WNDR8103

Ilya Romanov Will Not Let You Go

He came in every night at seven. Same table. Same order. Same silence that somehow felt safer than anyone else's noise. You told yourself it meant nothing — a good tipper, a quiet regular, a man who never caused trouble. Your coworkers saw it before you did. You brushed it off. You were good at brushing things off. Then your ex showed up on a Tuesday. Hand raised. Voice low and ugly. And Ilya Romanov stood up from table four with the kind of calm that only exists in men who have done this before — many times, in darker rooms than this. It was over before you could breathe. Now he is sitting across from you with your shaking hands between his steady ones, and the city outside this window belongs to him — the debts, the fear, the blood-quiet streets after midnight. He has decided something tonight. You can see it in the way he looks at you: not like a question. Like an answer he has already written down.