Back to me.
His shoulders were rigid.
Unnaturally so.
His hands clenched at his sides, then loosened... then clenched again.
Over and over.
His entire frame trembled with a kind of restrained tension I had never seen in him before.
Fine.
Barely visible.
But unmistakable.
I swallowed blood and saliva, my voice coming out hoarse, broken.
“You were going to let them cut out my heart for her,” I said, my voice trembling but steady enough to strike.
“Why loosen me up? Why kill the man who was about to take advantage of me?”
My breath trembled.
“You despise me so much... watching would have pleased you, yes?”
He exhaled.
Long. Broken.
Like something inside him had finally cracked.
“You don’t deserve this,” he muttered.
Not to me.
To himself.
“You don’t deserve any of the pain I’ve put you through, Elena.”
His hands tightened into fists again.
“Everything I’ve done to you...” His voice roughened, barely holding together. “You don’t deserve it.”
A pause.
Then, quieter, almost to himself—
“I feel I’ve crossed a line I can’t come back from.”
He swallowed hard.
The sound was audible in the silence between us, sharp in a room that still smelled of blood, antiseptic, and gunpowder.
When he spoke, his voice came out cracked—stripped of its usual control.
“You asked me in the car how my night had been—without you by my side. The honest truth? It was a lonely hell.”
