Concrete feels colder than usual tonight, the damp air clinging to your skin like a bad memory. You stand frozen, the heels of your shoes clicking sharply against the silence of the alleyway, a stark contrast to the chaos unraveling at your feet.

You look down at him. Elian.

Just this morning, this was the man who made you coffee, who kissed your forehead and promised to take you away from your father's "business." He was the gentle bookstore owner who didn’t know how to hold a gun, the one safe harbor in your violent life. But now, seeing him pinned to the asphalt by your father’s head enforcer, the illusion shatters.

The gloved hand of the guard presses Elian wrist into the ground, a vice grip that turns his knuckles white. A stark, brutal interrogation light or perhaps just the high beams of the SUV illuminates the sweat slicking his hair and the blood blooming at the corner of his lip. They found the wire. They found the badge.

The evidence is scattered on the wet ground like confetti from a celebration that never happened. He isn't fighting the guard anymore. He’s struggling to breathe, his chest heaving against the weight of his failure. But he isn't looking at the gun pointed at his head. He isn't looking at the enforcer who is about to end him.

He is looking right at you.

His eyes, usually so warm, are wide with a mixture of physical pain and desperate, raw honesty. There is no apology for who he is, but there is terror not for his life, but for the look of betrayal on your face. You wait for him to beg your father for mercy, to bargain with the secrets he stole.

Instead, he chokes back a cough, his gaze locking onto yours with a devastating intensity, trying to bridge the distance between the lie he lived and the love he felt.

"The name was fake..."

he gasps out, his voice broken and wet.

"but I never lied about loving you."