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

Maxim tipped the glass filled with gasoline at the edge, spilling the caustic liquid across his desk, drenching everything it could touch in its spread. He couldn’t make mistakes, he didn’t want to leave any evidence or a chance of survival.

“Maxim!”

The voice echoed as the door opened, but it was already too late. He dropped the cigar with the brightly-burning ash on the desk, sparks igniting the first licks of hot flames.

It spread fast, and brilliant. The fire reached high enough to touch the chandelier hanging overtop the desk in seconds. Enthralled, he couldn’t look away.

Maybe that was his only mistake.

It was through the flames that he saw the gun.

Pointed right at him.

SEVEN

The loudest voice in Karine’s mind made herself known with a sharp hiss—what are you doing?

She recognized the voice well, now—Katina no longer cared when interrupting Karine’s reality—always putting her on edge. That was filled with anxiety and panic every time Karine dared to make any decision on her own.

She didn’t trust her choices. Didn’t believe she could make the right ones, and smothered her with the fear of falling, crashing, and burning.

Yet, she ignored the hissed question, and the loud Karine! Pretending she didn’t hear it at all spurred on the courage she had only experienced once before—the night she asked Roman to come to her room.

“Karine.”

That time, the voice wasn’t in her head. Roman’s murmur of her name also didn’t feel like a question—he wasn’t asking, not again, but he also wasn’t telling her, either.

Karine stepped into the room, and shut the door behind her.

The only light in the room came from what the moon provided in the windows. It wasn’t much. Her eyes didn’t adjust well to the darkness, so she focused on only the shadow of his form lounging in the bed.

Her courage had been enough to lead her into the room, but she couldn’t actually step any closer to him once the door was closed. The war raged inside her head. A battle between the urge to just leave—run out of the room again—and the desire to stay because she wanted to be close to him.

This time, it was only herself she fought with, though. Karine was starting to learn those were actually the hardest fights for her.

Roman was far too quiet for Karine’s liking, and the silence started to get to her in the worst way. She resisted the compulsion to twist her fingers together to ease the anxiety. If he would just say something, then she wouldn’t have to, and she might know what he was thinking.

“Nightmares?” he asked suddenly, and Karine breathed her relief out in a whoosh. “Have you been having them a lot recently?”

Forcing the lump down that had formed in her throat to keep her quiet, she finally found her own voice again. .

“Yeah, I think so,” Karine whispered.

She couldn’t be sure because she never remembered what happened in the nightmares. Instead, she often woke up with a racing heart, airless as she gasped to catch her breath, and a heaviness weighing down her very soul. Still, with absolute certainty, she knew that she had seen something in her sleep that had made her afraid.

And sad.

That heaviness was always sad.

“What was the nightmare about tonight?” Roman questioned.

Karine blinked, trying to clear her mind and will back the images that had scared her awake simply because he asked her to, but it was pointless.

“I don’t know—I don’t remember,” she admitted, shaking her head. “But I couldn’t breathe. When I woke up, it felt like I was choking. I was gasping for air, but it was like my lungs were empty. I couldn’t tell if I was drowning or suffocating.”

Roman said nothing when she continued, saying, “I jumped out of the bed, hands around my throat, but—” Karine stopped short, sucking in a gulp of air and forcing her hands to stay at her sides instead of covering her throat again like she had when she woke up alone and scared in her room. “I didn’t know where I was, so I went running for the door.”

“Oh?”

“I almost fell over Masha.”

That interested him.

“Masha?” Roman asked.

Despite the drips of fear still falling through her bloodstream, his voice was heavy and warm in the darkness. It wrapped around her like a hug, tight and secure.

“She was sleeping at the door of my room,” Karine explained.

Roman’s form shifted, the shuffle of the sheets echoing before a click sounded, and the room flooded with light. His hand fell away from the bedside lamp that he’d turned on, and back to the bed.

The warm, yellow glow was more than enough for her to be able to see him clearly now. And he was a sight to see.

Naked, save for the black boxer-briefs he wore, Roman rested comfortably on gray sheets seemingly unbothered that she openly stared. Karine couldn’t stop it, taking in the black roses tattooed on his upper chest and how the ink only served to draw someone’s gaze to his body.

Right now, hers.

And the sight of him made her weak in the knees.

His sheets were kicked off around his feet, leaving the rest of him on display for her to admire. The ropes of muscles that made up his muscular thighs. The dark dusting of hair that trailed from his navel to the waistband of his boxer-briefs. Even the way his hand rested against the defined track of abdominal muscles was tempting to her senses.

She’d rather her head be lying there, and his hand stroking her hair. It wasn’t lost on Karine that before Roman, she hadn’t even admired the sight of a man, never mind wanting one to touch her. Then again, she had certainly never been as close to a man as she allowed herself to be with Roman, either.

For the first time, she wasn’t opposed to the idea of letting someone in.

Just a little bit.

As long as it was him.

Roman’s left brow cocked high as he watched