Page 106 of Monstrous Urges

“I don’t know how to tell you this, Taylor,” Kenzo murmurs as he starts to step away. “But there’s another you out there. And I would very much like to find her.”

Without another word, he turns and storms away into the crowd, leaving a wreckage of screaming, unanswered questions in his wake.

24

TAYLOR

The reason people tell you to never pull at a string is that once you start, there’s no going back. Until finally, you’ve pulled so much that the whole sweater comes unraveled.

And yet, it’s so hard to see a little string and not want to pull it.

A week after the gala in Moscow, it feels like I’m at a weird crossroads.

On the one hand, I’ve slowly started to accept who I am. Even though “who I am” is complicated. Because I’m starting to believe I’m two different people.

One is the woman I’ve known for fifteen years. Her name is Taylor. She loves the few close friends she has, working out, Van Morrison, and trashy reality TV. She’s also a complete workaholic, is married to her job, doesn’t know what a work-life balance even looks like, and is fine with all of that. She’s more than fine. She thrives on it.

She’s built a career and an empire, and if that came at the expense of a house in the burbs with a doting husband, two point five children, a dog and a minivan, so be it.

She’s great with that choice.

Then there’s the other “me”. The girl I forgot fifteen years ago. Her name is Annika. Her family is, or was, Serbian mafia. I don’t know what sort of music she liked, or what she did for fun, or if she ever watched reality television.

She married out of duty. Then she participated in a horrible, loathsome event. The only thing keeping me from tearing my own soul out with guilt and horror there is that I don’t remember it, or my motive for being part of it.

And that’s it. That’s all I know. Or all I knew, and I was having an interesting enough time trying to juggle and handle both those realities and selves. But then Moscow happened, and I met Kenzo.

Suddenly, the balance is all shaken up again.

“Answers to all the things you can’t explain, Ms. Crown. The gaps in your memory. The things you do when you’re asleep. The question that I think deep down, you’ve already figured out.”

“I’m not her.”

“There’s another you out there.”

I’ve been wondering why my great-aunt Florence would tell me my name is Taylor when the everyone I’ve met since crashing into Drazen’s world knows me as Annika. But I’ve looked into my family time and time again over the years, using every resource I could to dig as deep as possible. But the same questions forever remain unanswered, because of who my parents were. Well, who I thought they were.

Florence always told me in a hushed tone, as if worried someone was listening, that they worked for the CIA. That accounted for the huge amount of money they left me, and the total black hole that their pasts were. Whenever I dug into Paul and Lea Crown, I never found anything.

No other living family, either. Great-Aunt Florence was the last of them.

But after fighting my way back from the blackness and relearning who I was and how to navigate the world, I chose to look forward. I chose to see the accident that took my memories as a marker, separating the two parts of my life. And after relearning all that I know now about the “other” part of me I forgot, I was starting to make peace with the two parts of my life: the “before” Annika and the “after” Taylor.

Now I’m not so sure about any of it. I’m not sure I even AM Annika.

But if that’s the case…who the fuck am I?

A knock on my bedroom door yanks me out of my thoughts and I turn to see Drazen standing in the doorway. It’s funny: I’ve been here a month now, and this is still “my” room, just like he sleeps in “his” room.

He’s chased me around the house. He’s tied me to his bed or mine. He’s spanked me, fucked me, come in and on me, and made me scream for more as he pushes me past every blurry black line I have and into every depraved fantasy I’ve ever had.

But we’ve never once spent the night together.

I’m not sure if I’m complaining about that, but it’s something I’m more and more aware of as time goes on.

“Yes?” I glance over at him.

“Dinnertime,” Drazen growls.