Renata
The closet is dark and humid. I try rattling the doors again and again, but it doesn’t get me any closer to escaping. Like it or not, I’m trapped.
I huddle up, legs to my chest, still dripping water from the shower. Kian’s naked body flashes across my mind’s eye far more often than I’d like. Every time it does, I sneer and try to make the vision disappear.
But who am I kidding? He’s a fucking specimen. Carved from marble. Eyes like jewels. And the gray in his hair only heightens it all.
He’s been the boogeyman in my nightmare for twenty years. But the darkness in him does something very, very dangerous to the darkness in me.
I fall asleep at some point.
Or at least, I think I do.
All I know is that suddenly, I’m not in the wardrobe anymore—I’m somewhere else. Somewhere twenty years in the past. And I’m not the bitter, angry adult Renata Lombardi anymore. Not quite.
I’m just a five-year-old girl wondering what is happening at my father’s wedding.
Why there’s so much blood.
Why the screams of dying men echo through the house.
There’s blood dripping off the hem of my dress, but that doesn’t bother as much as the screams. They’re coming from the courtyard just outside the house.
“Stay away!” Someone had shouted that to me when the gunfire began. But I’ve never followed instructions very well.
When I step forward, under the slight shadow of the doorway, I see him.
A man. Tall and muscular with short hair, brown but shot through with blond, and intense blue eyes that skewer me in place.
An avenging angel.
He’s covered in blood, but I don’t run. Even when he walks toward me and squats down in front of me, I feel safe. Comfortable in his presence. His eyes are intense, but not unkind.
He tears off a scrap of his own shirt, and my eyes linger on the piece of fabric as he raises it to my cut cheek.
“Who are you?” I ask in a tiny, meek voice.
He doesn’t answer. Just keeps mopping the blood off my face. Then he stands and turns to leave.
“Wait! Don’t leave,” I whimper. He doesn’t pause. Doesn’t look back. He just disappears around the corner.
“Help me,” I whisper. But no one can hear me.
* * *
My eyes dart open.
The scene—the blood, the man—it all disappears. I’m awake again. But all I can see is darkness.
I gasp and sit upright. My legs complain instantly. I’ve fallen asleep lying on the wardrobe floor with my knees scrunched up near my chest. I try to stretch, but a cramp pulses up my leg and I have to keel over to try and soothe the muscle. Even after it passes though, my body aches.
How long have I been in here? I can see a sliver of light through the tiny slit at the bottom of the wardrobe door. It must be morning—but what time?
The air feels stale, oppressive. And it smells like him. Kian O’Sullivan’s scent is burying me in here, drowning me.
I want out. I need out.
I push against the wardrobe doors, but they don’t budge. He knew what he was doing when he trapped me in here.