The car hummed steadily, its tires eating up the miles as the low thrum of the engine mixed with the soft pulse of music playing from the stereo. The rhythm of the song was slow, methodical, just like the quiet that stretched between Eli and Ravi. It wasn’t the kind of silence that suffocated—it was the kind that wrapped itself around you like a heavy blanket, weighted with unspoken things.

  Eli leaned his head against the cool window, the city lights flickering in his peripheral vision, but his mind was far from here. It was back in that warehouse. That night. The image of Ravi—the way his voice cracked as he pleaded with the Oyabun—still played on a loop in his mind.

  “Oyabun—we cannot do this,” Ravi had begged, his voice raw, desperate. The pleading was there, but the desperation—it came from somewhere deeper. Eli could still hear it in his head. And the instant that followed. The shove. The gunshot.

  Bang.

  The sound of it still rang in Eli’s ears. The sharp crack of the gun cutting through the air, silencing the desperate cries that followed. In that moment, everything had shifted. Ravi had stood still, no expression of shock, no horror on his face. Just a stillness that didn’t belong in the world they lived in. Ravi was used to it. Used to the violence. Used to the blood.

  Eli’s stomach churned, and his eyes squeezed shut, trying to push the images out. He couldn’t. He remembered how Ravi had gently straightened the body in the wheelchair, the coldness in his hands as he moved the lifeless form. There had been no remorse, no panic. Just a calculated precision that made Eli’s skin crawl.

  He remembered Ravi kneeling beside her body, wiping his nose with his sleeve. The emotion was there—beneath the layers of control. But Eli hadn’t known what to do. What was he supposed to do when the man he thought he knew—his friend—wasn’t really the person he imagined?

  The song on the radio shifted, a new tune taking over, and Eli’s thoughts drifted back to the fire. Ravi standing alone, the flames reflecting in his eyes as he burned the evidence. The acrid smell of burning fabric filled the air. Ravi hadn’t said a word, not a single apology. He just smoked his cigarette, watching the flames consume everything. It wasn’t just the evidence—it was all of it. Everything that had been done.

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  Eli’s fingers twitched against his leg, the tension in his body creeping back, but he fought to keep still, to keep calm. Ravi, sitting next to him, hadn’t said a word. His eyes were fixed on the road, his knuckles tight on the steering wheel. Eli could feel the weight of the silence pressing in, each mile taking them further away from the warehouse and further into a place he didn’t fully understand.

  “You knew I was there,” Eli said, breaking the silence, his voice barely above a whisper.

  Ravi’s eyes didn’t leave the road. “Yeah.”

  Eli’s breath hitched. “You didn’t stop me.”

  “I didn’t have the time,” Ravi muttered, his voice thick. “Would’ve if I could’ve.”

  But Eli didn’t believe that. Not entirely. Ravi could’ve stopped him. He could’ve done something. He should’ve done something.

  Eli’s thoughts were thick with the questions he didn’t know how to ask. How much of what happened in that warehouse was something Ravi had seen before? Was it all part of the life they’d chosen, or was it something worse? He wanted to know, but even more, he was terrified of the answer.

  The music played on, a backdrop to the tension in the car, the beat slow and mournful. Ravi wasn’t looking at him. Eli was too scared to meet his eyes.

  “You’re not like I thought,” Eli said, the words slipping out before he could stop them.

  Ravi’s jaw tightened, but he said nothing. Instead, the silence between them deepened, a wall growing higher and higher with each passing second.

  And then, finally, Ravi broke it. His voice, quiet and weary, filled the car. “I’m not proud of that night.”

  Eli’s heart beat heavily in his chest as he looked out the window. “But you did it. You’re still doing it.”

  Ravi’s voice was like gravel. “Yeah. But we’re still here, aren’t we?”

  Eli closed his eyes, letting the silence rush back in, the weight of Ravi’s words hanging heavy in the air. The music slowed, the beats blending into the background, almost indistinguishable from the sound of the car engine now.

  They didn’t need to say anything more. The weight of everything unsaid hung between them, heavier than the night outside. Eli glanced at Ravi again, his face shadowed, but something about him—something unspoken—had changed. He wasn’t the same person Eli had first met. Neither of them were.

  The car pulled into the parking lot. The journey was over, but Eli’s mind was still a storm of questions, memories, and the haunting feeling that things weren’t going to get any easier from here.

  “So what now?” Eli asked, his voice a little rougher than he intended.

  Ravi finally looked at him, eyes sharp and tired. “Now? Now we survive. Together.”

  Eli didn’t know if that was a promise or a warning. But in that moment, he knew it didn’t matter. It was just their reality now.