Page 142 of Unlock My Heart

“Come see for yourself.”

I walk around to the driver’s side door, my feet faltering.

Nobody has been scratched out, and Everything is scratched above it.

Hot tears begin streaming down my face.

Nobody. Nobody. Nobody. Nobody.

Whore. Whore. Whore. Whore.

The stealth grief morphs into panic as a flashback splits into my psyche like a lightning bolt.

Terror grips my throat. I’m being buried alive beneath the putrid smell of trash.

“Sienna!” Faiben sounds far away, his voice muffled. “Uh-huh. Stay right here with me.” His face comes into focus as he grips my shoulders. “Breathe. I’ll count.”

My legs give out, and I’m in his arms as he slides us both to the ground, leaning against his car.

“Breathe with me for four and hold it.”

“I can’t,” I say between shallow panting.

“Yes, you can. Your stubborn ass can do anything. One. Two. Three. Four. Hold it.”

My lungs have inflated slightly as I do as he commands, and we go through this exercise two more times before I’m feeling somewhat back to the here and now, spent and turned inside out.

“Look at me,” Fabien says, gently tilting my head so he can see my eyes.

“There isn’t a way forward for us.” My words sound as small and deflated as I feel. “I’m stuck in the past; in that dumpster. I can’t get over what was done to me, or that you let it happen with one word.”

Fabien makes a strangled sound, but I need this off my chest. “You can change that word on your car, but it changes nothing.”

My fists pound against his chest as I scream incoherently. Pound and scream, pound and scream, until I feel like a popped balloon, all the fight having whooshed out of me.

I collapse against him, and he wraps me in his arms. Through my hot tears, I feel his own tears landing on my forehead. “Baby, I’m so sorry.” Fabien’s voice breaks. “So damn sorry.”

It is out of sheer stubbornness, but I pull myself up and hurry inside, locking myself in the bathroom.

Retrieving the phone, I swipe at my eyes as I power it up, scrolling through Kirkey’s missed texts, the tenor of each message getting more and more hostile.

He thinks I’ve ghosted him.

I’m the ghost, neither dead nor alive, haunted by my own past.

Relax, I’m still here. I’ve been waiting to gather more intel. My ears are open, lips loose, just as soon as that other million drops.

You’d better not be jerking me around. I promise you, doll, you don’t want me as an enemy.

These asshole men. They’re the ones who should be worried about making an enemy out of me.

Chapter Forty-Two

Fabien

The present

Having given Sienna space after our disastrous start to what I had planned as the perfect date, I find her cutting large swaths of black fabric in her work studio.