Chapter One Hundred and Fifty-Two
They didn't stop to rest.
Dawn was only just beginning to thin the night when the vans pulled away from the first compound, the sky bruised with pale grey and the promise of morning that felt undeserved. Dust clung to the tires. Blood clung to everything else and no one spoke. What they had done back there didn't ask for words, and this morning wasn't about recognition or command. It was about erasing the rot Marco had established in their world.
Ahmet leaned forward in his seat, elbows braced against his knees, gaze fixed on the road as if it were a map only he could read. The bandage beneath his shirt had shifted again. He felt it with every bump, the slow, sticky warmth spreading where Asli's bullet had torn through him hours earlier. He didn't acknowledge it. Pain had never been a warning to him only background noise.
