Page 110 of Monstrous Urges
25
TAYLOR
About those strings, and pulling them…
My string is the cheap black flip phone that Kenzo Mori pressed into my hand at the Moscow gala. That night, with guilt flowing through my veins like fire, I hid it away in my little evening bag. Back here at the house, I’ve kept it in a box of tampons under the sink in my bathroom.
Out of sight. But not out of mind.
“Answers to all the things you can’t explain, Ms. Crown.”
I don’t know why I haven’t told Drazen about meeting Kenzo. It’s not just because he told me not to. It just feels…
Well, like I shouldn’t. Like it will set fires that can’t be put out. There’s also a little fear in the back of my mind of it blowing over onto Fumi, just for being Kenzo’s half-sister. And they’re not even close, her having just learned of his existence recently.
Yet, the longer that goddamn thing stays under the bathroom sink, the guiltier I feel. It’s as if the mere presence of that phone means I’m cheating on Drazen.
At the same time, I don’t know if even fucking another guy, given whatever Drazen’s and my arrangement is, would be considered cheating. Not that I want to fuck anyone else.
What the hell are we? A couple? It sometimes feels like it, in a weird way. Other times, not so much. Technicalities of us being married aside, it feels…undefined. Probably because it is. I mean I’m stuck here on his island. And it’s not like I’ve got opportunities to—or any remote interest in—sleeping with any other man on this island, like any of the guards, or that gruff guy, Milos, who always looks like he’s annoyed at me.
But Drazen leaves. Not often, but every now and then. I know he’s off the island. Sometimes he tells me he’s leaving, other times he doesn’t. Either way, God only knows where he goes.
Or who he sees…
My brow furrows as my gaze slips from the book in my hand to my bathroom door.
“Hide this. When you’re ready for answers, use it.”
It’s been three weeks since the ball. For all I know, Kenzo’s offer was an exploding, time-limited one. He could’ve meant “when you’re ready for answers tomorrow” or “in the next few days.”
Not “almost a month from now.”
Then again… There’s only one way to know for sure.
I’m off the bed before I can stop myself. My hand rifles through the box of tampons until I find the little phone, a tingling feeling clawing up my neck as I pull it out.
This feels wrong. I haven’t even done anything yet, and it still feels like I’m doing something wrong.
But while the box of photos Drazen gave me has become one of the most precious objects I’ve ever owned, and even though I spend almost every night looking through them, it’s still not enough.
I need more.
I need more answers to questions I’m almost scared to ask.
Who am I.
You’re Annika Brancovich AND Taylor Crown.
But what if I’m not? What if I’m only one of them?
And what if Kenzo Mori has the answers to those hard questions?
I’ve kept the phone off since he gave it to me—one, I wouldn’t want it to ring. Two, I don’t have a charger for it, and I have no idea where on Drazen’s little island fortress I’d find a charger for what looks like a flip phone from twenty years ago.
When I turn it on and flip to the contacts, I see only one there. There’s no name, but it’s clear who it is.
Me