“He wants to see you,” he says.
My head shakes before my brain even catches up. “No. He’s refused. Every time. He said…” My voice falters, dies. He said what he always says.Forget me. Move on. Leave me and get on with your life.He knew, even then, before the first cell clamped shut to hold him in, that he would never see the light of day again.
“Not this time.”
Three words. And my heart stutters, misfires, slamming against my ribs like it’s trying to break free.
I force myself upright, legs unsteady, trembling as if the earth itself is shaking beneath me. My palms drag against the rough wall for balance. Somehow, I follow him - step after step, as though caught in a current too strong to fight.
Inside, the air changes. Corridors stretch long and narrow, humming with the faint buzz of fluorescent lights. The silence is deafening, worse than the noise outside. Doors line the passage, all of them locked, iron bolts heavy as judgment.
My pulse pounds in my throat. Every step closer to Lucian echoes like a countdown. It feels like walking toward an execution. And maybe it is.
They put me in a room divided by glass.
He’s on the other side, chains biting into his wrists, guards stationed behind him with guns. But it isn’t the restraints that gut me. It isn’t the iron or the uniformed muscle.
It’s his eyes.
The same eyes that once drank me in like I was his salvation. Eyes that used to soften when I laughed, darken when he touched me, burn when he whispered my name in the dark.
Now they’re hollow. Cold. Like the man I knew has already been buried, and what’s left is just the corpse of who he was.
He lifts the phone. I force myself to do the same. My hand shakes so badly against the receiver I can barely keep it to my ear.
“This is the last time,” he says. His voice is steady. Detached. Like he’s already rehearsed this goodbye a thousand times. “After today, we don’t see each other ever again.”
The word rips out of me, raw and jagged: “No.” My throat tears with it, pain shredding down to my chest. “Don’t say that—don’t youdaresay that to me.”
He leans forward, chain clinking at his wrist, the soundsmall and merciless. His face is carved from stone, but the faint tremor in his lip betrays him.
“You have a long life ahead of you,” he says. “A good life. Better than this. I won’t drag you into my grave. Move on, Nadia. Forget me.”
My hand slams against the glass, the crack of flesh against cold surface reverberating in the sterile room. Tears blur my vision, turn his outline into a smear of chains and grief.
“Forget you?” My voice shatters into pieces. “You’re all I’ve ever loved. How am I supposed toforgetyou?”
His jaw tightens, his gaze locked on me, cruel in its determination. He hardens his face into something brutal, something unbreakable - even as his lip trembles like it might split.
“You’ll do it because I’m telling you to,” he says, voice dropping low, final, lethal. “Because it’s the only way you’ll survive me.”
Tears streak hot down my cheeks, carving rivers of salt I can’t wipe away. I don’t try. Let the whole world see me undone. Let him see what he’s done to me.
“You don’t understand,” I rasp, my voice shaking so violently it scrapes raw. “When they read the verdict. When they saidguilty—they weren’t just condemning you. They condemned me too. Because you…” My words break, shatter in my throat. “You’ve already killed me, Lucian. Every day I live without you, every breath I take that doesn’t have you in it, it’s another way you’ll keep killing me.”
His knuckles whiten around the receiver, skin stretched tight over bone. His eyes shine wet - tears threatening, unshed, but his voice doesn’t waver. It doesn’t crack. He refuses to back down.
“Then let me bury us here,” he says. “Let me be the end of us. So you can go on and live.”
The sob that rips out of me makes my chest seize, my ribsache like they might snap. I press my forehead against the glass, hard enough that I swear I can feel it splintering under my skin. I want to claw through, to crawl into his arms, to scream until they drag me out kicking and bloody.
But I can’t. I can only watch as he lowers the phone, slow and deliberate, like a priest giving last rites. All I do is watch as the guards close in, hands on his chains, tugging him up from the chair.
His back straightens and his shoulders lock. His silhouette shrinks as he walks toward the door.
He doesn’t turn. Not once. Not even one final glance.
And then he’s gone.
