‘‘You should go home,’’ she says. ‘‘Get some rest.’’
I let out a quiet laugh, shaking my head. ‘‘And do what?’’
She doesn’t have an answer for that. We both know I don’t sleep. Not anymore.
Ada steps inside, leaning against the edge of the desk. ‘‘You can’t keep pretending you’re fine.’’
I don’t answer. Instead, I reach for a patient file, flipping it open without reading it. ‘‘I have work to do.’’
She exhales sharply, running a hand through her hair. ‘‘You think if you keep yourself busy enough, it’ll go away? The grief? The doubt? You have already locked yourself in your room for weeks to study for an assignment, you don’t feel any better now, do you? Ignoring it will never make it go away, it’ll suppress your feelings and make them arise in uglier ways.’’
‘‘It’s better than drowning in it.’’
She shakes her head, but doesn’t argue. We’ve had this conversation before. She knows how it ends. Instead, she studies me, her voice softer when she speaks again. ‘‘You don’t believe he’s dead.’’
I feel something in my chest tighten. ‘‘Do you?’’
Ada hesitates, then looks away. ‘‘No.’’
Neither of us say what we’re really thinking. That men likeAslanov don’t die so easily. That if anyone could disappear off the face of the earth and make the world believe it, it was him.
We both refuse to accept it, but for different reasons. Ada clings to the inconsistencies: the missing details, the discrepancies in the reports, the incorrect dates and files. She trusts the numbers, the logic, the evidence that doesn’t quite add up. The experiences she has from working at the police department for so long.
I hold onto something less tangible, something rawer and more unbearable; the simple fact that I cannot bring myself to believe he’s gone. Because if he is, then he died protecting me. And I don’t know how to live with that.
But in the end, either truth leads to the same cruel reality: I will never see him again.
Too many people, both in the underworld and beyond it, know what happened. Even if he survived, it would be too dangerous, for him, for me. He would vanish deeper into the shadows, erase himself from existence, because that’s who he is. And I don’t know what’s worse. To think that he is dead, or to know that he is alive somewhere, living a life I can never be a part of again.
Ada insisted I move in with her. She wouldn’t take no for an answer. Her home in the countryside is quiet, a world away from the chaos of New York, and maybe that’s what I needed. Maybe she knew I wouldn’t last long on my own. She knows everything, she knows I fell down the rabbit hole of loving a man like Aslanov.
It wasn’t until I settled in that she told me everything.
Aslanov had contacted her long before he showed up in my apartment. The moment I joined the police department, he reached out to Ada, briefly, over text. They never met. Never spoke face to face. But from that moment on, she was my safety net. Not just in relation to him, Aslanov made sure that if anything ever happened to me, whether it was his fault ornot, Ada would be there. Watching. Protecting. Keeping me from slipping too far.
All the while, as I dug into his past, as I tried to unravel the mystery of him, Ada already knew. She had been in direct contact with him. And I had no idea.
‘‘He made me sign a contract,’’ she told me one night, her voice barely above a whisper. ‘‘He gave me terms. Said if something ever happened, if he couldn’t protect you anymore, I had to step in. No matter what.’’
She never shared the exact terms he laid out, only that they were non-negotiable. He had planned for every possible outcome, even this one.
‘‘And you agreed?’’ I had asked, unable to hide the pain in my voice.
Ada only looked at me, her expression unreadable. ‘‘Of course I did. He threatened me, I couldn’t possibly deny his request. On top of that, I also felt a sense of protectiveness over you. I vowed my loyalty to the Bratva that day.’’
Now, my life is here, in the clinic we operate in together. It isn’t government-funded. It operates under the radar, a place for those the system has failed. We’re a small team: Ada, myself, and a few others who believe in what we’re doing. Former paramedics, ex-military medics, people who know how to work in the shadows. Ada is very close with them, and I can understand why. People who understand what it means to exist outside the lines.
We treat those who can’t go to hospitals. The criminals, the victims, the ones caught in the crossfire. We don’t ask questions, and we don’t turn anyone away. The authorities know about us, of course. They just can’t touch us. Not yet.
I close the file in front of me, pushing it aside. My reflection in the window looks different than I remember. Hollowed out. Stripped of softness. The girl I was before him is long gone,replaced by someone I don’t quite recognize.
The darkness isn’t just in my head anymore.
It’s in me.
Chapter 3
The Ghost in the Dark
