He didn’t romanticize my pain, he honored it.
Because he knew what it was to be hunted by your own past. He had demons, too, his wore different names, but they sang the same songs. Violence was his lullaby. Fear was his shield. Together, we built something ugly and honest. Something sacred.
We didn’t fix each other.
We understood each other.
I learned to sleep again.
I learned to eat when he cooked for me.
I learned that sometimes, love doesn’t have to feel like dying.
Sometimes, it can feel like coming home.
But peace, for people like him, never lasts.
And nightmares don’t knock before they return.
It was him, the very person the world would label a monster, who showed me what it was like to truly be alive.
And in a world that had stolen so much from me, that was enough. Or it was, until it was taken from me, too.
Chapter 1
Ghosts Don’t Bleed
Aslanov
The night they faked my death, I wished, if I’d known what was coming, that the bullet had been real.
I can’t move, I’m sedated, physically.
The gunshot echoes against the cracked walls of the abandoned prison, bouncing off rusted beams and shattered windows before dissolving into silence. I hit the ground hard, the cold concrete unforgiving beneath me.
A bomb explodes close to me, releasing a wave of heat through the building.
A man in a dark suit lowers the pistol, exhaling slowly. The air is thick with the acrid scent of cordite and the coppery tang of blood. My blood? No, not mine.
The execution is staged perfectly. The cameras capture everything: my supposed shooting, the muffled sobs, the fire, the false hope that clings to my breath. The Bratva will mourn their lost king. The world will move on. Aslanov Ivanov Karamazov is dead.
Except I am not.
A door creaks open at the far end of the warehouse. Two figures emerge from the shadows, their faces masked by the flickering glow of a single, buzzing bulb. One of them crouches beside me, pressing gloved fingers against my throat. His touch is clinical, practiced.
“A pulse,” he murmurs, his voice flat. “Faint, but steady.”
“Move him,” the other orders.
Rough hands grip my arms, dragging my limp form across the cement floor. My head lolls to one side. The movement sends sharp pain splintering through my skull, but I do not react. Blood, fake, yet convincing, soaks the front of my shirt, its scent mingling with the industrial staleness of the prison air. The bullet had missed, a deliberate near-miss crafted for the security cameras.
Multiple dead bodies, real dead bodies, are carried out within minutes of the abandoned factory. The floor is strewn with bullet casings.
Nick steps into my fading field of vision, watching as his men load me onto a stretcher. His face is an unreadable mask, but his dark eyes gleam with satisfaction. Everything has gone exactly as he planned. His phone screen glows as he checks for confirmation. Within minutes, the world will believe I am rotting in an unmarked grave.
The truth is far worse.
Hands grip the stretcher, lifting me with practiced ease. I am cargo now, an illusion wrapped in flesh and blood.
