Dominik nods.
He won’t die before he has felt real love.
Mine.
Chapter 53
Green Devil Eyes Meet
Brown Angel Eyes Again
Aslanov
The first thing I hear is the beeping.
Steady. Mechanical. It cuts through the dark like a drip of ice water to the brain. My eyes aren’t open yet, but I know that sound. I know what it means.
Monitors. Machines.
Needles.
My fingers twitch.
There’s a weight in my veins, cold, slow, invasive. IV lines. Fluids. Meds. I can feel them threading through my arms, my hands, maybe more. My body is limp. Weak. There’s no fight in my muscles, only the echo of pain, deep and buzzing, like a hive behind my ribs. My head throbs, stitched and foreign.
Something tight pulls when I shift my brow. Between my eyes, stitches. I can feel them. I know the sensation. The tug of broken skin sewn shut like a secret.
My chest rises in shallow gasps.
Where am I?
I force my eyelids open.
The ceiling above me is white. Sterile. Faintly cracked, the kind of white that only exists in places that pretend to be clean but smell like bleach and blood. I turn my head, too fast, and a waveof nausea claws up my throat. I gag, but nothing comes. Just the taste of copper, dry and sharp.
There’s a machine beside me. The source of the beeping. IV bags hang above it like silent, watching eyes. Tubes run down into both arms, one wrapped tight with gauze, the other raw and exposed. I don’t recognize this place. The lighting is dim, sickly. The walls are a soft grey-blue, meant to be calming. They’re not.
I am dressed in new, soft, and clean clothes.
My mouth is dry. My lips cracked. I try to speak, but my throat is a wasteland. Nothing comes out.
Panic bleeds in slow at first.
Then it explodes.
I bolt upright, or try to. My body rebels immediately, pain tearing through my torso like broken glass. My wrists scream. My shoulder seizes. My vision tunnels.
Where—
Where the fuck am I—
Wires.
Tubes.
Needles.
Restraints?
