Free FREE (The Billionaire's Rules, Book 16) by Kelly Favor Page A

continued to race and pound.
    Time passed, but her fear wasn’t abating. If anything, the panic attacks continued to worsen, the feeling of being trapped underwater, drowning, perpetually unable to breathe…
    Eventually she lost all track of time passing, and the fear pounded in her and against her until she just broke.
    She broke into what felt like a thousand pieces.
    Lanie fell back, all the way back in time—spinning in the darkness….
    She remembered in a flash when it had happened, when it had all begun for her. All the fear had started so long ago, and now she was seeing it as if for the first time.
    Saw her old room in the first apartment, before her mother had moved to the newer place.
    Just a tiny little bedroom, and Lanie was lying in the small child’s bed, her room appropriate for the age. She must have been three or four years old at most.
    And then she seemed to float into herself, and she was actually in the bed, shaking, as the night closed in around her. She saw the shadows on the walls and how frightening they looked.
    Especially the bad man. The bad man in the new poster that her mother had put in the room earlier that day.
    It was a large poster on the wall of a fireman sitting in a fire truck, but the man was too big for the truck, and his enormous eyes and smile weren’t friendly. Not at all.
    He smiled at her and his huge eyes seemed to follow her no matter where she shrank to in her bed, trying to get away from him
    Cowering under her covers, she screamed for her mother.
    Finally, there was the telltale stomping of feet and then her mother’s sharp voice, demanding to know what was wrong.
    Lanie peeked out from her covers. “That man,” she said, pointing. “That man, he’s bad. He’s bad.” She cried, blubbering, even though her mother hated blubberers and said so often.
    “What man?” Lanie’s mother said, hands on hips turning around to face the opposite wall. “You mean the fireman?”
    “He’s scaring me.” She moaned a little.
    “Why?”
    “He’s…he’s bad.” She didn’t have the words to describe the way his oversized body in proportion to the fire truck seemed so wrong. The way his large eyes followed her no matter where she went, and his smile seemed to indicate a willingness to continue to follow her, even if it meant coming to life in the middle of the night…creeping to her bed…
    Lanie started to cry louder.
    “Just stop it, young lady. I don’t tolerate that ridiculous behavior, and you know it. Now there’s nothing wrong with the poster. Jack Babson gave it to me and I’m not taking it down because you blubbered. Understand?”
    “But—“
    “No buts. I’m going back to finish watching my show, and if I hear another peep out of you, I’ll give you a hiding and I mean it.” And then Lanie’s mother turned and stomped out of the room, shutting the door with a slam.
    Lanie whimpered, crawling down under her covers and lying still in the darkness, heart pounding and pounding, closing her eyes and picturing that face…that horrible grinning, stretched face as it came to life, and the bad man crept towards her.
    The memory seemed to fade as she came back to herself, found herself sitting in the darkness of the hood, still tied to the chair.
    Still imprisoned in the basement.
    She was breathing heavy, but her heart was pounding less now.
    That memory was something she’d never had access to before. Her fear of the dark had always just been there, as far as Lanie was concerned. She hadn’t known where it originated from, only that since she was a little girl, she’d been scared of the dark more than anyone else she knew.
    But now she was shocked to realize that it had all been over something so small.
    A silly, goofy poster of a fireman that had scared her as a toddler had turned into a fear of the dark, of being left alone in the dark with no one to save her.
    It’s nothing, really. All of that fear and anxiety over nothing at all.
    And as she sat