The Promise (Darkest Lies Trilogy Book 2) by Bethany-Kris (e book reader android txt) 📗

wanted to try them herself, and she loved Katina. More than anyone else in the world.

From where she played in the corner, she could see clearly through the crack of the French doors into her sister’s bedroom. It was the shadow that passed over the corner of Katina’s bed, where she’d haphazardly thrown her rose-gold comforter into a pile, that turned Karine into a statue.

Still, she could hear Roman.

Stuck between her past, and present.

He was there.

“Karine, what the fuck are you talking about—who killed her? Who is she?”

Her voice was faded.

In the background somewhere.

“Dima. He killed my sister.”

She was nine when it happened. Life had been so different before that night. Not better, just ... different.

There was silence between them. Stretching on while the shadow on the blanket grew larger, and Karine couldn’t hide away from the scene that had stayed buried for so long in her mind.

“I saw it happen,” she said, wanting Roman to know why. Why everything was so ... so very wrong. And why it had been that way for too long. “I was there.”

When she blinked, she was transported back to the walk-in closet, sugared-rose in the air, and charcoal staining her tiny fingertips. Her big sister was in the room, scribbling something in a sketchbook—Karine had stolen Katina’s other notepad to do her own drawing.

She hadn’t thought Katina would stay for as long as she did, leaving Karine unable to sneak back out like she usually would without drawing attention. Instead, she sketched a picture of the old willow tree for her sister to find, but it probably wouldn’t look anything like Katina’s carefully crafted pieces of art. Not that the quality mattered—she pasted her creations all over her bedroom walls.

Annoying their father to death.

Not that Maxim cared much lately. He was too busy, never staying at home for long because the sight of his daughters reminded him of things he no longer had. Instead, the girls were raised by the servants and whatever nanny had been assigned to them for a time.

Karine had noticed the visitor in her sister’s room first—that approaching shadow didn’t catch her sister’s attention until it was already too late. Katina’s futile efforts to ask him to leave, his very presence enough to make her voice quake, didn’t work. It was the fear she heard from her sister that made Karine stay crouched in the closet, and not make a sound.

But it was the way she remembered seeing Dima watch the girls as they played in the halls of their home that kept her silent as the rapidly spiraling conversation outside the closet went from bad to worse. Some people just felt bad. He was one of those, but his father’s constant presence in Maxim’s life meant the man was around more often than he wasn’t.

Karine and Katina made every effort to stay away. Lately, even that didn’t work to keep hidden from Dima’s unnerving view.

The nine-year-old hiding behind thin doors with a visible crack in the middle didn’t know what to do when he’d hit Katina across the face after she’d dared to step off her bed toward him, demanding he leave. She saw the flash of her sister’s bare calf when she stumbled back to the bed, almost falling to the ground.

Except Dima was there, grabbing her.

In one second, he apologized.

In the next, he hit her when she cried.

The memory wasn’t as clear, then. Her mind couldn’t really process the scene of her sister’s trembling legs pinned against the side of her bed, or the sounds of muffled sobs. Despite her young age, she did comprehend pain, and she couldn’t get her hands to cover her ears good enough not to hear ... she couldn’t squeeze her eyes shut tight enough to keep the burned images away.

Karine couldn’t breathe. The same way she couldn’t breathe that day inside the closet. The same way her sister couldn’t breathe when Dima had used Katina’s bloody tank top to strangle her when Katina wouldn’t stop fighting.

Karine had needed to put her hand over her mouth to keep herself from screaming. Her sister couldn’t make a sound then because none would ever escape her lips again. She’d bitten through the skin of her knuckle, the sounds of those final moments one of her biggest regrets.

Taking her hands from her ears had consequences.

Her mind kind of broke, then.

All shattered into different pieces.

Sharp fragments. Never quite fitting back together the way they once did, but cutting her until she bled all the same when they tried.

“I’m so sorry,” she heard Roman say.

Karine was still staring out at the darkness that overlooked the lake. The memory had already begun to fade, but the effects remained burrowed deep in her heart, filling her chest with a heaviness that only seemed to spread.

“Nobody even knew it was him,” she said in a whisper. “Her death was just another excuse for my father to avoid, and—”

“You shouldn’t have had to see something like that.”

Maybe not.

“But that wasn’t the worst part, Roman.”

“Babe—just come to me. You don’t have to tell me this on the phone. Let Alec drive you to me, okay?”

It was too late.

That was the thing.

Karine had kept it secret for as long as she could ... there was no holding it back.

Maybe it was a noise that drew Dima’s attention to where Karine had been hiding in the closet. Either way, he’d found her there. Wild-looking, and bloodstained. Jeans shoved down his hips, and red staining his hands.

You.

That was all she remembered him saying. Well, that’s where her memories stopped altogether. The voice that answered the monster back when he’d thrown open those French doors was not her own.

“Pl-please don’t hurt me.”

The first words Katee ever spoke.

Regardless of how hard Karine tried, she couldn’t remember what happened next. Katee had simply decided those memories were hers to have.

Part of Karine was grateful.

The rest was terrified.

“Karine, listen to me—can you hear me?” Roman asked, the firm words forcing Karine to blink out of the blackhole