He takes my hand, his bigger one swallowing mine, and starts for the door, and this time I don’t try to stop him. My head is spinning, and not from the pain. Because somehow speaking my fears makes them more real. I might have killed someone and I can’t breathe with the idea. I try and I just can’t get air into my lungs, let alone process where Kayden is leading me. I blink and we are inside a small, round room wrapped in floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and I don’t even remember how we got here.
Kayden sits me in one of two gray leather chairs, kneeling in front of me. “Easy, sweetheart,” he says, his hands settling on my legs. “We’ll deal with this. Tell me what you know.”
I finally draw in a deep breath and let it trickle from my lips. “I was in his room and I knew he was about to return. I was pacing and giving myself a pep talk that ended in me walking to a dresser and opening a drawer. Inside was a gun.”
“And then what?”
“I meant to hurt him.” My words are confident, strong—the way I wish I were about everything, not just murder.
“But you don’t know that you did?”
“Yes. No. Yes.”
He arches a brow. “Okay. Let’s move to something cut and dry. Do you remember what he looks like?”
“No.”
“What did you do with the gun?”
“I just remember looking at it and knowing I had to use it.”
“Nothing else? You’re sure?”
“That’s it.”
“We don’t know that you even tried to kill him.”
“I know what I feel.”
“You also keep saying I’m familiar beyond what is the truth.”
“No one else I’ve met feels like you do to me.”
“Case in point,” he says. “Your mind is sending you messages you aren’t always reading right. You can’t jump to conclusions until you fully recover your memory.”
“What if it was Niccolo?”
“He’s alive.”
“What if I tried to kill him?”
He reaches in his pocket and pulls out his phone, punches a couple of buttons, and then offers it to me. “Niccolo.”
I close my hand over his and take the phone, staring down at the image of a man in his thirties with curly dark hair and dark eyes, dressed in an expensive fitted suit. And I wait for the familiar feeling to follow, but it doesn’t.
“Anything?” Kayden asks.
I shake my head and look up at him. “No, but you just said my memory is not working right. Maybe it’s not. I mean, Niccolo is hunting me.”
“I’m not convinced it’s because you tried to kill him.”
“Then why would he be chasing me?” I ask.
“That’s what we need to find out.”
“What if ‘he’ was someone close to Niccolo?”
“We’ll go through pictures of everyone close to him once we’re at my place.”