The Agreement (Darkest Lies Trilogy Book 1) by Bethany-Kris (motivational books for men .TXT) 📕

colors on the pages despite how fast he went through it.

The whole time, Roman glared.

At each page.

He scrutinized the images closely—like they meant something to him, and he had a personal connection to what was staring back at him. She couldn’t quite the same.

Still watching him in silence, an uneasiness settled deep inside her. It wasn’t that she was afraid of him, or what he might do. For the first time, she wasn’t afraid of a man.

Well ...

This man, anyway.

He had looked at her in a way that said he would never hurt her. And yet, Karine couldn’t put a finger on why all of this felt so wrong.

“You’re telling me you don’t know where I found it?” he snapped, the question raking over her skin. Like hot coals searing lines down her body. When he turned his eyes to her again, she found fire staring back. It burned from where she sat on the bed, still lost to what was happening.

“That’s what I’m telling you,” Karine replied, trying desperately to keep her voice level. She hadn’t done anything to warrant the way he was treating her. “I don’t know what it is, or why it matters.”

“I found it under your bed, Karine. I almost tripped on it when I got up to go for a piss. It was right there.”

She looked at it again, her brow furrowing. He brandished the sketchbook in the air like a sword, daring her to deny what he was saying. Despite not knowing what the sketchbook was, what it held, or why it had been stuck under her bed, simply looking at it caused a swell of emotions that she couldn’t explain.

All bad.

It drowned her.

The confusion was heaviest, and most prominent. Except it was best friends with the disgust that filled up her stomach with nausea the longer she stared at the item he held. It was the fear climbing up her spine simply because he had the sketchbook that concerned her the most, though. All of those warring emotions—all at the same time, too.

Why did a sketchbook have that effect on her?

Karine didn’t know, and she didn’t care to find out. Not tonight, certainly not when everything else had been so perfect. Just like everything else in her life that didn’t make sense and scared her, she wanted to hide it away and bury it as deep as it would go—wherever it would go.

Those details didn’t matter.

It just needed to leave.

Now.

“Roman, please—can you put that away?”

Her tone remained calm.

She was anything but.

“Who is Katee?” he asked instead.

Karine shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Come on. You need to trust me, and tell me the truth.”

What was he talking about?

Stepping closer, Roman flipped through the pages—his hands a manic frenzy—until he seemed to find the one he was looking for.

“You don’t know who this is?” Roman asked, turning the sketchbook around to force her to look at the image. Karine’s stomach seemed to cave when she had no choice but to face the picture. Someone had drawn a young girl’s face in angry strokes with a lot of different colors. However, there was no mistaking who it was—her. “A self portrait, maybe?”

His burning glare remained locked on her while she found that she couldn’t look away from the drawing.

“That is you,” he added firmly when she didn't reply.

She glanced up at him, water filling her eyes and her lips parting slightly, the urge to cry out for help welling within her. Somehow, she shoved it back down long enough to utter, “I don’t know who drew that.”

“Karine.”

“I don’t!”

Roman shot her another stinging, fleeting look, muttering, “And this?”

He flipped over to the next page, and what she saw there made her wince. It was a picture of a man. Undeniably Dima, but with exaggerated facial features like a caricature from a cartoon, maybe. It was drawn in the same style as the previous portrait with varying colors, except this one had been violently scribbled and scratched over. Possibly with nails and crayons to the point that the page had torn in several places.

The anger and pain radiated from the page—bleeding into the lines and colors, evident in the wear and tear.

“There’s no way you don’t know who drew this, Karine. It was under your bed. You know who Katee is—you can tell me.”

Roman’s voice dripped with bitterness, but he still tried to soften it. He wanted her to trust him with the information he apparently had, except she didn’t have the answers.

“I don’t know,” she insisted.

Again.

Roman sighed harshly, squaring his shoulders as he scrubbed a hand down his jaw. His patience was quickly running out, it seemed.

“What do you think will happen to her when you marry Dima, and you’re no longer here to protect her?” he demanded.

What?

Karine shook her head violently, saying only “Protect who? I don’t know that girl.”

Her denials did nothing.

“Is she here? Do they keep her hidden—like you? Out of view?” Every question slammed into her harder than the last. Roman’s tone grew deeper, and darker, unrelenting in a quest she hadn’t known even started until it was too late. Her soul was stripped and exposed for him under his scrutiny, but she couldn’t get away. He wasn’t anywhere near finished, saying, “You’re gambling with a child’s life. That can’t be who you are.”

Roman wasn’t the only one becoming desperate, though. Karine’s mind raced to find a way to convince him she wasn’t lying—her words spilled out in a rush before she could stop them, or consider what she said.

“No, she’s not here ... I’ve never even heard that name before! I don’t know Katee.”

Yet, as she said the name, images from her past dreams ran through her mind at lightning speed. A movie reel she couldn’t escape. A little girl’s arms wrapped around a tree trunk as she spun and spun. Humming a nursery rhyme she didn’t recognize. Karine continued to shake her head, rubbing at her mouth and face, even her forehead and into her hairline, with her fingertips