Chapter 53Green Devil Eyes Meet Brown Angel Eyes Again
Green Devil Eyes Meet Brown Angel Eyes Again
Aslanov
The first thing I hear is the beeping.
Steady. Mechanical. It cuts through the dark like a drip of ice water to the brain. My eyes aren’t open yet, but I know that sound. I know what it means.
Monitors. Machines.
Needles.
My fingers twitch.
There’s a weight in my veins, cold, slow, invasive.
IV lines. Fluids. Meds. I can feel them threading through my arms, my hands, maybe more.
My body is limp. Weak. There’s no fight in my muscles, only the echo of pain, deep and buzzing, like a hive behind my ribs. My head throbs, stitched and foreign.
Something tight pulls when I shift my brow. Between my eyes, stitches. I can feel them. I know the sensation. The tug of broken skin sewn shut like a secret.
My chest rises in shallow gasps.
Where am I?
I force my eyelids open.
The ceiling above me is white. Sterile. Faintly cracked, the kind of white that only exists in places that pretend to be clean but smell like bleach and blood. I turn my head, too fast, and a wave of nausea claws up my throat. I gag, but nothing comes. Just the taste of copper, dry and sharp.
There’s a machine beside me. The source of the beeping.
IV bags hang above it like silent, watching eyes.
Tubes run down into both arms, one wrapped tight with gauze, the other raw and exposed.
I don’t recognize this place. The lighting is dim, sickly.
The walls are a soft grey-blue, meant to be calming. They’re not.
I am dressed in new, soft, and clean clothes.
My mouth is dry. My lips cracked. I try to speak, but my throat is a wasteland. Nothing comes out.
Panic bleeds in slow at first.
Then it explodes.
I bolt upright, or try to. My body rebels immediately, pain tearing through my torso like broken glass. My wrists scream. My shoulder seizes. My vision tunnels.
Where—
Where the fuck am I —
Wires.
Tubes.
Needles.
Restraints?
No.
I rip at the IV in my left arm, the needle tearing out with a hot splash of blood. The monitor wails in protest. My heart rate spikes. I reach for the second tube, breath heaving, but my hand falters halfway. I am so weak.
The walls start closing in. The machines feel louder. The room smells like antiseptic and old nightmares. The last thing I remember—
The motel.
The scream.
Her voice.
Blood on my hands.
Dominik’s face beneath mine.
My skin crawls. My breath won’t come. I press both hands to my temples and dig in like I can force the memory out through bone.
I stumble out of the bed, every joint screaming, every breath scraping like rust in my lungs. The IV pole crashes to the floor behind me, tubes dragging like veins torn from flesh. I don’t care. I need out. Out of the walls. Out of the smell. Out of my own goddamn skin.
The door isn’t locked.
My legs barely hold me, knees buckling with each uneven step. One hand catches the frame as I drag myself into the hallway, feet numb against cold tile. The corridor stretches out in both directions, dim lights overhead, shadows clinging to the corners like watchers.
I turn right.
I don’t know why. Instinct, maybe. Fear pulling me by the ribs.
My shoulder brushes the wall. The world tilts. A high-pitched ringing rides the edge of my hearing. My blood is still leaking from the torn IV site, trailing down my arm, a slow, thin line that drips onto the floor like Morse code.
And then I see them.
Four figures at the far end of the hall at a table.
Eight eyes staring back.
They freeze. I freeze.
Isabella
I’m still wearing his blood under my nails.
The clinic’s quiet now, the way it always is after something near-catastrophic. The fluorescent lights buzz softly above us, and the only sound is the occasional click of Ada’s pen tapping the chart she’s half-heartedly updating. We’re all too tired to talk. Too wired to rest.
Aslanov’s vitals are stable, for now.
We made it on time.
He’s in one of the back recovery rooms. We sedated him just enough to close the abdominal wound: 8 centimeters, ragged edges, no clean cut to follow.
Ada worked quickly, her hands steady even when mine weren’t.
We cleaned it with saline and packed it with gauze before stitching layer by layer: subcutaneous first, then dermal.
She placed a chest lead to monitor his rhythm, and I started him on broad-spectrum IV antibiotics. Cefoxitin. Vancomycin, just in case.
He had third-degree burns forming around his wrist ligatures. We irrigated the raw skin, applied silver sulfadiazine cream, and wrapped it loosely. The fluid loss was severe—we pushed two liters of saline through the largest-bore IV we could get in him. Another one in his hand for maintenance.
I stitched the cut between his eyes myself. Small, precise. Six sutures. That one felt personal. I don’t know why.
His torso is a brutal canvas of suffering; scars, burns, deep cuts that never healed properly.
Some fresh, some old, all of them telling a story of pain too cruel to put into words.
Dark bruises litter his ribs, and along his side, there’s a jagged, angry gash that looks dangerously close to tearing open again.
But that wasn’t the worst.
His star tattoo, the symbol of the Pakhan , the mark of his power, the mark of the man he used to be, is ruined. The ink is thick and dark, an ugly attempt to erase what was once there.
They tried to strip him of his identity.
Tried to erase the king from the chessboard.
But it’s what’s above it that made the breath vanish from my lungs entirely.
Three letters.
I. M. B.
My initials.
He tattooed me onto his skin, he marked himself with me.
Dominik’s quiet beside me, staring into the middle distance like he’s halfway between here and whatever he has got going on regarding the Bratva. Ada’s finally stopped pretending to write and now just sits, arms crossed, watching the hallway.
Then the door creaks open.
Sawyer walks in, hands full of a tray of coffee mugs. “Hey, I grabbed coffee from—”
He stops, his gaze roaming around the table- focusing on Dominik. Someone who isn’t supposed to be here, or is unusual to see in this place.
His brows knit at the sight of us—bloody gloves in the biohazard bin, the way Ada won’t meet his eye, the tension you can smell like ozone before a storm.
“What happened?”
And before anyone can answer—
A crash.
I bolt upright.
The unmistakable clatter of metal on tile, the shriek of the vitals monitor flatlining from disconnect. My heart’s in my throat. I already know. He’s awake.
“Shit,” Ada mutters, pushing back her chair.
The hallway goes dead silent.
And then—
There he is.
Aslanov steps into view like a ghost staggering out of a grave. His black infused eyes that used to be bright green are scanning the hallway, blood seeping from the torn IV site, staining down his forearm. His eyes are wide, wild, animal-deep. He looks straight at us. No, through us.
He’s not seeing people. He’s seeing threats. Traps. Memory.
My stomach sinks as he moves closer to the table.
Eight eyes meet his, mine, Dominik’s, Ada’s, Sawyer’s, and he freezes like we’ve struck him.
Sawyer doesn’t move.
I see it; the exact moment recognition hits him.
It’s not just shock. It’s a flicker of horror behind his eyes, something raw and primal, as he finally connects the dots.
The face in front of him is a name he thought belonged to a ghost. A man long dead, buried beneath layers of whispered stories, bloodshed, and violence.
And now that ghost is here; alive, breathing, bleeding.
His stance changes. It’s subtle at first, a slight shift, but then his shoulders lock.
His hands twitch, fingers curling instinctively like he’s fighting the urge to reach for a weapon.
But there’s nothing there. Not anymore. Not in this place, not with his back against the wall, not with a dying man standing in front of him.
Sawyer knows who Aslanov is. He recognizes him.
Not just the heir to the Bratva throne, the brutal, calculating leader who carved his way through the criminal world. Not just the name men whispered in fear, the legend of a monster who drowned empires in blood and death.
But the man. This man . Broken, ragged, weak. And still terrifying.
He’s staring at him, jaw tight, his body tense, his eyes locked on Aslanov.
I rise from my seat, and so does everyone else.
Sawyer doesn’t understand why I’m so close, why I haven’t run, why I’m not afraid. I know they’re all thinking it.
Why isn’t she afraid?
Because Aslanov is more than the man they think he is. He’s more than the stories, more than the monster that haunts nightmares. And for all his violence, all his rage, he’s mine. I’ve seen him at his lowest, at his most vulnerable. I’ve seen the man under the name.
He isn’t a monster.
But no one here, except Dominik, understands that.
Sawyer, trying to regain control of the situation, speaks first. His voice is tight, forced. “He needs to be restrained.”
Aslanov doesn’t blink.
Then, he moves.
It’s barely a movement, but it’s enough to make Sawyer take a step back. The air changes. His posture shifts slightly, like he’s not sure whether to stand his ground or retreat. His jaw tightens, fingers twitching again as he braces himself.
Aslanov doesn’t speak. His eyes lock onto Sawyer’s, not with malice, but with something far more chilling. It’s a look that speaks volumes of power. Not of the past, but of the present. Of the man he still is, even now.
Even in his weakest moment, bleeding and broken, Aslanov has power. The same power that haunted every room he stepped into. The same power that forced men to bow, that commanded empires. And though his body is failing him, though his blood is spilling on the floor, it’s still there. His presence.
Sawyer falters. His eyes dart between me and Aslanov, confusion mixing with unease.
And then, Sawyer does it. He steps forward. A small movement, but it’s a mistake.