INSATIABLE CRAVINGS
Insatiable Cravings – Episode 142
Subtitle; {Loving You Is A Loosing Game}
TAGS: Age-gap, Mafia, Forbidden Love, Drama, Tragedy and Betrayal.
Settings: United Kingdom, Russia and others.
★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★
~ Genevieve ~
My mouth was dry.
The kind of dry that stripped your tongue raw and made every swallow feel like dragging splinters down your throat. I longed for water, but the thought of asking twisted my stomach. What if it wasn’t safe? What if they’d tampered with it?
I couldn’t risk it. Not for me. Not for the child inside me.
So I stayed silent, my lips pressed shut.
Rory shifted again beside me, her body trembling with nervous energy. She couldn’t keep still. The scuff of her boots against the floor, the restless twitch of her fingers—she was already plotting, testing the walls in her mind. Brave, reckless Rory. She thought of escape, always escape. I thought only of survival. Of my baby. Of Dominic.
The night outside pressed against the barred windows, heavy and watchful. Crickets shrieked, owls hooted—their cries sharp enough to make the skin on my arms pebble. The air smelt of damp plaster and stale tobacco, thick with the ghost of old smoke.
At least the cold didn’t sink too deep into me. I’d layered myself well: red turtleneck, black leggings beneath a skirt, wool coat. Strange foresight, as if some part of me had known the night would end in an abdúction from a car park. Rory, draped in pink and white fur, looked more like she was dressed for champagne than captivity, but at least she wasn’t shivering.
“I can’t help but worry Nic didn’t get the message.” Her voice was low but edged with panic. “What if he never saw it? What if you thought you sent it, but didn’t?”
The words clawed at me. Before I could answer, the door swung open.
A man filled the frame. Tall, broad, dead-eyed. His stride was deliberate, heavy, the sound of his boots echoing across the room like a threat. He radiated boredom, but it was the sort of boredom that hid violence.
“Come on,” he said, his tone flat, like life itself bored him. “A room’s been arranged.”
Rory and I rose together. His eyes flicked over us—assessing, weighing, like a butchér eyeing cuts of meat. A mask of indifference, but beneath it, ruthlessness. His gaze caught mine, and for a moment I felt the chill of what he was capable of.
“What room?” Rory’s voice snapped, sharp enough to sting.
His lip curled. “Follow. I won’t ask again.”
The room he herded us into was suffocating in its simplicity. Teal wallpaper curling at the seams, a single bulb casting jaundiced light, the drone of its filament filling the silence. A wooden door locked behind us with a sound that lodged in my chest. Two barred windows, no freedom beyond them—only shadows of men, cigarettes glowing in the dark.
The bed in the middle looked wrong. Sheets too crisp, corners tucked too neatly, as if daring us to disturb them. I couldn’t stop staring, half convinced the thing would move, rise, consume.
Another man entered, heavier, sweat and cologne clinging to him. He carried a tray, steam rising from two bowls, condensation beading on bottled water. He set it on the bed with practised care.
“Eat,” he said. Nothing more.
The lock clicked again behind him.
Rory’s eyes met mine. The unspoken question hummed between us.
Should we?
“He wouldn’t…” she whispered, “…he wouldn’t poíson us, would he?”
I forced a shake of my head, though my own pulse betrayed me. “No. He needs us alive.”
“Good,” she muttered. “Because I’m starving.”
“Likewise.”
The bowls held fried rice, broccoli, eggs fried until the edges crisped. Steam curled into the air, thick with oil and salt.
The sight of the egg made my throat close. Its smell clung, sulphurous and heavy, turning my stomach.
“You want mine?” I asked, pushing the plate towards her.
“You don’t?”
“No. Makes me sick.”
“Oh.”
I slid it into her bowl. Forced myself to eat. The taste was tolerable, but every mouthful felt dangeróus, like swallowing a trap.
••
Rory lay stretched across the bed, her gaze fixed on the ceiling, voice quiet but heavy.
“What do you think’s happening at home right now?”
“Dominic will be worried sick,” I said without hesitation. “My sister will have rung, and when I didn’t answer, she’d know something was wrong. She’ll have told Dominic, and he might confide in her—or he might not. Then she’ll tell Everett. Everett will tell my mother. And once my mother knows, my grandfather will call in the army.”
Her eyes flicked to me. “And do you think they’ll find us?”
I shook my head slowly. “No. Not unless Viktor decides to hand us over. He’ll let Dominic know when it suits him—when it serves his purpose.”
“You’re probably right.” Rory sighed, her voice edged with resignation. “But from what I know of Viktor, he likes to take his time. He savours things. He’s disturbingly patient.”
“How long before that patience breaks?” I murmured. “How long before the power-hungry mónster inside him claws free of its cage?”
She didn’t answer. Her lips pressed tight, her eyes narrowing in thought.
After a moment she asked, “How many do you think are out there?”
“No, Rory.” The refusal snapped out of me before she’d even finished. “Don’t. It’s reckless even to wonder.”
“You’re right.” She turned her head away, restless. “But I hàte being locked up. It gets under my skin. Feels like I can’t breathe.”
“We just need to hold on,” I told her, surprised by the conviction in my own voice. “Something will shift, and we’ll reach Dominic before Viktor intends us to.”
Whether I believed it or not didn’t matter. It calmed her, her lashes lowering, her breathing slowing until she drifted into uneasy sleep.
I exhaled, sliding back against the headboard, my body taut with exhaustion. My thoughts, however, refused to rest.
What was Dominic doing at this very moment? Was he searching? Was he close?
Had he traced my phone to the car park? And if so… did he already know? Did he know about the baby?
And how would he feel? Relief? Rage? Fear of what it meant for us both?
How long would Viktor keep us here, letting his patience curdle into cruelty?
The thought that haunted me most—the one that hollowed out my chest until all I felt was dread—wasn’t about Dominic at all.
It was about the tiny life inside me.
Would my baby survive this?
The question gnawed like teeth at bone. Every rumble of hunger, every jolt of fear, every hour in this stale, suffocating room—I wondered what it was doing to the small, fragile being I carried.
What if the stress was too much? What if my body betrayed me, and the faint flutter I longed to feel one day simply… never came?
What if I lost the only piece of Dominic and me that Viktor could never corrupt, never twist into a weapon?
The silence pressed in on me, thick as smoke. Rory’s steady breathing only made the panic louder, more jagged in my ears.
I pressed a hand to my stomach, desperate for reassurance, for some sign that everything was still as it should be. There was nothing. Only the hollow echo of my own fear.
And then Dominic’s face filled my mind—his eyes when he discovered the truth, the way his world would shatter if that truth was ripped away before he could even hold it. I pictured the storm in him, the grief that would devour him whole.
The thought was unbearable.
I wasn’t only terrified of losing my child. I was terrified of what losing our child would do to him. To us.
So I sat there, wide-eyed in the dark, praying—pleading—for mercy.
Please. Let my baby survive this.
Please. For me. For Dominic.
TBC📖✍️
