Chapter 41
Ayla
Idon’t try to get free.
At first, I did.
Twisted my wrists. Tested the rope. Pulled until the raw skin burned hotter and the pipe behind me gave me nothing back except cold iron and the hard truth that Maksim doesn’t do anything halfway.
Now I just sit here.
The apartment is too quiet without him in it.
Too still.
The kind of stillness that makes every tiny sound feel like a warning—the hum of the refrigerator, pipes knocking somewhere deep in the walls, a car passing outside with bass thudding low enough to rattle the window for half a second before it fades.
My cheek throbs in time with my pulse. My lip tastes like old blood. My wrists feel flayed open where the rope bites every time I shift, so I stop shifting.
There’s no point.
Gabriel is going to kill me.
Or Maksim is.
Either way, this is the end.
I tip my head back against the radiator and stare at the ceiling, at the crack in the paint above the window, at the weak afternoon light sliding across the floor inch by inch like time is still moving for everyone except me.
I should be afraid.
I was.
I think I burned through it somewhere between Gabriel’s hands in my hair and Maksim’s face when I told him the truth.
My brother.
The ledgers.
I love you.
The words feel sick in my head now. Heavy. Useless. Like they belonged to some other girl stupid enough to think saying them would save anything.
I close my eyes.
Maybe if I stay still enough, when it comes, it’ll be quick. The lock turns. My eyes snap open. The front door opens and shuts with a soft, final click.
Footsteps.
Not Maksim’s.
His steps always come hard, like the floor should brace for him. These are quieter. Slower. Deliberate enough that my stomach drops before I even see him.
Vaska.
For one second, all I can do is stare.
He fills the doorway without trying to. Dark hair. Dark eyes that look black from here, empty and flat in his face in a way that makes it hard to remember they’re human eyes at all.
This isn’t Vaska who sparred with me. Who looked at me as Maksim’s pet.
No.
This is the Vaska the world gets. Everybody knows his moniker, but you don’t feel what it means until he’s in front of you. You don’t say it out loud. Not unless death is already in the room.
Reaper.
The Bratva’s executioner.
And Maksim has sent him to reap me.
He looks at me once.
That’s all.
No expression. No curiosity. No anger. Nothing I can use to read him.
He walks right past me. I go cold all over. That’s worse.
Much worse.
Because if he was going to yell, I’d know where to put my fear. If he was going to hit me, I’d know how to brace. If he pulled a knife right away, at least I’d understand the shape of what comes next.
But this—
This feels like the pause before something ruthless.
He disappears down the hall toward the bathroom like I’m not even worth acknowledging yet, and I can hear cabinet doors opening. Closing. Something plastic shifting. Metal knocking lightly against porcelain.
My heart starts slamming harder against my ribs.
I look at the front door.
Too far.
Pointless to run.
By the time he comes back, there’s a white first aid kit in one hand.
My throat tightens. He sets it on the coffee table. Still says nothing. Then he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his knife.
The breath catches in my chest so fast it hurts.
He flips it once between his fingers, the motion so smooth it makes my skin prickle. The light catches on the edge for half a second.
I stop breathing.
He crouches in front of me.
Not close enough to touch anywhere that matters. Just close enough that I can see his eyes properly now.
I never noticed before, they’re brown.
Very dark brown, almost swallowed whole by his pupils, but not black. There’s something worse about that. Something more alive. Like death would be easier if he looked less like the man I knew and more like the thing people call him when he isn’t around to hear it.
The knife slips under the rope.
One clean slice.
The tension vanishes so suddenly my arms jerk and pain rips through my wrists. A sound leaves me before I can stop it—small, ragged, humiliating.
He folds the knife closed.
“Up.”
My fingers curl uselessly against my lap.
For a second, I can’t move.
His gaze drops once to my wrists, then back to my face.
“Up,” he says, voice low and flat, “Now.”
I swallow hard and push myself up on shaking legs.
The room tilts immediately. My knees threaten to give.
His hand closes around my wrist before I can hit the floor. Firm enough to keep me upright. I hate that my body reacts to that like it’s mercy.
He lets go the second I find my balance.
“Walk.”
I do.
Because what else am I going to do? Fight him? Run?
He guides me to the couch with one hand at my arm, more steering than holding, and sits me down like he’s placing something where he wants it. Positioning.
“Hands where I can see them.”
I obey before I even realize I’m doing it.
He crouches in front of the coffee table, opens the kit, and starts pulling things out with the same calm he used with the knife. Gauze. Alcohol. Cotton. Tape.
I watch every movement.
Waiting.
Still waiting for the real violence to start.
Instead, he reaches for my chin. I flinch so hard it’s automatic. His hand pauses in midair.
For one endless second, neither of us move.
Then he catches my jaw anyway. Tilts my face toward the light.
The sting of antiseptic hits a second before the cotton does.
My eyes water instantly. He doesn’t apologize. Doesn’t warn me.
Just wipes the blood from under my nose with maddening precision, like he’s clearing something from his field of vision.
Only then does he speak again.
“How old were you,” he asks, dabbing at the split in my lip, “when he started using your face to make his point?”
I stare at him.
The question is so direct it doesn’t feel real at first.
Not because of what it asks. Because of who’s asking it. Vaska doesn’t look up from what he’s doing. He presses fresh cotton to my lip, steady and impersonal, like he asked me what time it is.
My mouth opens.
Closes.
I don’t answer.
His thumb shifts against my jaw—not hard, just enough to keep my face where he wants it.
“How old?”
I swallow.
The room feels too warm all of a sudden. Too small.
“Thirteen,” I say.
The word comes out flat.
I hate that. Like I’m reporting weather. Like it happened to somebody else. Vaska doesn’t react.
Not to the number. Not to the way it leaves my mouth like it means nothing.
He just tosses the bloodied cotton onto the table and reaches for another piece.
“Your mother?”
My throat tightens. “Murdered when I was eight.”
He nods once like he’s slotting the fact into place.
“And your father?”
I hesitate for half a second. Because I know he knows that answer.
Everyone knows when my father was killed.
But mostly because saying his name out loud always makes him feel real again, and I don’t know which version of him Vaska is asking about—the man who existed before, or the one who died and left me with Gabriel.
“Selim Kaya,” I say quietly. “Dead when I was thirteen.”
Only then do Vaska’s eyes lift to mine.
Brief.
Direct. Too knowing.
“And that’s when it started.”
Not a question.
I stare back at him, breathing shallow.
“The day of his funeral,” I say. Then, because something ugly in me wants him to hear how simple it was, “Yes.”
His hand shifts from my lip to the bruising at my cheekbone. Two fingers. Light pressure. Testing swelling.
I flinch anyway.
He doesn’t apologize.
“Why not leave?”
That one almost makes me laugh. I look him truly in the eye for the first time since he walked in.
Because men like him ask questions like doors exist everywhere. Like walking out is the same thing as getting away.
“That’s not possible for someone like me.”
His gaze stays on mine.
“Why?”
Not why didn’t you. Not why not. Just why. He wants the bones of it, not the performance.
I swallow.
“Because I had nowhere to go,” I say. “No money of my own. No one who’d take me in. No version of my life that Gabriel couldn’t reach into and ruin.” My mouth twists. “Girls like me don’t leave men like him. We just make them angry.”
Vaska says nothing. Just reaches for my wrist.
Turns it over once in his hand, inspecting the raw skin there like it belongs to the rest of the story.
“You were trying to get away.”
I blink.
The words hit harder than they should because he says them like fact, not comfort.
Before I can stop myself, I nod. “Yes.”
His thumb brushes once near the edge of the rope burn, not tender, just deliberate.
“Before this.”
Again, not a question.
“Yes,” I say, voice lower now. “Before he put me on this assignment.”
That gets a pause out of him. A sharpened one.
“What exactly was the assignment?”
I look at the first aid kit. At the gauze. At his hands. Anywhere but his face.
“To get information on imports tied to Smash and Sugar.”
He waits. I know what part he wants.
I hate that I know.
“Through you.”
That makes his eyes settle on me properly.
“Through me.” The repetition is quiet. Dangerous in a way I can’t name.
I nod once.
“Yes.”
His expression doesn’t change. “How?”
“He wanted me to get close to you,” I say. “Get the job. Stay useful. Listen. Find out what moved through Smash and Sugar, what names touched it, where the weak points were.”
His mouth hardens a fraction. “But you didn’t get the job that day.”
“No.”
“What happened?”
I let out a breath that almost trembles. Hate that too.
“Maksim stole my car,” I say. “With me in it.”
For the first time, something almost human flickers at the corner of Vaska’s mouth.
Not amusement exactly. Recognition, maybe. Like of course that’s how it happened. Of course Maksim didn’t enter my life like a normal man.
“And then,” he says.
“And then Maksim just happened to me,” I answer.
That pulls the room quieter.
Vaska leans back slightly, forearms braced on his knees now, attention fixed on me with that same unbearable stillness.