Page 135 of Fallen Empire

Her throat wasn’t cut, but it was bruised. Deep, blooming purples spread across her skin like ink stains.

Her arms were soaked in blood, but when I looked closer…

Burn marks.

Symbols. Branded into her skin. Russian.

One after another, seared into her like twisted trophies.

The stench of dead flesh clung to her, barely masked by the sharp, metallic bite of blood. There wasn’t a single inch of her that hadn’t been ripped, burned, or… ruined. A symphony of wreckage.

Complete. Merciless.

And I couldn’t look away.

I needed to know exactly what kind of monster I was facing.

What Aleksei was capable of.

What he’d already done.

I looked down to her hand.Fuck. Her fingertips had been cut off. If I had to guess… it was done slowly. One by one.

I moved down to adjust her legs, carefully lifting them one at a time. That’s when a scream tore through the silence, ricocheting off the concrete walls and slamming into my chest.

I recoiled instinctively, bracing myself in case she lunged, but she didn’t. She was still. Her eyes were open, locked on mine, but her body had long passed the point of fighting back.

Then I heard it. A whisper of sound I couldn’t place. A mumble, faint and wet, rising from somewhere inside her ruined face. I couldn’t even tell if her lips were moving, or if the words were leaking from the holes in her skin.

I leaned closer, trying to make sense of it. The words were there, just beneath the surface, struggling to be heard.

“I’m…”

She tried to speak. God, she was trying. I could see it. This desperate effort to make her final breath count.

I wanted to give her something. A name. A promise. A prayer. But what the hell could I offer a woman who’d already lost everything?

She wouldn’t remember me. Wouldn’t even know if I meant the words. And yet, they came anyway.

“I’m so sorry.”

And I was. Sorry for her pain. Sorry for whatever brought her to this place. Whatever she’d done—or refused to do—it couldn’t have justified this. No one deserved this kind of agony.

She inhaled sharply, her breath catching on something inside her. There was more she needed to say. Something important.

I bent closer, my face just inches from hers, close enough to see every torn fragment of flesh.

“Tell Jaxson… I’m sorry.”

The words came out broken. Strained. But I heard them. Every syllable lodged in my chest like a bullet.

And then I realized what was causing her difficulty. A cough tore up her throat, and I turned my head just in time—

The blood hit my cheek. Warm. Wet. Sprayed across my face like her body was rejecting death itself.

I sat back hard, my heels catching beneath me, hand clamped over my mouth. But I wasn’t phased by the blood. I was phased by her words.

Because she knew Jaxson.