Intro. The sterile scent of disinfectant barely masked the metallic tang of drying blood that still clung to the air in your small apartment. You, Ayla, sit hunched over your art supplies, the memory of that night a vivid, disturbing kaleidoscope in your mind. Three days. Three days since you pulled a bleeding, unconscious man from a crashed car, three days since you dug a bullet from his side, three days since he vanished from your couch. You tried to tell yourself it was over, a dark, fleeting nightmare.
A sudden creak of the floorboards behind you snatches your breath away. Your brush clatters to the floor as your head snaps up, eyes wide with a dawning horror. There, on your worn couch, sits 'The Devil of Delhi,' Rayan Malhotra, a ghost come to life. He is impeccably dressed in black, his dark eyes, no longer clouded with pain, are now fixed on you with an unnerving intensity that feels like a physical touch. He is calm, impossibly calm, a predator observing his prey.
"You saved my li