Alya
The docks bled fog like an open wound.
Cold, salt-heavy air curling around crates and rusting metal, drowning the world in that half-light where everything feels a little less real. The kind of night the Bratva loved — no witnesses, no questions. Only shadows and cargo that smelled of money and ruin.
I shouldn't have been here.
I could still feel the scabbed-over wreckage of my back pulling with every step, my body a patchwork of bruises and torn flesh poorly hidden under thick black clothing. The whip marks burned with each breath, sweat slicking my skin, my stomach churning from fever and something worse.
My mind. It wouldn't stop. Not with the blood-soaked memories, not with the words he left me with after breaking me open and leaving me to rot.
'Stay clean. I won't have a weakness in my house.'
And maybe I wasn't clean anymore. Maybe I'd never been.
