And once again, I was on the ground, broken open, while the world stood and let it happen.
Ruslan’s shadow loomed over me.
“You killed my unborn child,” he said coldly. “You butchered an innocent woman. And you have the nerve to cry over spilled ash?”
I forced my head up.
My face was streaked with tears, dirt clinging to my skin, blood drying at the corner of my mouth.
“I didn’t,” I rasped.
His gaze pinned me in place.
“I’ve never been to Greece,” I said, each word dragged out like it weighed a ton. “Not once.”
Another tear slipped free. I stared at the gray dust scattered across the ground, wishing—praying—my mother could rise from it, wrap her arms around me, tell me I was safe.
“If she were alive...” My voice fractured. “She would’ve protected me. She would never have let them hurt me. The crash took her. The crash took everything.”
“Do not lie to me,” he said.
“I’m telling the truth,” I whispered, forcing the words past the fire in my throat. “I swear on her ashes.”
Silence stretched between us—heavy, dangerous.
He watched me for a long moment, something unreadable flickering behind the storm-gray of his eyes. Rage. Grief. Doubt, buried so deep it terrified him.
Then he turned away.
The graves waited—open mouths yawning beneath the moon.
And I knelt among them, broken and hollow, my mother’s remains scattered into foreign soil, waiting for the man who believed I was a monster to decide whether I would join her tonight.
Ruslan’s phone lit up in his hand.
The glow cut through the darkness like a blade. He glanced down once.
That was all it took.
His entire body locked—every line of him going rigid, as if something inside had snapped into place. The air around him shifted, thickened, turning sharp and dangerous.
When he lifted his gaze back to me, the gray storm I’d seen before was gone.
His eyes were black now. Not shadowed—emptied. Like something vital had burned out and left only scorched ruin behind.
“Elena had a sister,” he said. “That’s you?”
The words came slowly, deliberately, each one weighted. Not a question meant to be answered—an accusation spoken aloud to make it real. Like the first distant crack of thunder before the sky splits open.
I swallowed. My throat burned. My knees trembled, but I didn’t lower my eyes.
“Yes.”
He moved.
Not abruptly. Not in anger.
Deliberately.
