The Promise (Darkest Lies Trilogy Book 2) by Bethany-Kris (fiction book recommendations .txt) 📕

“Let me go.”

She raged against him.

Pushing.

Crying.

Begging, too.

He didn’t even touch her—didn’t move, either. Not once did he stop her from hitting him, those emotions of hers tumbling out in the worst way.

“I can’t let you leave, Karine,” he told her softly, “You could be a danger to yourself. To others. We gotta get this figured out first, huh? Come on, sweetheart.”

She heard him.

Karine simply didn’t want to.

“You don’t know me,” she sobbed, her strength and desire to run depleting fast. “You know nothing. You have to let me go. I don’t care what happens to me.”

“Karine, I care about what happens to you.”

It all stopped, then.

Her crying.

The fighting.

Even the way he positioned himself in the doorway to block her loosened a bit as those words fell between them. She parted her lips, testing the words she wanted to shout back to protect herself from the hope that dared to grow in her heart. They stuck in her throat instead. He refused to look away.

Roman wanted her to see he meant it—every single word.

Then, he reached for her and she let him. His arms wrapped around her, and despite the feelings trapped inside her that she fought to ignore, she sagged in his embrace because it was fucking easy. He wouldn’t let her fall, but he also wouldn’t let her pretend, either.

“It’s okay,” she heard him say. “We’ll get it figured out, Karine. We will.”

She wished she could walk away now. She didn’t want to hear any explanation he had for the voices in her head, or who they were. Maybe her life was better caged behind the walls of a mansion that didn’t quite feel like home with a constant flow of medication at the ready to make everything bad go away.

Maybe.

“I’m not crazy, Roman,” she whimpered, the words muffled as she dug her face into his chest. She didn’t want him to see how hard she cried, or that she couldn’t control the flood of tears. “I’m not.”

He held her tighter.

“I know you’re not crazy. You’re just a little unwell, babe, and I’m the only one trying to help right now. You have to let me help you, Karine. Please, let me help you.”

FIVE

Karine needed help. That was the whole truth, plain and simple. Technically, it didn’t matter what the other facts were about her current situation, and Roman wasn’t even sure if it was up to him to dig into the past and uncover all the secrets the Yazovs were keeping as to why this had happened to her. What he needed to focus on right now was keeping Karine safe ... and stable.

At least until someone could help her.

This meltdown had not been like the first. If anything, it was worse. He thought he was prepared for another one, but he wasn’t. The calm Roman kept throughout explaining facts—as he knew them to be—to Karine about Katee and Katina was nothing short of a miracle. Self-control he didn’t know he possessed, until he realized she wouldn’t give him a choice.

The woman was a hurricane.

She didn’t need more chaos.

Roman hadn’t asked Karine what exactly was going on inside her head—he wasn’t sure he should, or if she would even tell him. Not yet. But he noticed every single one of her tics, like how she glanced to the side like she was hearing something there, though he chose not to point them out. But he’d seen the look of realization in her eyes, too.

When he said things she couldn’t deny—when she knew things he said to be true. Two and two together always made four, even if at first, it didn’t seem right.

He didn’t know where to start when it came to helping Karine, though. It was so fucking obvious he was in way over his head. Was he expected to be an expert on how to handle all of this?

Hell, he didn’t even know an expert to deal with this. But he sure as shit was going to try. Who else would do it for Karine?

That was the sad thing he had already realized. If not him, then she had no one.

He’d spent some time consoling Karine, only to get her back sitting on the bed where he found a cut on her heel had reopened to bleed through the fresh bandage. It was then that Masha heard the loud sobs, and returned to suggest that Karine might like to have a bath.

If he agreed, that was.

Masha’s words.

Not his.

Even though they weren’t in Chicago—or under the demanding, watchful eye of Maxim Yazov—it seemed that Masha had already placed herself on a lower rung of an imaginary hierarchy. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that, to be honest, but there were bigger issues on his plate. In fact, he wasn’t even technically attached to Karine in any way that gave him control over her, but Masha was willing to treat him like he was.

Without question.

The burdens of his responsibilities were never more apparent to Roman. And he couldn’t say that he had been ready for it.

He took the opportunity to step away when Karine was led out of his bedroom by Masha. She kept glancing at him over her shoulder, and she wasn’t crying anymore, but she looked completely broken—one step at a time, he supposed. Roman nodded at her, and stayed where she could see him in the hallway until Masha directed her into the bathroom down the hall.

She still threw him one last, fleeting look that made his chest ache.

How was he supposed to do this?

How did she?

That was the better question.

By the time Roman finally was able to step back into the living room, he found his father by the bar, pouring a glass of vodka.

The broken glass on the floor had magically been cleaned away. Not a shattered shard in sight. Even the bloody tracks, droplets, and smears all over the marble floors had been cleaned, too. The bull was nowhere to