Someone only I will ever get to touch.
“I swear to you,” he breathes, voice low and wrecked, “I will never hurt you again.”
The words aren’t soft. They’re carved from something jagged and raw, dragged straight from the wreckage inside him.
“I’ll spend the rest of my life protecting you.”
He pulls back just enough to look into me. His green eyes shimmer like they’re made of fire and heartbreak.
“If you don’t feel the same, I’ll understand,” he says, barely able to get the words out. “I’ll stay away. I’ll vanish. I won’t trap you in the darkness I drag behind me.”
But I’m already breaking, splintering around the edges. His pain. His promise. His love.
I grab his face in both hands, hold him like he’s the only thing keeping me from falling apart. “I do,” I say, tears streaming. “I do feel the same. I never stopped.”
The relief that washes through him is violent—his shoulders drop, like he’s finally laid down the war he’s been carrying. His fingers clutch at my sides, desperate.
“I thought I lost you,” I whisper. “I thought the pain would kill me.”
“You’ll never lose me again,” he swears, forehead pressed to mine. “I’ll burn down every rule, every name, every goddamn Bratva law if I have to. I don’t care what it costs.”
His smile is feral, fevered, a thing of devotion and madness.
“I love you,” he says, the first time the words have spilled in this form.
My body shakes as I reach for him, grip him like I’ll never let go again. My heart feels like it’s cracking wide open with the ache of every moment I thought I lost him, every second I had to pretend I was breathing while my soul was buried with his absence.
“I love you too,” I whisper, almost choking on the words. “God, Iloveyou.”
Chapter 57
Where Secrets Rot and Fester
Dominik
They can’t hunt what no longer bleeds.
The entire underworld already thinks he is dead; now only his captors need to be convinced he will no longer be a ‘problem.’
First, I need a body.
Not just any John Doe, we’re not dealing with street rats. This is Aslanov.Pakhan. The weight of his name echoes across cities. His enemies know his bones.
So I call in a favor from an old contact at the morgue. A fresh body, similar build, matching height. Skin tone close enough. His face will be destroyed, of course, that’s key, but the body has to hold up to scrutiny before that.
The corpse I get is perfect. Overdose, homeless, no next of kin. No one will ask questions when he disappears. I prepare the body the same night: same tattoos for the parts that will be somewhat visible, surgically burned in if needed. It’s meticulous work. So I start the clock. I give myself twelve hours. My fingers ache with the detail.
Then I douse the body in gasoline, but not all at once. I soak specific parts; torso, arms, and most of the face. Enough to ensure total disfigurement, but not enough to make him unrecognizable by dental records. Because I’m going to givethem those too, fabricated, of course. Everything doctored to match.
I burn the fingerprints with acid. Not beyond recovery, just enough to be ‘inconclusive.’ For men like his captors, that casts doubt, but the rest of the evidence will drag them into belief.
Blood is easy. I have tubes of Aslanov’s from the clinic. I scatter it at the scene; inside the motel and along the route outside. A trail, like he crawled and bled out. I smear it across door handles, light switches, the floor, under fingernails.
When they come for him, they’ll find everything they need.
It will be irrefutable. A textbook case. Case closed.
They’ll believe he died through self-destruction.
