The fabric was soaked through—dark red stains splattered across his chest and arms.
Fresh blood.
His hands were still wet with it.
He hadn’t even bothered to wash.
The metallic scent reached me before he did.
My stomach flipped violently.
Our eyes locked.
My husband.
The word felt poisonous.
He crossed the room slowly, deliberately, boots leaving faint crimson smears across the polished marble floor. Every step was measured. Controlled.
Dangerous.
I turned my face away instinctively, expecting—praying—that my brothers would step between us.
They didn’t move.
Not one of them.
They stood tense.
Watching.
As though this was something they could not interfere with.
As though this was a battle that belonged only to us.
Ruslan stopped directly in front of me—close enough that I could see the shallow cut above his left eyebrow, the dried blood crusted along his knuckles, the faint tremor he was trying and failing to hide in his right hand.
His chest rose and fell in slow, measured breaths, as if he were holding himself together by sheer discipline.
His eyes were a storm contained behind glass.
“I killed Harlan,” he said quietly.
The name struck like a blade sliding between my ribs.
“For you, Elena.”
The room seemed to shrink.
The marble floors, the vaulted ceilings, the glittering chandelier overhead—none of it mattered. All I could hear was the echo of that name in the hollow spaces of my skull.
Harlan.
The prison guard who made my sentence feel like a burial.
My aunt’s husband.
The monster who was meant to be family — and violated me not once, but twice.
