Chapter 56‘I Love You.’’
‘I Love You.’’
Isabella
I’ve spent years learning how to stitch up bodies, how to stop the blood from spilling, how to ease the pain just enough so the soul can hold on a little longer.
I’ve seen fractures, bruises, lacerations, and burns.
I know how to make them stop, how to dress the wounds, how to offer comfort when the body cries out.
But this— this —is different. This is the kind of pain that doesn’t leave a mark on the skin.
The kind that doesn’t show up in a scan or a chart.
The softness of the floor beneath me almost swallows me whole as I sit here.
He looks at me, his eyes so vulnerable, so broken. His voice is raw, scraping the air, fragile as glass. ‘‘Can I hug you, please?’’
I break into unlimited pieces.
I glance at the restraints, my throat tight, the tears still spilling down my face. Dr. Hsu’s words echo in my head, distant and hollow: ‘‘He is dangerous.’’
His voice breaks through my thoughts again, softer this time, like he’s trying to convince me. ‘‘I’ll be good.’’
An unlimited number of pieces that’ll never be put together again break.
With shaking hands, I slowly unfasten the last straps. The sound of the Velcro tearing echoes in my ears like a gunshot, final and loud. I want to pause, want to hesitate, but I don’t.
When the straps of his wrists are free, he moves like a coiled spring, too fast, too desperate.
His hands reach for me, and I’m falling before I can even think, falling into the warmth of his arms despite the wires, the tubes, the needles that are still tethered to his body.
He pulls me to him with a force that knocks the breath from my lungs, and I feel him, all of him.
The pain, the desperation, the relief, the yearning that’s been buried under everything else.
I press my face into the crook of his neck, my hands gripping the back of him as though I could fuse our bodies together and make this moment last forever. His skin is warm, too warm, and I can feel the rapid pulse of his heartbeat, a frantic rhythm that matches mine.
I hug him back violently, my whole body shaking with it. It’s as though I’m trying to make him real again, trying to fix what’s been broken.
His arms lock around me like the world is ending.
One hand presses to the small of my back, the other cradles the back of my head, fingers curling into my hair with the gentlest desperation.
Like he’s afraid I’ll disappear if he lets go.
Like if he holds me tightly enough, he can rewrite everything that’s happened.
I feel the tremble in his muscles, the shake in his breath.
He buries his face into the side of my neck and breathes like he’s trying to inhale me, like the scent of my skin might anchor him.
And maybe it does. Maybe we’re anchoring each other right now, two broken magnets that only understand one another’s pull.
“I’ve got you,” I whisper, running a hand down the back of his neck, fingers brushing the line of a healing scar. “I’ve got you, Aslanov.”
His breath stutters.
But his hold is still too tight. And I feel it, the edge of panic still curling inside him like smoke. The confusion. The questions he’s too afraid to ask.
So I speak, even though it hurts. Even though the words feel like breaking glass in my throat.
“You’re in a clinic,” I say softly, keeping my voice low, soothing. “A private one. Under the radar. Safe. I’ve been working here… for months. With Ada.”
He shifts slightly, just enough to meet my eyes. The edge in his stare dulls, just a little.
“The man you saw earlier,” I continue, brushing his hair gently back from his face, “his name is Ethan or ‘Sawyer’. You don’t know him. But he’s not a threat. You’ll like him when you’re not…” I swallow, careful, “…when you’re feeling steadier.”
His grip on me loosens by degrees. Not gone. Just enough for him to breathe again.
“Dominik’s here too,” I add, softer still. “He’s safe. He’s been helping.”
His brows draw together like the information is hard to parse. He’s still piecing things together, still fighting whatever war lives in his mind. But something in his chest eases.
I shift slightly, both of us still tangled together, and I brush my thumb over the pulse at his throat. “You’re in an isolation room,” I explain. “Everything in here is designed to have as few triggers as possible. No sharp corners. No harsh lights. Nothing that might send you spiraling.”
He blinks, slow and heavy, like each word is landing somewhere deep inside him.
“You’re on medication,” I continue, gentle but firm. “For the PTSD. We’re still adjusting the dosage, it’s not balanced yet. That’s why you’ve been restrained. Because… because right now, your brain doesn’t know the difference between a memory and reality.”
And because people are terrified of you, but those words die in my throat.
He doesn’t speak.
“I’m here,” I whisper. “And I’m not going anywhere.”
His breath shifts, fractured, unsteady. I feel it in the way his chest jerks against mine, like something inside him is trying to crawl free.
“I have to tell you,” he whispers, voice splintered, barely human. “What happened.”
His arms tighten around me like a vice, not in violence, never that, but in desperation. His entire body begins to tremble, small tremors at first, then violent ones, like he’s fighting ghosts stitched into his bones.
“I need you to know,” he grits out, jaw locked tight. “The darkness, the screams—fuck, the smell. Burned metal. Rot. My own blood.” His voice cracks, something feral clawing behind it.
He’s spiraling. I can feel it in every word, each one a jagged shard of something that should never have existed. His pulse thrashes against my fingers. His eyes go glassy, unfocused, like he’s watching it all happen again.
“They tortured me like—”
“No,” I say, firm and low, like a hand on a gun. I press my forehead to his, forcing him to look at me. “Stop.”
He shakes his head, wild. “You need to hear it, what he told me—”
“Not like this,” I snap, quiet, but unflinching. My fingers curl in his hair, grounding him. “You’re bleeding too fast. Bleeding through words.”
His breath stutters, panic still rising.
“When?” he whispers, like a dying thing.
“When your mind isn’t trying to kill you for remembering.”
He swallows, hard. Silent. A single tear tracks down his cheek.
“I don’t know who I am anymore,” he says, barely audible.
“I don’t care how many pieces there are. I’ll hold them all. Even the ones that cut me.” I stare into his green eyes.
He squeezes his eyes shut, like he doesn’t want me to see him. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I do.” I rest my hand over his heart, feel it hammering; wild and wounded. “I see the worst in you, and I’m still here.”
He breaks again, this time with a sound, something low and broken, not quite a sob, not quite a scream. It rips through him, and through me too.
“I wanted to die,” he confesses. “I begged for it.”
I nod, tears streaking down my cheeks.
“The only thing that kept me breathing,” he murmurs, voice barely there, “was you.”
My breath catches, but I stay silent.
“Not your face. Not your voice. Just… the feeling of you,” he says, eyes still shut. “That warmth you gave me that I carried in my bones. That unbearable softness. I held onto that like a dying man clutches light in the dark.”
His hands tighten around me, desperate, like he’s afraid I’ll vanish if he loosens his grip.
“I don’t know who I am without the title,” he whispers. “Without Pakhan .” He spits the word like it’s poison. “That name gave me shape. It told me who to be. What to want. What to destroy.”
“And when it was stripped away… there was nothing left but bone and shadow.”
He pulls back just enough for his eyes, those brilliant, haunted green eyes, to meet mine. They’re glassy, wet, and ancient with pain.
I can’t breathe through the ache in my chest.
“But you,” he says, so quiet it’s almost a thought, “you saw through it. Through all the rot. Through the blood and the bruises and the rage.”
His lip trembles, and I can feel his shame rising again, like smoke from a long-dead fire.
“You looked at me like I was still human,” he chokes out. “Like there was something left.”
I cup his cheek, thumb tracing the damp line of a tear.
“There is,” I say. “There is. You don’t have to be the name, there is someone beyond that.”
He leans into my touch like it’s sunlight after a lifetime of rain.
“I don’t know how to be that person,” he whispers.
The silence that follows is thick, suffocating.
“I only know how to burn things down. How to make people afraid . But when you touch me…” His voice falters. “I feel like you’re touching the man beneath the name, you touch me so deep that it reaches the buried layers.”
His eyes are anything but calm.
“I don’t want to be a ghost,” he says, voice shaking. “I want to matter. Not to the world. Not to the name. To you . I want to be seen by you the way no one’s ever dared to see me.”
My chest twists painfully.
“I want to be yours, ” he continues, and there’s a raw violence in the way he says it, like a vow, like a threat to everything that would dare keep us apart. “In a way that doesn’t stain your soul. But I don’t know if that’s possible.”
He swallows hard, and his gaze drops, shame cutting through the intensity.
“I’m not sorry for the blood I’ve spilled,” he says, and there’s no hesitation. “I’d spill it again. I will spill it again. That part of me doesn’t die.”
“But,” he adds, slowly lifting his gaze again, “I am sorry for what I did to you . ”
His jaw flexes, and his voice drops to something more guttural, unhinged with emotion.
“I’m The Devil, solnyshko, ” he breathes. “But for you, I kneel. For you, I would strip the skin off the world. Burn every city. Drown every name. If it meant you lived in peace at the end of it. If it meant your smile stayed unruined.”
I can’t stop crying, not because I’m afraid, but because there’s something so achingly pure in this twisted, broken man offering the only kind of love he knows how to give. Violent. Unrelenting. Absolute.
“You give me meaning,” he says, voice cracking. “You gave me a reason to come back from Hell. And if all that’s left of me is flame, then I want to be the fire that warms you, not the one that scars.”
I press my forehead to his again, my tears mixing with his, and whisper into the breath between us, “Then be fire, and I’ll be the one who never lets you go dark again.”
And in that moment, he breaks, fully breaks.
Not into pieces.
But into someone new.
Someone only I will ever get to touch.
“I swear to you,” he breathes, voice low and wrecked, “I will never hurt you again.”
The words aren’t soft. They’re carved from something jagged and raw, dragged straight from the wreckage inside him.
“I’ll spend the rest of my life protecting you.”
He pulls back just enough to look into me. His green eyes shimmer like they’re made of fire and heartbreak.
“If you don’t feel the same, I’ll understand,” he says, barely able to get the words out. “I’ll stay away. I’ll vanish. I won’t trap you in the darkness I drag behind me.”
But I’m already breaking, splintering around the edges. His pain. His promise. His love .
I grab his face in both hands, hold him like he’s the only thing keeping me from falling apart. “I do,” I say, tears streaming. “I do feel the same. I never stopped.”
The relief that washes through him is violent—his shoulders drop, like he’s finally laid down the war he’s been carrying. His fingers clutch at my sides, desperate.
“I thought I lost you,” I whisper. “I thought the pain would kill me.”
“You’ll never lose me again,” he swears, forehead pressed to mine. “I’ll burn down every rule, every name, every goddamn Bratva law if I have to. I don’t care what it costs.”
His smile is feral, fevered, a thing of devotion and madness.
“ I love you ,” he says, the first time the words have spilled in this form.
My body shakes as I reach for him, grip him like I’ll never let go again. My heart feels like it’s cracking wide open with the ache of every moment I thought I lost him, every second I had to pretend I was breathing while my soul was buried with his absence.
“I love you too,” I whisper, almost choking on the words. “God, I love you.”