Then—without warning—he turned away from me.
His fist slammed into the wall.
The sound was explosive, violent enough to make me flinch hard.
The entire suite seemed to shudder—the framed artwork rattled against the walls, the chandelier above us swayed, crystal chiming softly like bones knocking together.
A sharp crack echoed as plaster fractured beneath the force.
Blood bloomed instantly across his knuckles, bright and shocking against his skin.
It dripped onto the marble floor in thick, crimson drops.
He didn’t react.
Didn’t curse. Didn’t inhale sharply. Didn’t even look at his hand.
“That man...” he growled.
He spun back toward me, pointing into empty space as though his enemy stood right there between us—solid, breathing, waiting. His face was twisted with a fury so raw it was almost unrecognizable.
“He did things to me,” Ruslan said, his voice breaking apart. “Things I will never speak aloud. Not to you. Not to anyone. Not even to myself.”
His throat worked visibly as he swallowed.
“There are memories that rot you from the inside,” he went on. “Memories you don’t survive—you just learn how to carry them.”
He dragged a hand down his face, smearing blood across his skin.
“And second,” he said, his tone hardening again, snapping back into place like a blade sliding into its sheath, “how could love ever exist between us?”
He looked at me then—really looked at me—with something close to hatred.
“Your sister didn’t just kill my sister,” he said. “She slaughtered my pregnant wife too. Both of them. In ways so calculated, so cruel, I still can’t think about it without wanting to burn the world down.”
My stomach twisted violently.
“And you,” he continued, stepping closer, his voice dropping to something lethal and intimate, “are the daughter of a man who serves my greatest enemy. Al-Chapo’s loyal dog. A man who helped build the empire that destroyed me.”
His chest rose and fell in harsh, uneven breaths.
“All of it is tangled together,” he said hoarsely. “Blood on blood. Betrayal stacked on betrayal. And you stand in the middle of it and ask me for love.”
Something inside him finally snapped.
“I wish I could kill him again!” he roared. “I wish I could rip him apart with my bare hands—slowly—until there was nothing left but dust!”
He turned and stormed toward the door, slamming his bloodied fist into it once—twice—again and again. Each impact thundered through the suite, splintering wood, cracking the frame. With a final violent blow, the lock gave way.
The door burst open with a sharp, brutal crack.
It hung crooked on its hinges afterward—broken, jagged, a violent wound carved into the elegance of the room.
“Ruslan,” I called after him, the name tearing out of my throat like a wound being reopened.
My voice sounded small, brittle—nothing like the woman I’d once imagined I might be.
He paused at the threshold.
