He Didn’t Kidnap Me. Not Exactly novel Chapter 327

He Didn’t Kidnap Me. Not Exactly

Chapter 327

Taisy’s POV)

My whole life, I’d believed exactly one specific, sad little story about myself: unlucky girl, absent father, nothing more complicated than that

Turns out the story had just been incomplete. My father hadn’t been a plain, garden–variety loser who couldn’t handle fatherhood. He’d been a violent one. man who’d built something enormous and bloody out of fear and control, and now the entire weight of that thing was apparently mine to hold

My hands were shaking. Actually, physically shaking, and I stared down at them like they belonged to someone else entirely, someone flightly more equipped to be handling a hundred plus lives instead of a girl who, until recently, had struggled to responsibly manage a single houseplant

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How did the universe let this happen. Why did things keep escalating instead of leveling off even slightly. I would have accepted, at this point, one singl evening that didn’t end in some new, previously unimaginable catastrophe.

The men who’d knelt were standing again now, forming a loose ring around me, around all of us, in the exact same formation I’d watched them hold around

Volkov less than an hour ago.

That didn’t help. If anything, it made everything feel worse, more real, more permanently mine. I’d pinched myself enough times tonight, hard enough, that I’d stopped bothering. It hurt too much now to keep proving the obvious.

My mother stood in front of me, dread and anticipation tangled together in her expression, waiting on an answer. Everyone else wore some version of the same look. All of them, waiting on me to decide what happened next, like that was a reasonable thing to hand a person who’d never once in her life been asked to decide anything bigger than what to order for lunch.

I felt deeply, catastrophically unqualified.

brain wasn’t cooperating either, darting sideways at the worst possible moments, incapable of holding one single thought in place long enough to build plan out of it. Decision–making, for me, had always been trial and error. Mostly error. And right now the moment seemed to be demanding bravery from someone whose default setting had always been fear, closely followed by an intense, specific craving for something fried.

Here I was. Daisy Bennett. A nobody, by any reasonable definition, now expected to be somebody, because my mother’s expression told me so, and because every single person standing around me told me so without saying a word.

I took a deep breath. Let it out slow.

Okay, Daisy. We have to speak now.

I turned my gaze toward Nico and Lillian, and something in their expressions had shifted since the last time I’d looked. The panic, the dread – gone. Replaced with something closer to waiting, Patient, almost.

It made sense, in a horrible way. Everyone who actually knew me had probably already/guessed the answer before I’d even finished processing the question myself. They knew my personality. Peace or chaos; they’d have bet on which one before I opened my mouth.

Knowing that didn’t make saying it out loud any easier.

I swallowed hard, forcing my breathing into something steadier, and prepared to actually speak.

“You’re good, my mother said quietly “You re okay

Shad caught something shift in my love I nodded, slow, and let my gare drift to DeLuca.

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15:03 Fri, Sep 4)

Chapter 327

Not much showed on his face beyond the obvious – pain, from the wound still bleeding under the makeshift bandage, and worry, aimed directly at me.. understood both. I was tired of both, honestly, tired of watching everyone I loved hurt because of decisions made long before I ever entered any of this.

Tened my mouth.

An engine cut me off.

Every head turned at once, mine included, toward the source – a single car, driving with an almost comedic amount of casual disregard through a battlefield

still scattered with bodies and smoke.

It rolled to a stop a short distance from the group.

A head shot out the driver’s

I am done with this,

eyes swept the scen

one in particular, already furious. I’m going to tell him exactly what I think, and then I’m leaving. Wait. Her

Jessa leaned out, surveying the carnage with wide, horrified eyes.

The passenge

I thin

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