Panic surged hot and fast. My chest tightened as I clawed for words that refused to exist, my jaw trembling with the effort. I had only experienced full muteness once before—and it had nearly broken me. The frustration, the humiliation, the agony of having so much to say and no way to say it.
Especially to someone who didn’t understand sign language.
Especially now.
God, no.
Not this time.
I swallowed hard, pain screaming in protest, tears burning my eyes as I shook my head helplessly. The truth pressed against my ribs, desperate to escape—and I was trapped inside my own silence.
Pain flared behind my sternum, sharp and suffocating.
It was happening.
Again.
The harder I tried, the worse it became. Speech abandoned me entirely, the way it always did when fear tipped into terror. A betrayal of flesh and nerve I had lived with for ten years—trauma’s permanent scar.
Inside my head, the words screamed, piling on top of one another, frantic and useless:
I didn’t kill anyone.
I’ve never killed anyone.
I didn’t touch your wife.
I don’t even know what you’re talking about.
But my body refused to obey.
My chest convulsed.
Something warm flooded my mouth—metallic, thick. I bent forward with a choking gasp and spat onto the concrete.
Red splattered at my feet.
Blood.
The night seemed to hold its breath.
Ruslan stopped moving.
His gaze dropped—not to my face, but to the blood on the ground between us.
And for the first time since he turned around, something shifted in his expression.
Ruslan watched.
Silent.
There was no pity on his face. No hesitation. Only cold, patient certainty—the expression of a man who had already decided how this would end and was merely allowing the inevitable to unfold.
He took another step toward me.
Something inside me snapped.
I stumbled backward, my heel catching on uneven concrete, and went down hard. The impact slammed through my spine and jarred my broken nose. White-hot pain exploded behind my eyes. I gasped, a sharp, broken sound tearing out of my throat as tears sprang unbidden.
