Chapter 55
Ayla
Iwake up in the dark with pain already waiting for me.
It’s not gradual. No slow drift up through sleep. Just pain and cold metal and the sharp, ugly throb at the side of my head like it’s been there the whole time, sitting on my skull and waiting for me to notice.
I suck in a breath and regret it immediately.
Salt. Rust.
Something damp and industrial under it.
My hand flies to my head. Fingers brush dried blood tangled in my hair and I hiss through my teeth.
Great.
Just fantastic.
For one second, I don’t move. I stay exactly where I am, eyes open, breathing slow through the ache, letting the dark settle around me instead of fighting it.
Figure it out.
The floor under me is metal. Cold enough to bite through my jeans. The air feels close, stale, but not fully sealed. Somewhere nearby, metal creaks low and hollow, followed by the faint slap of water.
Water.
Dock.
My pulse kicks harder.
I push up carefully, ignoring the way my stomach rolls, and the first thing my hand hits is a bar.
Not a wall.
A bar.
I go still.
Then I reach again.
Another one.
Vertical. Cold. Thick.
I look up.
At first I can’t see anything but strips of weak light and shadow, but as my vision settles, I make out more bars overhead, welded into a metal frame above me. Beyond that, a ceiling. Low. Corrugated maybe. The whole thing boxed in tight enough to make my skin crawl.
A cage.
Inside something bigger.
Shipping container.
I know containers. I know the shape of them, the feel of them, the way sound moves inside them.
This one’s been made into a fucking kennel.
My mouth twists.
Wow. New low.
I get to my feet slowly, one hand braced on the bars until the dizziness backs off enough for me not to throw up on my own shoes. The cage is maybe six feet across, not much more. Just enough space to stand, sit, pace if I really need to lose my mind properly.
Beyond the bars, I can barely make out more shapes in the dark. More metal. More partitions.
Other cages.
Empty.
I’m the only one in here.
That should make me feel better.
It doesn’t.
I check myself fast. Jacket still on. Boots still on. Bag gone.
Knife gone too.
Of course.
How generous of them to leave me my coat.
I pat down the rest of myself anyway, like a weapon might magically appear because I want one badly enough.
Nothing.
The ache in my head sharpens as memory starts coming back in pieces.
The station.
The man by the pillar. The bag.
I thought Gabriel.
I was wrong.
No—
My jaw tightens. Not fully wrong. The first one could’ve been one of his.
But the second voice—That accent.
Not Turkish.
Armenian.
A loud metal clang rips through the dark.
I jerk toward it.
At the far end of the container, a door swings open and daylight blasts through so hard it turns everything inside white for a second. A man’s silhouette fills the frame. Broad shoulders. Still posture. One hand on the door.
I can’t make out his face yet. Just shape. Height. The outline of something dark on his head.
Then he steps inside.
The door shuts behind him with another heavy bang, and overhead lights flicker on one by one.
Not clean lights.
Bare industrial bulbs in wire cages, hanging from the ceiling on long cords, swaying slightly like someone rigged this place fast and ugly. The movement sends shadows swinging across the walls and bars and floor.
Makeshift.
That’s what this is.
A container turned into a human holding pen.
Christ.
The man walks toward me slowly, and the closer he gets, the more the light catches.
Black clothes. Long sleeves. High collar. Burn scars climbing one side of his neck.
Then his face.
One side untouched. Hard. Familiar.
The other dragged and ruined by old fire, the skin pulled tight and shiny in places where it should move naturally. One pale blue eye stares dead and flat from that side, wrong in a way that makes something cold slide down my spine.
I know him before he gets all the way into the light.
Of course I do.
“Arsen?”
His mouth tips, not quite a smile. “Ayla.”
For a second I just stare at him through the bars.
Then annoyance wins.
Because really?
Really?
“What the fuck is this?”
His gaze drops over the cage like he’s assessing workmanship. “Temporary.”
I bark out a sharp laugh and instantly regret it when pain stabs through my skull. “Did Gabriel put you up to this?”
“Not for him,” he says.
That wipes the rest of the sarcasm off me.
My brows pull together. “Then why?”
Arsen stops a few feet from the cage. Not close enough to touch. Close enough to make it clear he doesn’t need to.
For a second I just stare at him.
At the face I’ve known since I was a kid. At the man whose house I used to walk through like it meant nothing. At the same voice, the same shape, the same presence—only now standing on the other side of a cage with me inside it.
“What the hell is this about, Arsen?” I ask. “You know me.”
His expression doesn’t move.
“If this isn’t for Gabriel, then why the fuck am I here?”
Nothing.
So I go uglier. “I’m not good enough to traffic.”
That gets something.
Not much. Just the slightest shift in his mouth. Not a smile. Something meaner.
“If you’re good enough to be in the Pakhan’s bed,” he says, voice flat, “you’re good enough to traffic.”
Ice slides down my spine.
Then he adds, “But that’s not what this is, Ayla. This is business. Don’t take it personal.”
I bark out a laugh.
“Don’t take it personal?” I gesture at the bars around me. “You put me in a fucking cage.”
“That,” he says, eyes flicking over the lock, the bars, me, “is because you’re volatile.”
My brows shoot up. He keeps going like he didn’t just insult me to my face.
“And I know you. I can’t let you loose in here.”
I open my mouth, then close it. Because honestly?
Fair.
Still.
“What the fuck,” I mutter.
He says nothing.
I study him harder. The stillness. The scars. The dead blue eye. The good side of his face giving me nothing.
Then the shape of it starts to turn wrong in my head. If this isn’t for Gabriel—
A cold thread pulls tight in my stomach.
“Does Gabriel know?” I ask.
Arsen’s gaze settles back on mine. “He does.”
“Then where is he?”
“He knows you’re gone.” A beat. “He just doesn’t know where.”
My pulse stutters.
No.
No, that’s—
That’s deeply wrong. I look at him again. Really look. At the old burns. The old rage sitting under his skin like it never cooled. The man Maksim dragged out of a fire instead of leaving there.
And then it clicks.
Not Gabriel. Maksim.
This is about Maksim.
I go very still. “It’s about Korsakov.”
For the first time, something close to approval touches Arsen’s face.
“You were always very smart, Ayla.”
My mouth goes dry.
I make myself sneer anyway. “What, you think he’s going to come running because of me?”
Arsen doesn’t even blink. “That’s exactly what he’s going to do.”
My stomach drops, but I keep my chin up.
“What’s your plan?” I ask. “Because this worked out so well with the Amatos, didn’t it?”
That does it. His jaw ticks. Not much. Just enough.
Good.
So he can still feel something.
“This one is personal,” he says.
I let out a short, sharp laugh. “Of course it’s fucking personal. I’m personal to you.”
“No.” His voice turns quieter. Colder. “Not you to me.”
He steps closer.
“Him to me.”
Something dark turns over in my chest.
I stare at him through the bars, then at the ruined side of his face. At the eye that doesn’t work. At the skin Maksim once put back into breathing.
“This is about him saving you?”
Arsen goes still. Really still.
Not a blink. Not a shift. Nothing.
“You think that’s what he did?”
I hold his stare.
I’m not stupid enough to say yes. But I’m not built to back down from men like him either.
So I shrug one shoulder. “You’re breathing.”
He is fingers wrap around the bars of my cage.
He’s close enough now that I can see every warped edge of scar tissue, every place the fire reached and stayed.
“And that,” he says, voice low and flat, “was his mistake.”
His good eye holds mine.
“And unfortunately for you, Ayla”—his gaze flicks over me, the bars, the space I can’t get out of—“it may be your demise.”
This time the fear doesn’t come smart.
It comes all at once.
Arsen sees it.
Something unreadable flickers across the good side of his face, then vanishes just as fast. He steps back like the moment is over. Like whatever he came in here for, he got it.
He turns toward the door.
“Arsen.” I hate the way my voice shakes.
He stops. Just enough to let me know he heard me.
Then he looks back.
I grip the bars. “I know you.”
His expression hardens instantly. “You don’t.”
“Yes, I do.” My throat feels raw, but I keep going anyway. “I know you didn’t want this life.”
That gets me the smallest pause.
“You don’t know anything about me, Ayla.”
I laugh once, bitter and breathless. “Don’t I? We’re cut from the same cloth.”
He says nothing.
So I push.
“You think I wanted this?” I gesture at the cage, the bars, the whole rusted metal nightmare around me. “You think I want to be born into this shit and end up here because men keep deciding what I’m worth and where I belong?”
My voice sharpens with every word. “You think this is what I wanted, Arsen?”
For one second, something flashes in his eye.
Not softness. Not even mercy. Something worse.
Recognition.
Then it’s gone. His face closes over.
“Ayla, because I know you,” he says quietly, “I can’t treat you the way I treat the other girls.”
Ice floods my chest.
I stare at him.
“Well,” I say, voice thin and mean, “thank fuck for that.”
His mouth twitches, but it isn’t amusement.
“Your mouth is so damn sharp, Ayla,” he says. “Gets you in trouble every fucking time.”
He reaches for the light switch.
My pulse jumps.
“What I mean,” he says, “is I have to keep you weak.”
Then the lights cut out.
Darkness slams down so fast it feels physical.
“No food,” he says from somewhere near the door.
My fingers tighten around the bars.
“No water. No light.”
“Arsen—”
The latch clanks. He opens the door. Panic claws up hard and sudden.
“Arsen, goddammit—if you leave me in here without water, I’ll die in three days.”
His silhouette is the only thing left, cut out in the strip of white from the open door.
“It won’t take three days, Ayla.”
My stomach drops. He looks back once.
“Your Pakhan will be here long before that.”
Then he steps out.
The door slams shut.
And I’m alone in the dark again.