Page 25 of Inevitable Endings
“Because he knew you,” she says simply. “I saw the way he looked at you.”
A knot forms in my stomach. My appetite is gone.
I lower the bowl to the nightstand and sink deeper into the pillows, the weight of exhaustion pressing down on me. “His name’s Nick.”
Ada doesn’t react right away, but I know her well enough to see the gears turning in her head. “And?”
I let out a slow breath, staring at the ceiling. “And it’s complicated, I don’t know much.”
She scoffs softly. “It always is with you.”
I huff out something that might’ve been a laugh if I wasn’t so damn tired. “We worked together. A long time ago.”
Ada stays quiet for a long moment, watching me like she’s waiting for the cracks to show. Like if she’s patient enough, she’ll finally get the whole truth out of me.
I let out a slow breath, shifting the bowl of soup in my lap, though I’ve long lost the appetite for it. I should tell her to drop it, to let it go, but I know Ada. She won’t. Not when she’s got that look in her eyes.
“Nick was my boss.”
Ada’s brows lift slightly, her fingers curling around the edge of the blanket. “At a hospital?”
I shake my head. “No. After my jobs there. At the prison.”
Silence. A beat passes before Ada exhales sharply. “The maximum-security prison.”
I nod. “That’s where I met Aslanov.”
The name settles between us like a weight.
Ada sits up a little, watching me carefully, waiting for me tocontinue. I don’t know why I haven’t told her this before. Maybe because it feels like another life. Or maybe because it’s easier to pretend parts of it didn’t happen.
I shift under the covers, staring down at the soup as I swirl the spoon absently. “Nick ran the place. He was... kind to me. The kind of man who knew everything that happened within those walls before anyone else did. He had this way of looking at you, like he could see straight through you.”
Ada stays quiet, listening.
“I was in a bad place when I started there,” I admit, voice softer now. “Too young, probably. It wasn’t what I wanted to do, but I needed the job. The money was good, and I figured it would be temporary.”
I let out a humorless laugh. “It was.”
I glance at her, then look away. “The first time I saw Aslanov, he was half-dead.”
Ada tenses beside me.
“They brought him in late one night,” I continue, my voice distant, like I’m not really in this room anymore. Like I’m back in that prison, the fluorescent lights buzzing overhead, the scent of antiseptic and cold steel thick in the air. “No records. No reports. No history. Not even a name that would show up in any system. We were understaffed that night, so I was the one who had to attend to his wounds.”
Ada’s grip tightens on the blanket. “What happened to him?”
I shake my head. “Nobody knew. He hadn’t spoken a word. He just sat there, bleeding, staring at me like he was trying to get straight into my soul.”
The memory is sharp, still vivid even after all this time that has passed. The way the other guards avoided looking at him for too long. The way the air felt different around him—charged, like a storm about to break.
“There was something about him,” I murmur. “Something…wrong. Not in a violent way, not like the others. But like he didn’t belong there. Like he didn’t belong anywhere.”
Ada shifts beside me, her fingers brushing against mine under the covers. “You weren’t afraid of him?”
I take a deep breath, considering my answer.
“I was,” I say finally. “But something in me shifted, it was fear mixed with longing.”
