ARSHILA — POV
The car is going slow.
Painfully slow.
Like it's crawling out of the wreckage of what just happened instead of fleeing it.
The engine hums low, restrained, obedient, and that alone feels wrong enough to make my skin prickle.
This car never moves like this.
Zayan doesn't drive like this.
We left the hall in silence. Not dramatic silence. The kind that presses into your ears and makes you hyperaware of every breath you take.
I remember the doors opening, the night air rushing in, and the driver already waiting.
Standing straight.
Still.
Then Zayan looks at him.
Just one look. No words. No gesture. Nothing loud enough to register as an order.
The driver bows. Not a polite nod. Not professional courtesy.A full, instinctive bow like his body reacts before his brain can interfere.
He steps aside immediately, eyes down, hands clasped like he just saw something he never wants to see again.
Like this isn't the worst version of Zayan he's witnessed.
Like it's just the most recent one.
Kamal Rashid Tavarian doesn't say a single word. He doesn't ask questions. He doesn't scold. He doesn't even look surprised.
He just watches Zayan with that sharp, unreadable stare and then turns away like this fits neatly into a box he's already labeled and filed.
That's when something in my chest starts to crack.
Now I'm in the passenger seat.
Leather. Cold. Expensive. Quiet.
The city slides by outside the window, lights blurred and distant, like the world is continuing out of spite.
The speedometer barely climbs. Sixty. Seventy. Controlled. Careful.
Zayan usually pushes past two-sixty like the concept of death personally offended him. Like the Angel of Death owes him money and he's daring it to collect.
This version drives like every movement is measured, deliberate, locked down tight.
Like he doesn't trust himself.
I turn my head.
Big mistake.
His face is angled forward, jaw tight, one hand steady on the wheel. Knuckles clean now, but I know what they looked like minutes ago. His eyes are still dark. Not angry. Not wild.
Just… deep.
Heavy.
His beautiful face with those eyes is a fucking problem. The contrast is wrong. It's unsettling.
Like seeing a cathedral with blood on the altar. Like something sacred learned how to kill and didn't feel bad about it.
A beautiful monster.
The thought sits in my head and doesn't move.
I look down at my hand.
The handkerchief did its job. Mostly. My skin is clean enough that anyone else would stop thinking about it.
But there's still a smear there. Faint. Reddish-brown. Right along the side of my finger where the fabric didn't quite reach.
His blood.
Still on me.
My stomach turns. Not nausea. Something sharper. Something colder. My body feels wrong in its own outline, like my nerves are buzzing under my skin and I can't shut them up.
I rub my thumb against it.
It doesn't come off.
I stop touching it.
I don't know why that feels like the smarter choice.
My mind keeps circling back to one thing, over and over, like it's chewing on a bone it refuses to drop. The moment before everything broke.
The second where that man leaned in too close. The way Zayan's hand tightened on mine before I even registered discomfort.
What would he have done if the man touched me?
My chest tightens.
Because if that was Zayan's reaction to words—
I don't know what he would've done to hands.
The image doesn't fully form.
My brain refuses to finish it.
It just leaves the implication there, heavy and unfinished, and that's somehow worse.
I press my lips together.
My heart starts racing again.
Not from desire.
From realization.
I have never seen him like that.
Not once.
Not even close.
And the terrifying part isn't that he's capable of it.
It's that it didn't look new.
It looked familiar.
Like he knew exactly where to put his weight. How to angle his fist. When to stop breathing so he wouldn't get sloppy. Like his body remembered something his face pretended to forget.
The car turns.
Marble screeching under the tires and my stomach drops like my body recognizes the place before my brain does. Iron gates slide open without a sound, lights flaring up along the drive like the house woke before we arrived.
I'm not here.
Not really.
My head is still stuck in that marble hall, replaying angles and sounds and the way his fist moved like it knew the job. The mansion rises in front of us, all sharp lines and quiet money, and it feels unreal that this place exists in the same universe as what I just watched.
The car slows even more.
Of course it does.
It stops at the entrance, perfectly aligned, doors unlocking with a soft click that feels disrespectful after violence. I don't wait. I push the door open and step out like I need air before my lungs cave in.
Cold hits me immediately.
Not a breeze. A full-body chill that crawls under my dress and grips my spine. My skin tightens, nerves flaring, every sense stretched thin like I'm one wrong sound away from shattering.
"Wait."
His voice isn't loud.
It doesn't need to be.
It carries that same weight it had back there, the same quiet command that froze an entire room. My body obeys before I can argue. I stop. Completely still. Breath stuck halfway in.
Footsteps.
The door closes behind him. I hear it without turning, the soft thud too final, too intimate. He comes closer and I can feel him before he touches me, heat and presence and something dangerous sitting just under his skin.
He shrugs out of his blazer and drapes it over my shoulders.
Slow.
Careful.
The fabric is warm from him, heavy, grounding, and it should be comforting. It should feel protective.
Instead it makes my ribs ache like something is pressing from the inside out, because this is the same man who had blood on his hands ten minutes ago.
My hands curl into the sleeves without permission.
I hate that.
"its Cold," he says quietly, like it's an observation, not an excuse.
I nod because words are unreliable right now.
He watches me for a second too long, eyes searching my face again like he's still checking for cracks. His jaw tightens when he finds something he doesn't like. I don't know what it is, but I feel it anyway.
"let's go," he says.
I don't answer.
I turn and walk.
The doors open before I reach them, staff invisible and efficient, the house swallowing me whole. The warmth inside doesn't help. It just makes the cold inside me more obvious by comparison.
My heels click against the marble.
Sharp. Echoing. Too loud in the quiet.
Behind me, his shoes follow. Slower. Heavier. Each step measured, controlled, like he's giving me space but refusing to let me forget he's there.
The sound crawls up my back and settles between my shoulders.
I don't look at him.
I don't trust my face if I do.
The hallway stretches, all clean lines and shadowed corners, art I've stopped noticing a long time ago. Tonight everything feels different. Bigger. Too open. Like the walls are listening.
The stairs feel longer tonight. The hallway upstairs quieter, like the house itself is holding its breath.
My heels keep clicking, his shoes keep answering, and the sound threads together into something intimate and unsettling.
We reach our room.
I stop at the door with my hand on the handle and my heart doing something wild and uneven in my chest. Everything in me is tired. Wired. Overloaded.
I don't look back.
I open the door and step inside.
The darkness greets me like it's been waiting.
The darkness inside the room doesn't settle me.
It presses.
The door closes behind him and the sound lands too loud in my head, like punctuation I didn't ask for. I don't wait. I don't slow.
I move on instinct, sharp and fast, like my body already picked a direction before my mind could argue.
Bathroom.
Now.
I cross the room in long steps, blazer slipping off one shoulder and then the other. I don't fix it. I don't care. I push into the bathroom and shut the door behind me with more force than necessary.
The click of the lock feels obscene.
Not safe.
Just final.
I lean my palms against the counter and breathe once. Twice. It doesn't help. My heart is still sprinting, but now it's different.
The adrenaline is draining and leaving something uglier behind. Something shaky and loud and very aware of how alone I am in my own skin.
I turn the tap on.
Water rushes out, bright and unforgiving.
I shove my hands under it immediately.
Cold first. Then warm. Then hot.
Soap.
Too much soap.
I pump it again anyway.
The smell hits sharp and clean, trying too hard. I scrub my palms together, fingers laced tight, nails digging into skin. The friction burns a little and I welcome it. Burn means real. Burn means now.
I rinse.
I look.
There it is.
Still there.
Not dramatic. Not smeared everywhere. Just faint traces clinging to the creases of my fingers like it knows me now. Like it's stubborn on purpose.
My chest tightens.
I scrub harder.
Backs of my hands. Wrists. Under my nails. The sound of skin against skin is wet and frantic, ugly in the quiet bathroom. The water splashes everywhere, droplets hitting the mirror, the counter, my dress.
I don't stop.
I can feel my pulse in my throat now. Loud. Fast. Embarrassingly alive. The kind of heartbeat that makes your ears ring and your vision narrow.
I rinse again.
Still there.
My stomach drops.
Not faintness. Just this sharp, sliding realization that some things don't come off because you want them to.
I press my hands flat against the basin and stare at them like they might explain themselves.
They don't.
My fingers tremble.
That's new.
That's the part I don't like.
I shut the water off too hard and the sudden silence crashes down. The bathroom feels too big now. Too clean. The lights too bright. Every reflection sharp enough to cut.
I look up.
The mirror doesn't soften anything.
My face stares back at me, pale under the lights, eyes too dark, mouth slightly open like I forgot to close it.
There's a red mark along my collarbone where the cold hit me outside. My hair is a mess. My breathing is uneven.
I look like someone who just learned something she can't unlearn.
My gaze drops to my hands again in the reflection.
Still faintly marked.
Still not clean enough.
My heart is beating fast now in a way that has nothing to do with danger and everything to do with aftermath. The crash after the crash. The moment where your body finally realizes it's allowed to feel.
And it doesn't know what to do with that permission.
I swallow.
My throat hurts.
The room smells like soap and water and something metallic my brain keeps insisting isn't there anymore. I rub my hands together again, slower this time, like I'm negotiating instead of attacking.
It doesn't work.
I straighten slowly, eyes lifting back to the mirror.
The thought comes without drama.
Without flourish.
Just lands.
The man I married has two faces.