I wanted to scream the truth until my ruined throat tore itself apart. I wanted to rip the air open with it—I didn’t do this, I swear it, I’ve never killed anyone, I’ve never even held a knife with the intent to harm—but I knew what would happen if I forced it now. I’d cough blood again. Spray it across his pristine shirt. And whatever fragile restraint he was clinging to would snap like overstressed wire.
So I didn’t speak.
I held his gaze.
This time I didn’t let my eyes go soft and pleading. Didn’t let fear hollow me out until I looked guilty simply by existing. I straightened—chin lifting, shoulders squaring despite the tremor that ran through them. I locked my face into something harder. Stoic. Controlled. Almost defiant.
I am not your victim, it said.
And I am not your monster either.
It didn’t move him.
Of course it didn’t.
“Speak, Ele—” He cut himself off sharply, as if the sound had sliced his tongue. His jaw flexed, muscle jumping beneath skin. “Elena.”
The way he said my name felt like an accusation and a wound all at once—like he was stripping it of softness, turning it into something sharp enough to hurt us both.
I kept staring. Silent. Helpless. Desperate in a way no sound could convey.
“Since you refused to respond,” he said quietly, almost thoughtfully, “not even with a yes or a no... I will bury you alive.”
The words slid into me like ice water poured straight down my spine. My lungs locked. My heart stuttered.
The composure I’d fought so hard to build cracked clean through. Fear surged back in, hot and overwhelming, threatening to drag me under.
He took a single, measured step backward—as though he needed the distance to keep himself contained, as though being too close to me was dangerous in ways even he didn’t fully understand.
“You know...” His voice changed. Rougher. Lower. Almost confessional. “When Al-Chapo held me for five years, he broke me in ways no man should survive.”
My breath caught.
“Buried alive,” he continued, eyes unfocused now, staring somewhere far beyond the clinic lights. “More than once. Electric cane across the soles of my feet every dawn until I couldn’t stand. Starvation. Isolation so complete I forgot what sunlight felt like on skin.” A muscle jumped in his cheek. “The only thing that kept my heart beating was revenge.”
He laughed softly—once. No humor in it at all.
“Revenge on whoever killed my sister—if she was still alive. And revenge on Al-Chapo himself for turning me into this...” His hand curled slowly into a fist. “...thing.”
He looked past me at the moon, jaw locked tight, breath controlled with military precision.
“When I finally killed him,” he continued, voice steady, “and took everything he owned—at home and abroad—one family refused to bow. They believed themselves untouchable. Powerful enough to make demands.”
He paused, letting the weight of it settle.
“They demanded marriage as the price of surrender. Their first daughter.”
His eyes hardened.
“Maria.”
His eyes flicked back to mine.
“Maria gave me Yannis,” he said, and for the first time his voice softened—not with love, but with something heavier. Permanent. “When she was pregnant again...” His expressionhardened, grief and fury colliding violently behind slate-gray eyes. “You killed her.”
The accusation hit just as hard this time. Maybe harder.
Yet he didn’t advance. Didn’t shout. Didn’t strike.
