Chapter Hundred and Seven
As they turned off the main road, she directed.
"Left," Asli muttered, her voice faint but firm.
Markus glanced at her, catching the way her hand pressed tighter against her side. More blood soaked through her shirt now... darker, heavier. He didn’t argue. He turned.
Asli was human too.
She pointed with a jerk of her chin toward a lit sign just ahead, its flickering red cross buzzing weakly against the night.
"Park," she whispered, already pushing the door open before the car had fully stopped.
She staggered out, boots scraping gravel, her fingers still clamped over the wound. Her back was straight, and her jaw set, each step pulled tight with purpose.
.Markus followed her. Why didn’t she use her Villa’s doctors?
The clinic door creaked as she pushed it open. Inside, the place slled like antiseptic and rust. No nurses at the desk. Just humming fluorescent lights and the ticking of a distant wall clock.
She did not wait for assistance.
Her feet carried her down a short hallway, past the consulting rooms, until she found what she needed, a small treatnt bay, curtain half drawn, and a tray of instrunts glinting under cold light.
She peeled her jacket off slowly, her breath catching as the fabric tugged at the dried blood. Then the shirt. It was sticky, ruined. Her side was a ss, the skin torn open over pale, half-healed scar tissue.
She didn’t flinch. Just breathed through her nose.
"Let help you," Markus offered but she shook her head. He didn’t press and just watched her.
She grabbed a bottle of antiseptic from a nearby shelf and splashed it over the wound without hesitation. The sting was imdiate... sharp enough to make her vision dance but she gritted her teeth and stayed still.
With steady fingers, she threaded a curved needle.
In. Out. In. Out.
Each stitch tugged the wound tighter, the skin folding into itself with quiet obedience. Her hand trembled once, just slightly. But she did not stop.
She tied the last knot with practiced ease, then taped gauze over the angry red line and pulled a fresh undershirt from the cabinet.
By the ti the doctor pushed the door open, she was already done. Throwing her bloodied clothes in a bin, her shoulders squared like nothing had happened.
"Asli..." The woman called as she eyed Markus who stood by her. She wasn’t scared of her. So he knew the doctor knew her too well.
"Needed so help," she told her. The doctor folded her arms.
"And you did not wait for ?" She asked Asli but she ignored her as she walked over to the nearby sink. She didn’t sound angry and neither did she look it.
Markus cleared his throat. He did not know what their relationship was but the doctor seed nice. And Asli didn’t look weary of her. The more he watched them, the more curious he was about who the Doctor was.
Her clinic did not look aesthetically pleasing either.
"I’m Doctor Hilde." She offered her hand and he took it, shaking her firmly.
"I’m Markus." He told also her.
Dr. Hilde smiled warmly at him and from the other side of the room, they could see Asli rolling her eyes.
"You will need to fix the bulbs," Markus advised. He didn’t know what else to say.
"Can you imagine? It’s been faulty for almost a week. The company I called refused to co and work though I have paid." She complained and Markus wondered why she was telling him.
"I’ll have soone co and fix it for you." He didn’t know why he said that. Usually, he wouldn’t have cared.
"That’s so sweet of you but don’t worry. I want them to co and do it since I have paid. If by Thursday it still hasn’t been fixed, I’ll go there myself and show that I’m not just a pretty face." She inford and Markus watched her face properly.
He hadn’t done that when she first entered.
Her face, though flushed from exertion, held a strange calmness; her eyes were sharp and focused, and her mouth set in a line that spoke of quiet defiance.
The faded scar along her collarbone, and the bruises forming along her arms, none of it matched the softness of her features or the delicate cut of her jaw.
She didn’t flinch under his gaze. She t it head-on. And as he watched her smile at him as if that was all she could offer him, he found himself nodding faintly. She was right. She was not just a pretty face.
Who was she?
"She’s my cousin." Asli decided to help him out of his questioning thoughts.
Cousin? Since when did she have female cousins? How many were there? Why hadn’t she seen her before?
"Don’t say it like that. Yes, we are cousins but not ’cousins’. You make it seem like I’m scary like you are. She always picked on for no reason." Dr. Hilde told him with a smile.
"I never did that. You always wanted to follow for missions and I had to look after you." Asli revealed while she moved around the hall. "You a new certification?"
"Yes. Not to brag but I have about eighteen now. It could be more if I didn’t stop them. I have a real hospital though. Don’t think this is all that I got." She was watching Markus who nodded his head.
She was chatty.
"You both are similar," Asli comnted as she watched the two standing next to each other.
"Right?" Hilde’s tone grew more excited.
"No, I didn’t an that way. I an in Character." Asli rolled her eyes again.
"You should have been specific when speaking." She blad.
"Specific my ass." Asli almost yelled.
Markus hadn’t seen this side of Asli. She looked comfortable with her cousin.
The more he watched and listened to them talk, the more he wanted to find out about her and their past.
Why did she decide to beco a doctor? The scars he saw on her were not fresh. It looked like it had been carved on her skin, so years ago.
"Why are you a doctor?" He asked out of nowhere. One thing about him was, if he was curious about sothing, he’d make sure to find it.
Asking her directly would save him from going through extra hours before finding out.
"It has always been my passion." She answered quickly... too quickly and he knew she had lied.
"Markus is a Mafia. He can tell when you are lying." Asli inford her, her tone bored and when they turned to her, she was relaxing in the chair.
"You are? Damn, why do I always fall for the bad guys?" Dr. Hilde joked and she quickly laughed. "Duh! I knew he was one. You ca here with him. Well, I got thrown out of ho when I decided to quit the business. I was only nineteen. Asli took care of while I figured things out. And to pay her, she needed to be a doctor."
"Why do you tell everyone that?" Asli quickly asked.
"Because it’s true."
"No, it’s not. I hardly even co here!"
"Look who ca in today for a stitch?"
"I did it myself!"
"Yeah. Which I taught you by the way. You don’t want to accept it but I’m important to you." Dr. Hilde announced with a teasing tone.
Asli looked normal here. She was a young woman quarreling over nothing important with her cousin.
Would she ever want to quit the business too? He wouldn’t want to but considering her cousin wanted to, and how Asli’s character was, he could only imagine how brutal her father was.
He was standing behind the door when her father had thrown sothing at her for getting shot twice during the mission.
The narration he got when they returned, he had assud Mr. Marco would give her her flowers but the man treated her like she was only asked to drive them and she still managed to get hurt.
He didn’t want her to know he heard the conversation between them. Asli was proud and shouldered every pain alone. He knew she’d be embarrassed when or if she found out he knew.
So before Mr. Marco could excuse her, he rushed out and hid behind the building.
Asli must’ve been too angry to have noticed that he had just left behind the door of her adoptive father’s library. Even when he returned after he saw her leave, he slled his cologne by the door.
"You know, getting thrown out of the Villa was the best thing that happened to . Believe , I used to love the Mafia world. If anything, more than Asli. Or close enough. But, they forced to kill the man I loved." Dr. Hilde continued.
"Sorry for your loss." He imdiately said and she laughed.
"It’s not your fault. But thank you." Her tone grew sad and he knew that he had crossed the line when he asked why she beca a doctor.
He had imagined her to say she got paralyzed at so point and decided to find a better place until she recovered.
Technically, she found a better place but had she healed? Watching a loved one die was hell enough but having to be the one to kill him, must have been a special kind of hell.
Had Asli ever killed anyone she loved before? He wanted to ask her. When Hilde ntioned it, he saw how her eyes twitched with sothing different, sothing he hadn’t seen in a long ti.
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