Chapter One Hundred and Forty
Cole
Matilda’s call ca too early in the night for it to an nothing.
Cole was halfway through cleaning his gun when his phone vibrated against the tal table. He frowned before even looking at the screen. Matilda never called during dinner unless sothing was wrong. Sothing crawled under his ribs and refused to settle.
The kind that slled like blood before you even saw it.
That was all it took.
Cole slipped out a minute later, careful not to draw attention. Asli was decisive, but she wasn’t careless. If she noticed him, she would stop him. So he moved like a shadow, parked a distance away, and followed when her car rolled out of the gates.
She didn’t look back.
That worried him more than if she had.
He trailed her quietly through the city, through traffic that thickened and thinned until she turned into an industrial stretch where the buildings grew uglier and the lights thinned into sickly yellow sars across cracked roads.
His chest tightened the mont she swerved into the familiar lot.
Her warehouse. It had been a long ti since he rembered coming here. She had found solace sowhere else and rarely ca here... without her father’s noticing.
Cole’s hand stilled on the wheel.
A knot ford behind his ribs, sharp and sudden and unwelco.
He parked farther down, and out of sight, the engine clicking softly as it cooled. He stayed there, staring at the building, telling himself she would co out in a few minutes.
Normally he should not have been this tense but Matilda had spoken quickly, like she was afraid the words might disappear if she waited too long to say them. Matilda swore she saw sothing thin and sharp flicker there.
Fear.
And that was what twisted in Cole’s chest.
Fear did not live in Asli’s eyes.
Cole was certain Asli was eting soone tonight. Soone she dreaded or perhaps soone holding sothing against her.
Only Aht seed to have sothing on her. She had let him off the hook far too many tis.
Just then, another car eased in monts. It was slower. As familiar to Cole as any scar on his own hands, he knew it was who he thought it was.
Aht.
Cole leaned back against the seat, the recognition settling heavily in his chest.
So that was it.
A part of him wasn’t surprised. He’d seen the way Asli’s eyes softened only for him. The way Aht moved through her world like he was allowed to breathe there when others were rely tolerated.
They had never said it aloud. They hadn’t needed to. Besides they were never seen alone but he always cleared her GPS without her knowing. He was attentive, he knew when they were eting. If Asli knew he knew about them, she would’ve had a reason to kill him.
Was Aht using their relationship against her? How did he even get her in the first place? He had never been this curious.
Cole pushed the car door open and walked into the night.
If not that Matilda had ntioned seeing fear in her eyes, he would’ve thought this was one of those etings that burned hot but brief... just instinct. The kind that grew in your chest when you loved soone long enough to learn their silences.
He had never wanted to see what they did in the dark.
Never pictured it.
Asli did not belong in his head that way. She was not sothing a man touched. Not to him. She existed sowhere higher, untouchable, furious, and sacred. He had never imagined peeling her clothes away; he had imagined only standing beside her when the world ca apart.
Which sohow hurt worse knowing Aht was doing exactly what he never imagined anyone would do to her.
Cole’s jaw clenched. He went still, his eyes narrowing.
He approached the warehouse carefully after Aht disappeared inside.
Inside, the warehouse felt colder than it had any right to be. Sound died strangely in there, swallowed by space and rust. His boots whispered across concrete as he followed instinct more than sight, slipping between shadows until he could see them.
Aht stood a few feet from her.
That closeness burned.
Still, if fate had been cruel enough to give her to anyone, he would take Aht over Demir any night. He couldn’t explain why. Only that Demir touching her felt like defilent in a way Aht never would.
Cole’s fingers curled slowly at his side as he watched them face each other with the weight of things unsaid heavy between their bodies. He didn’t know what he had expected. Perhaps tenderness, maybe, sothing soft that would confirm the thing he’d never dared to na but what he saw instead was tension drawn tight as wire.
Then Asli lifted the gun. He could hear them speaking but couldn’t hear exactly what was said.
Cole figured it was a lovers’ quarrel. Asli never aid a gun at anyone and talked with them before shooting.
"What the hell am I even doing here?" he told himself and retreated from where he stood and went back to his car.
Just as he was about to drive away, he heard the gunshot. Panic seeped in. Was it Asli who fired the gun or got shot instead?
He rushed back to the entrance but then he saw sothing that made his throat go dry. It wasn’t out of fear but curiosity.
He didn’t slam doors. Didn’t run across open space. He drifted toward the building the way he used to move through enemy territory, just in case. He was quiet, aware, and alive in every nerve ending.
He slipped inside through the side entrance.
He told himself to prepare for anything.
He was not prepared for the sound that ca next.
He reached the edge of the inner warehouse just as Aht’s body crumpled.
The man didn’t scream.
He didn’t stagger.
He dropped like gravity had finally rembered him.
Cole stood frozen, watching the might of a cri empire collapse to concrete in front of him.
And then... he saw her.
Asli stood a few paces away.
Her gun was still in her hand, smoke faintly curling from the barrel. Her shoulders were squared, her back straight, and her face empty in that terrifying way she wore when emotion would only slow her down.
She took a step toward him.
Surprisingly, Cole’s heart thudded painfully.
Another step.
He expected her to kneel, or to press her hands into the wound, and to curse, or beg him to hang on while she called for help.
She didn’t.
She stopped.
Sothing twisted in her face.
And then she stepped back.
Not in rcy.
In finality.
Cole did not breathe.
If she turned even slightly, she would see him.
Then her heels turned, picked up the gun he hadn’t realized had fallen to the ground, and walked away.
Every step she took away from the fallen man felt like sothing being carved out of Cole’s chest. He was used to seeing people die... used to killing them himself but this? Aht dying? He didn’t know what fate this was.
When the echo of her engine finally died...
The warehouse felt wrong.
Cole exhaled slowly.
And then he looked at the man on the ground. He lay motionless, blood spreading dark against concrete, chest barely moving if moving at all. The sa man who used to own rooms now lay conquered by one square foot of dirty floor.
A strange admiration stirred in Cole despite himself.
He’d fallen standing tall.
He did not beg her to help him.
He did not even crawl.
Like a king dragged off his throne by a single bullet.
Cole swallowed.
And then ca the question he didn’t want to answer.
’Do I step forward... or do I leave him here?’
His feet weighed a thousand pounds.
Asli had fired the shot and had walked away.
Whatever had just happened between them was not sothing Cole could untangle with hands or words.
He stood in the shadow, unsure whether saving Aht would an betraying her...
Or abandoning him would an becoming sothing he could regret.
And for the first ti in years...
Cole did not know which loyalty would destroy him fastest.
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