Aj
The dress doesn’t fit right.
It clings in all the wrong places—too tight across my ribs, too loose at the hips.
I stare at myself in the mirror, at the pale ghost wearing a wedding dress like a corpse dressed for burial.
Thunder cracks overhead, rattling the windows and making the glass shiver.
Rain lashes against them in heavy sheets, turning the world outside into a blur of gray.
I reach behind for the zipper, but my fingers won’t cooperate. They’re shaking too badly. The pills haven’t kicked in yet. Not enough vodka, apparently.
Grabbing the bottle off the dresser, I take another long swallow. I don’t know why I’m even trying this stupid thing on. The wedding is weeks away, and I already know I won’t make it that far. Not like this. Not when every breath feels like dragging broken glass through my lungs.
I’m so fucking tired.
The kind of tired that settles into your marrow until it becomes part of you. The kind you carry into bed and secretly hope you never wake up from. The kind where you drift a little too close to the center line while driving home and catch yourself wondering…
What if I just didn’t correct it?
No notes. No goodbye. Just…done.
BANG.
The front door shudders so violently, the picture frames rattle on the walls. My heart slams into my throat.
Another crash.
“AJ!”
“No.” My body moves before my brain catches up. “No… No, no, no…”
Ice floods every vein as I stumble backward, the long train of my dress dragging across the hardwood.
BANG.
“Open the goddamn door!”
I spin toward the dining room, slipping on the polished floor.
Another hit.
The wood groans again, splinters cracking.
My hand scrambles blindly across the dining table until my fingers reach the cold metal of Gage’s gun. Heart thundering, I snatch it up with both hands.
“Wolff!” My voice breaks. “Go away!”
The doorframe groans under another slam.
“I swear to god, I’ll shoot you!”
“AJ!” His voice cuts through the storm, louder this time. “Open the fucking door.” Something heavy slams into it again.
The deadbolt groans.
“No! I mean it!”
Lightning flashes through the house, making the lights flicker. Where’s my phone? Where the fuck is my phone? I keep the gun trained on the front door while my eyes search wildly for my purse.
Another crash.
The hinges scream—
The door explodes inward, and wood splinters across the entryway. A bolt of lightning floods the room, illuminating his tall figure standing in the doorway.
I pull the trigger.
The gun bucks in my hands.
Wolff jerks with a shout, grabbing his arm as blood sprays across the wall beside him.
“Fucking Christ, AJ!”
I fire again.
The bullet punches through drywall, filling the room with plaster dust.
“Get the fuck out of my house!” I scream, the sound guttural.
Another shot.
Glass explodes as the lamp beside the couch shatters.
“AJ! Stop shooting!” he shouts back.
I stumble backward, nearly tripping over the train of the dress as the cloud of plaster dust slowly settles between us.
He grunts low, then steps through the dust. One hand is clamped hard over his upper arm, blood forcing its way between his fingers before dripping steadily onto my hardwood floor. His breathing is heavy, but his eyes lock onto me with a terrifying kind of focus.
My hands shake harder as I lift the gun again, both hands wrapped around it now because I can’t keep it steady with one.
“Stop. Wolff.”
He takes another slow step.
Then another.
“No…” Everything inside me caves in. “No, no…” The gun slips away from him, toward me. The cold barrel presses against my temple.
His entire body freezes, eyes widening with a concern I’ve never seen from him. “Don’t.”
Rain pours through the broken doorway, pooling across the hardwood. Blood slips through his fingers where he’s clamped a hand over the bullet wound, splattering the floor with every step he takes.
My breathing won’t slow.
Every inhale catches halfway down, breaking apart into ragged sobs that burn my throat.
“AJ…”
I squeeze my eyes shut, pressing the barrel harder against my temple until it hurts. “I can’t… I can’t do this anymore.”
“Don’t. Don’t you fucking dare.” His voice rises.
“I’m so tired, Wolff.”
“I know.”
“No…” My knees threaten to give out beneath me. “You don’t.”
His throat bobs. “AJ. If you’re gonna shoot somebody…” he trails off, exhaling. “You point that gun at me.”
My eyes open.
He’s standing in the middle of my living room, rainwater dripping from his clothes, blood running down his arm in thin rivulets.
“I mean it. Put it on me.”
“You raped me.” My voice splinters. “You hurt Jackal… You…”
His entire face hardens. “It wasn’t me.”
“You’re lying.”
“I swear to—”
“Stop lying!” I cry out.
“AJ, I never came here that night.”
“I saw you.”
“You saw my mask.”
“I screamed the safeword… our safeword… and you didn’t stop. You just kept…” My throat closes, the memory of his hand on my throat, choking me all over again.
His eyes squeeze shut for one impossible second, looking pained.
“It wasn’t me, AJ.”
“You expect me to believe that? After everything you said to me? You told me—”
“I know. I know what I said.” His voice is rough, almost broken. “I know every fucking word. And I hate that I said them. But I’m telling you the truth.”
“So why are you here?!” I sob. “Why now? Why do you always come back after you’ve already broken me?
” The room slowly starts to tilt. Vodka and too many pills catching up, my words and thoughts hazy.
The gun suddenly feels impossibly heavy.
“It doesn’t even matter. You could rape me a hundred more times…
still wouldn’t matter. I don’t want to do this anymore… I can’t do this anymore.”
He inhales deeply, his eyes never leaving mine. “I was four minutes late.”
“…What?”
“There was a truck outside Novosibirsk.” He takes another slow step. “I missed it…missed you. By four minutes.” Rain drums against the roof so powerfully, I can barely hear him. “A motel in Omsk. The sheets were still warm when I got there.”
Another step.
“I watched a black-market stream long enough to hear the bidding start before the feed cut. I tracked the IP. Burned the building down. Cut three men open looking for where they’d taken you.”
Another step.
“The information was already two days old.”
I don’t understand… I don’t understand any of this. My chest tightens, breaths coming in shallow gasps. The gun wavers.
“I kept finding pieces of you. Your blood. The clothes they kept you in. Strands of your hair.” His throat works hard as he swallows. “Every room I walked into…was empty.”
Another step.
“Every time I thought I’d finally found you, I’d kick in another goddamn door, and you still wouldn’t be there.”
My hand starts shaking harder.
“So I kept looking. I stopped sleeping. Stopped eating. I stopped giving a shit about anything except finding you.” He pauses, eyes on mine. “I hated you.”
I stop breathing.
“I hated what you were doing to me. I hated myself more.” The gun feels like it weighs a hundred pounds, resting against my temple. “You stopped being a mission long before I found you.”
The room feels too small, too loud, my head floating somewhere just above my body as I stare at him through tears that won’t stop falling.
“Why… Why are you telling me this now?” leaves me in a broken whisper.
He opens his mouth, then closes it again, frustration carving across his face like he’s fighting something he doesn’t know how to say.
“I…” He drags a harsh breath into his lungs and scrubs a blood-smeared hand over his mouth.
“I don’t know how… I know how to hunt people.
I know how to kill them. I know how to survive.
That’s all I fucking know. I don’t know how to…
” The words catch in his throat so hard I can see him physically fighting them.
“I don’t know how to love somebody…but—”
My heart forgets how to beat.
“I love you, AJ.” His voice is raw, like the admission is being torn out of him.
“I’ve loved you since before I understood what the fuck was happening to me.
I knew you were wrong for me. I knew I’d ruin you.
So I did the only thing I knew how to do…
” His eyes squeeze shut for the briefest second, like even saying it hurts. “I tried to make you hate me.”
My chest caves in, a sob clawing its way up my throat. He loves me. The monster who I still crave in the worst, sickest parts of myself—he loves me. And it changes nothing and everything all at once.
“I pushed you away because I knew what would happen if I didn’t. I don’t feel things the way I’m supposed to. I don’t speak unless I have to. I don’t touch unless it’s to kill. I don’t know how to let people close without destroying them.”
Shaking his head, he drags a hand over his face.
“I was so fucking obsessed with getting you home that when I finally found you…when they put you on that stage…” His hands clench into fists, the tendons standing out beneath his skin.
“I told myself it was necessary. I told myself it was the only way to save you. But the worst part… The part that makes me want to tear my own fucking skin off every goddamn day is that I wanted it. I enjoyed it. My cock was buried inside you while you were crying…while you were terrified…and I fucking wanted it.”
A sob tears out of me. I can barely see him through the tears.
His voice is raw now, stripped down to something that barely sounds like him.
“I’ve spent every single day since Russia hating myself for it.
For not being able to find another way. For not finding you sooner.
I looked at you afterward, and all I could see was what I’d become.
The same monster that raped me when I was a kid.
I became them, AJ. I raped you. I raped you, and part of me liked it.
” He looks physically sick saying it. “I failed you in Russia, and the Sovereign promoted me. Pinned a fucking medal on my chest. Called me a hero for the worst fucking day of my life.”