were the only ones vile enough to do this.

Had they found her, hunted her down to silence her forever?

I pressed a trembling hand against the wall, my blood mixing with hers on the cracked paint. “No,” I whispered, the word cracking apart in my throat. “No, no, no…” My knees buckled, and I hit the carpet, the pain in my leg flaring white-hot, but I didn’t care.

The world blurred through tears and shock.

Today had already been a nightmare—Penelope’s betrayal, the guards’ beating—and now this? It couldn’t get worse. It couldn’t.

She’d found me. She’d finally found me after all those years — and now she was gone.

Taken.

I forced myself upright, my entire body shaking, and limped out of the room, stumbling down the corridor.

The elevator was too slow, so I half-fell down the stairs, gripping the railing to keep myself upright, the metal slick with my own blood.

The lobby lights burned too bright when I burst through the doors. The night clerk — a middle-aged woman with weary eyes — jerked upright behind the counter, startled.

“My mother,” I gasped, slamming my palms on the desk, leaving bloody prints on the wood. “Someone broke into our room — she’s gone! You have cameras, you must’ve seen—”

Her expression changed. Not fear, not confusion — composure. Practiced. Controlled. She looked at me the way a doctor looks at a dying patient — pitying, detached.

“The Romanos left a message,” she said, her voice flat, each word falling like a stone. “They said you trespassed on their property tonight. You’re alive because of who your foster family is — because of the men in Lake Como who would’ve avenged your death.”

My pulse froze. “What are you saying?”

Her gaze flickered — not cruel, but resolute, as though she wished she could lie but couldn’t.

“They couldn’t kill you,” she said quietly, “so they took your mother instead.”

The world stopped. My breath came in shallow bursts.

My heart pounded so hard it felt like it would crack my ribs open.

I leaned forward, voice shaking with rage and disbelief. “Who ordered it?”

For a moment, she hesitated — then she spoke the name that ended whatever innocence I had left.

“Penelope Romano.”

The room tilted.

My pulse stuttered. “No… no, that’s—” I choked on the rest, shaking my head like I could undo the sound of it. “You’re lying.”

My vision swam, the room spinning in a blur of blood, neon, and disbelief.. “She couldn’t—she wouldn’t—”

But the image came unbidden. Her in another man’s arms, skin against skin, the warmth of her body pressed to someone who wasn’t me. My stomach turned. My knees nearly gave out.

“She’s just fifteen,” I rasped, half to myself, half to the world that had stopped making sense. “She can’t be that cruel… she can’t.”

The clerk didn’t flinch.

Her eyes were flat, her tone stripped of mercy. “Cruelty doesn’t wait for age. Especially not in their world.”

The clerk’s tone was flat, practiced, like she’d rehearsed this conversation before. “She only dated you to plant a tracker,” she said. “A bug, in your jacket, your backpack—somewhere close enough to trace you when you went back to Italy. The Romanos wanted to map your foster family’s operations.”

“You were leverage, Dmitri. That’s all.”

I blinked, my heart hammering. “No… she’s fifteen,” I said, shaking my head, as though saying it aloud could make it true. “She doesn’t even know what a bug is. She—she reads poetry. She cries when pigeons die. She—”

“She’s a Romano,” the woman cut in sharply. “In that world, innocence dies before childhood does. They use their children the way normal families use prayers.”

I stared at her, searching for any flicker of doubt, any sign she was bluffing. But she only reached into a drawer and slid a scrap of paper toward me, her fingers steady, her expression grim.

“Here.”

The paper was creased, smudged with ink and fingerprints. An address scrawled in hurried Cyrillic letters bled across the page.

“I shouldn’t be giving you this,” she said, lowering her voice. “But I’ve seen the footage. They took your mother alive. They want a confession before they finish the job. If you move now, you might make it in time.”

For a heartbeat, the world stopped moving. I could hear nothing but the faint hum of the fluorescent light above us and the roar of blood in my ears.

Then everything snapped.

I grabbed the paper, my bloody fingers smearing the ink, the letters dissolving into a crimson blur.

My pulse was pounding so hard I could barely breathe.

I turned toward the exit, limping, unsteady. The woman’s voice stopped me.

“Don’t go unarmed,” she said quietly.

I didn’t answer. Didn’t look back.

My broken body moved on instinct — pain was irrelevant now. Rage was stronger. Fear sharper.

I slammed through the doors, into the night, into the downpour that hadn’t stopped since the world began falling apart.

The car door stuck for half a second before giving way, and I fell into the driver’s seat, breath ragged.

The smell of iron filled the cabin — my blood on the upholstery, my sweat on the steering wheel. The engine coughed, then roared.

I reversed hard, tires shrieking, the car fishtailing on slick pavement as I shot out of the garage.

My ribs screamed, my vision wavered, but I kept going.

The city blurred — red lights, headlights, sirens in the distance — all meaningless noise.

“Mom,” I whispered, my voice shaking, my teeth chattering from pain and adrenaline. “Stay alive. Please… just stay alive.”

The paper sat on the dashboard, the ink half washed away by my blood and the rain, but the address burned in my mind.

“I’ll save you,” I swore under my breath, again and again, the words turning to a rhythm that drowned out the pain. “I’ll save you. I’ll fucking save you.”

A car honked. Someone shouted. The light turned red, but I didn’t stop. The city didn’t matter. The cops didn’t matter. My life didn’t matter.

Only she did.

My mother — the only person who had come for me.

And Penelope Romano — the girl I’d loved with every piece of my ruined heart — had betrayed me deeper than anyone ever could.

The road ahead was a black river of rain and vengeance, leading to a reckoning I wasn’t sure I’d survive.

But if I didn’t — I’d make sure she remembered my name before I died.