Page 117 of Inevitable Endings
His hands are on Dominik’s throat now, squeezing, choking the life from him. Dominik tries to fight back, weakly, but his efforts are futile. Aslanov’s grip is iron, like he’s drowning in a world of rage and terror that doesn’t belong to him anymore.
I want to scream. I want to run. But my body won’t move. I’m frozen, paralyzed by fear, by the sheer brutality unfolding before me.
I see it—the gun—lying on the ground, just out of reach. Aslanov’s hand moves to it, gripping it with a savage strength, dragging it up to point it at Dominik’s head. My stomach churns.
But then, something changes.
The sound of my breath breaking through the silence.
A scream, sharp and strangled, rips through the air. I don’t know where it came from, but my voice is suddenly louder than anything. It breaks through the haze of adrenaline and terror, echoing in the room.
I rush forward, away from the threshold of the door, without thinking. My feet are moving before my brain catches up.
No, no, no, no.
I don’t think, I don’t look back, I just charge forward, rushing into the room, and freeze.
Aslanov’s eyes—those black, feral eyes—slowly, agonizingly shift to me.
His face is full of so much pain, pain of his own, pain that has been inflicted onto him. A deep, jagged, angry cut in between his eyes stares back at me. His face is covered in blood, sweat, dirt, an image of pure chaos, but when his gaze lands on me, something shifts. The gun stays aimed at Dominik’s head, but his focus isn’t on him anymore. It’s on me.
Chapter 52
Echoes of a Dying Soul
Isabella
The gun stays trained on Dominik’s skull, cocked and trembling in Aslanov’s hand, but his eyes, those black, bottomless, godless eyes, are locked on me now.
They don’t soften.
They don’t recognize.
Theydevour.
I can’t speak. My throat tightens, clogged with breath I forgot how to take. My limbs feel detached, like my body’s trying to protect me by keeping me somewhere far away from this moment, from the nightmare unfurling in front of me. But I’m here. I’m here.I can smell the blood in the air. I can see the raw terror twisting Aslanov’s face. I can feel the weight of something ancient and broken humming in the floorboards, as if this motel room is the only thing holding back whatever hell he just crawled out of.
And he is here, right in front of me.
“Aslanov,” I whisper, my voice shaking so badly it barely survives the air between us. His name tastes foreign on my tongue. Like it belongs to someone who’s already dead.
He doesn’t respond, just stares. That stare is too sharp, too empty, too wide. Like he’s seeing a thousand things at once: my face, the past, the men who held him down, the chains, the cold floor, the screaming. Maybe all of it is layered over this room,projected onto the walls in blood. His eyes twitch. A muscle jumps in his cheek.
And in that moment, I realize:
He doesn’t see me.
Not yet. Not really.
But he doesn’t shoot either. The gun shakes. His grip is tight, knuckles white and straining, but there’s a flicker in his posture now, a fracture in the storm of violence. He’s looking through me, searching for something that might anchor him. I lift my hands, palms exposed.
“It’s me,” I say. “Isabella.”
A tremor jolts through him. His head twitches, as though the name claws at something buried deep. Recognition crawls behind his eyes, slow, unsure, like it’s dragging itself up from a pit. For a second, just a breath of time, I swear he sees me.Reallysees me.
Dominik, bleeding, dazed, still conscious beneath him, makes a noise. A groan.
His arm tenses again, the gun tipping back toward Dominik’s skull.
