The Mafia's Bride

Chapter 28

The first thing I heard was the beeping of the machines I opened my eyes , my head hurting i looked around trying to figure out where I was it look me a minutes to settle in my head what happened everything replayed in my head just like a movie on rewind...my heart dropped to my stomach.

Hazar .

It struck me like lightning i tried to sit my but by body didn't helped me . Azkar saw me and rushed to me .

" Hayat beta " he said rushing towards me hugging me  he kissed the top on my head i could feel his tears on my shoulder.

“Azku—Hazar.” The name tore out of me like a plea.

Azkar’s arms tightened. “I’ll take you to him. Stay with me, Hayat.” His voice shook; I could feel it against my cheek. He helped me sit up properly, fingers gentle as if I might break. The corner of the room blurred; bright lights and the low hum of machines pressed into my head. I clutched at the sheet until my knuckles ached. “Please—please, Azkar. Don’t let him—don’t let him be gone.”

He nodded only once, and the world seemed to shift under my feet as he half-led, half-carried me out of the ward. The corridor whirred past in antiseptic white streaks. Nurses glanced at us, their steps quickening. Azkar kept a steady hand at the small of my back; the contact was the only thing holding my balance.

My legs felt like jelly. Every memory of the night crashed over me in waves: the smoke, the crunch of metal, his weight in my arms, the cold that followed when everything went wrong. Each flash was another sting. I swallowed around the lump in my throat until it hurt.

When the door to his room creaked open, the air inside smelled like disinfectant and something iron-strong that made my stomach twist. He was there—lying on the bed, pale, the bandages around his arm stark against the white sheets. Tubes and machines surrounded him, beeps marking the slow rise and fall of his chest. For a moment I saw only the beaten stillness, and panic tried to claw its way back up.

“Hazar,” I whispered, and the word trembled.

His eyelids fluttered. He looked at me, and in that instant all the noise in the hospital shrank into one thin, sharp line between us. He tried to smile—weak, crooked—and it made my breath hitch. He looked small this way, not the towering, untouchable man I’d known, but human and damaged and utterly real.

Azkar stayed by the door. He didn’t step in further; he gave us the moment like a priest might give a blessing, then slipped out silently, leaving us alone.

I moved toward him and then stopped, as if some invisible wire held me back. Memories from before the war, before the crash—words he’d said that had cut me—flared up with the same sudden heat. The truth he’d told me not long ago, shaky, half-whispered in a night that already felt like another life: he had lied. He’d said he’d married me for reasons that weren’t entirely honest. He had called the marriage a shield, he’d said it kept me safe. At the time the words had been jagged and confusing; now, in the pale light, they felt like an accusation.

He watched me with those same tired eyes. “Hayat,” he said, and it was a whisper that asked both permission and forgiveness.

I didn’t go to him immediately. My feet moved, but my chest felt cemented in fear and anger and something worse—betrayal. “Is it true?” I asked before I could make it a prayer. “Did you… did you lie to me? Was it all a lie?”

His gaze dropped to his bandaged hand, then to the sheet. When he finally met my eyes again, I saw exhaustion there, and something else—regret, raw and complete.

“I did,” he said. One word, and it landed in the room like a stone. “I lied.”

I laughed then, but it was a bleak, broken sound. “Why?” The word ripped out of me. “Why would you—why would you do that to me?”