Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Six
Asli stood near one of the far concrete walls, her coat drawn tight around her, her body still as stone. The sll of rust, oil, and dust pressed against her lungs, heavy, tallic, unrelenting.
She hadn’t bothered to switch on the lights when she slipped inside. The dark suited her. It covered the shaking in her fingers, and the racing in her pulse. Damn, she felt stupid. Not once had she killed soone for personal gain.
She had her gun pressed flat to her thigh, loaded, cold, and waiting. Not raised... not yet.
The more she waited, the more her patience ran out. She emptied the magazine without a sound.
The rounds vanished into her palm like confessions she would never make. She pushed the one after the other into her pocket without looking.
Then she loaded one back in.
Just one.
Click.
Not because she was unsure.
But because she was certain.
One bullet was all it would take.
Today, it would end.
The quiet was broken by the low growl of an engine outside. Her chest was constricted. His car. She knew it like she knew her own heartbeat.
She closed her eyes, steadying herself, telling herself she wasn’t waiting... not like so lovesick girl perched in the shadows.
She was choosing to be here. Choosing to end it. Choosing to stand her ground before he could walk into her Villa and remind her how badly she had lost control.
The sound of the engine cut. A door creaked open. Slamd shut. Then, silence again.
Her ears strained for his footsteps. His steps were slow, and deliberate. He wasn’t rushing. He wasn’t cautious either. Of course, he wasn’t. He always walked like he owned the ground beneath him, like the air bent to part around him. Her jaw tightened, her teeth pressing so hard together she tasted iron.
Minutes dragged. The cavern swallowed his steps. He was searching. She made no move to guide him. Let him find her. Let him stumble in the dark, like she had been stumbling inside her own chest since her discovery shattered her balance.
Then, finally, the faint scrape of a boot sole close. Closer.
Too close.
She flicked the light switch.
The room groaned awake under the dim, overhead glow.
There he was. Aht. Just a few feet away. His eyes squinted against the sudden brightness, then focused on her. That sa sharp, unreadable stare. His mouth curved slightly. It was not a smile... not quite. His lips parted.
"Hi," he whispered.
It was nothing, just two letters dragged out in breath, but it ripped through her.
Her throat burned. "That is all you have to say?"
He took a step forward. She raised her gun, fast, and steady now. The words sliced from her before she could stop them.
"Don’t."
He froze. For the first ti, she saw his body falter, even if it was only for half a heartbeat.
"Don’t what?" he murmured, his voice low, almost coaxing.
"Don’t walk closer. Don’t talk to like..." she swallowed hard, the words turning acid in her mouth, "...like you have any right."
The gun wavered for a split second, not from fear, but from the storm tearing through her chest. She forced it steady again.
He lifted his hands slightly, palms open, as though that would make a difference. As though she hadn’t seen those sa hands stained with blood a hundred tis.
’Those sa palms caressed you,’ a voice whispered to her and she wished it weren’t true.
"Asli," he said, softer this ti.
Her na. On his lips. God, it cut her in half.
"Don’t!" she hissed, but her voice cracked. "Don’t say my na like that."
He tilted his head, studying her, the way he always did, as if she were both a puzzle and the solution. "You called here."
"Because you threatened to co to ," she snapped. "Because you sent your dog to remind that I don’t get to breathe unless you give permission."
Did she seriously still think they got together because he blackmailed her?
He raised his eyebrow. "Dog?" His jaw tightened, sothing dark flickering in his gaze. "Don’t call my brother that." He took more steps towards her. Then halted.
"Don’t." Her finger pressed harder against the trigger. Her voice dropped, breaking into a whisper. "Don’t stand there and act like you didn’t know exactly what you were doing."
The silence that followed was unbearable. Her pulse roared in her ears.
She laughed then... it was a broken, bitter sound. "God, I was a fool. Do you know what the worst part is, Aht?" Her voice trembled, but her eyes didn’t. They locked on him, unflinching. "It’s not even that you’re using . It’s that I knew you were dangerous, I knew you’d carve open and take whatever you wanted and I still..."
Her throat closed around the word.
She bit it back.
The air between them was poison and fire all at once.
And then...
She moved. Her fingers moved.
Not with a warning. Not with breath. Not with thought.
The gun didn’t rise slowly.
It snapped up.
It was one sharp motion: a blur of black tal and fury until the barrel was aligned with his chest. Not his shoulder. Not the floor. Not the space beside him. And not even to his leg or arm.
His heart.
The shift was imdiate.
She saw it.
Not in his body, he was too disciplined to show what he was feeling... but in his eyes. In the way, the air left him just slightly too fast. In the faint tightening of his jaw that ca half a second too late to an nothing.
He felt it. She knew he did and she hoped he’d never wake up again. But she wished his pain would be written on his face and he’d cry for rcy so she would use that as her ringtone.
He tried not to show it. Of course he did. n like him were trained to swallow pain like pride and to wear stillness like armor.
But she knew:
The way his gaze flickered. The stiffness that crawled into his chest. The infinitesimal pause between breath and breath.
Whatever she had aid...
It wasn’t sothing he could simply endure.
Yet...
He still didn’t stumble back. He didn’t reach for her wrist. He didn’t raise his hands further in surrender.
Then suddenly sothing fractured in his face to confirm that one bullet hit him.
*******
A quiet, instinctive widening of the eyes and a tightening in his chest he could not control. A split second where certainty cracked and realization took its place.
She wasn’t threatening him anymore.
She was choosing.
The weight of the aim settled inside him. Cold imagined itself through fabric. Through bone. Through blood.
For the first ti since he had entered, he wasn’t the man who owned the room.
He was just a man standing in front of a loaded weapon.
For a heartbeat... just one... he saw it.
Not her anger.
Not her fury.
Her resolve.
It shone in her eyes like sothing ancient. Not rage, exactly. Not madness.
Finality.
Her breathing was gone; no rise, and no fall. Her shoulders were perfectly still. The trembling in her fingers vanished as if it had never existed. Even the storm inside her fell quiet.
The world narrowed.
Concrete.
Steel.
Dust floating in the dim air.
His outline stood exactly where she needed him to be.
Every mory burned at once.
Every betrayal.
Every touch.
Every night she had fought herself instead of him.
It all drove into her spine like a blade.
Her finger tightened.
He started to move.
Not forward.
Not back.
Only the smallest shift of instinct in his chest to remind him of what he was to her. That he was human, unplanned, and useless.
Her eyes did not blink.
The warehouse held its breath.
Before she had fired the gun, he thought he could explain to her. Even if it ant lying to her. He didn’t want to lose her.
The violent crack tore through the dark, splitting the silence in half.
Sound exploded.
Did she actually shoot him?
Wait, did he not think she could?
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