Elena didn't sleep that night.
Not after Sofia's whispered warning.
Not after hearing her mother's name spoken like it was part of a puzzle she hadn't realized she was in.
Lucian hadn't returned. Rosa hadn't come. And the house—the sprawling, marble-wrapped fortress—felt like it was breathing around her. Watching. Waiting.
She stood barefoot on the balcony, arms wrapped around herself against the sharp night air. Somewhere in the distance, the city buzzed like it always had, alive and indifferent. But here, in this house, time didn't pass. It coiled.
The ouroboros.
She turned the symbol over in her mind again and again. A snake devouring its own tail. Eternal. Self-consuming. Ancient.
And foreign.
Why would someone link that to her?
To her mother?
She didn't hear Lucian come in.
But she felt him.
The shift in energy behind her was immediate. The air grew denser, the tension tighter. Elena turned, slowly.
He stood inside the room, jacket discarded, shirt rolled at the sleeves, blood on one cuff. Again.
"How long have you been standing there?"
"Long enough to know you didn't sleep."
She said nothing.
He stepped toward her, gaze flicking to her bare arms, the goosebumps rising on her skin.
"You'll catch cold."
"Worried about me now?"
"I've always been worried about you. That's the problem."
Elena snorted softly. "You have a funny way of showing it."
"I wasn't raised with tenderness, Elena."
"I wasn't raised with knives at my throat either, but here we are—adapting."
The room fell silent. Then, without asking, Lucian walked past her and poured a glass of whiskey. Not for himself—he handed it to her.
She didn't take it.
"I need answers," she said. "No more evasions."
He didn't sit. Just stood, drink in hand, staring at her like he was bracing for something heavy.
"There's something I haven't told you," he said.
"That much is clear."
He exhaled. "The symbol Sofia told you about—the ouroboros—it's used by an Eastern European syndicate. Old money. Older grudges. They deal in things even the Mafia won't touch."
"And what do I have to do with that?"
Lucian hesitated.
"Elena," he said carefully, "what do you know about your mother's past?"
The glass slipped from her hand.
It didn't shatter. It just hit the rug with a dull thud and rolled.
She stared at him, jaw tight.
"Don't do that."
"Do what?"
"Make this about her. She's been gone for years. She was a teacher. She baked on weekends. She sang off-key to keep me asleep when I had fevers."
"She was also fluent in Russian."
Elena blinked.
"What?"
Lucian nodded once. "Your mother. Claire Carter. She was born Claire Volkov."
The name punched the breath from her lungs.
No.
He was lying.
She shook her head slowly. "No. My mother was American. She was from Vermont. She met my father in college—"
"She was placed at your father's college," Lucian interrupted. "To disappear."
"You're lying."
"I wish I was."
His voice wasn't cruel. It was too quiet for that. But the truth in it cracked her chest.
"She defected in the early nineties. Fled a family connected to the Bratva—Russia's criminal elite. She tried to disappear, but those kinds of ghosts don't stay buried."
"No," Elena whispered, stepping back. "That doesn't make sense. She died in a car crash. When I was thirteen."
Lucian nodded. "And two men followed the funeral procession. I confirmed it."
Elena turned away from him, gripping the edge of the dresser, her knuckles white. The room spun.
"So I'm what? Some kind of… leverage? Revenge?"
"I don't know yet. But someone waited. And now, they've found you."
Her mind reeled.
Claire Volkov.
The name sounded wrong in her head. It wasn't her mother. It couldn't be. That woman hummed while she folded laundry and told Elena stories about her imaginary kingdom made of clouds. She made pancakes shaped like stars.
She didn't run from syndicates.
"Elena," Lucian said softly. "You're not safe. Not from them. And not from yourself if you keep pretending this isn't real."
"Why are you telling me now?"
"Because you asked." He paused. "And because you deserve the truth."
It was too much.
Too many cracks splintering at once.
"I need to be alone."
Lucian studied her for a moment. Then, silently, he left.
Elena didn't cry.
She couldn't.
Instead, she stared at her reflection in the mirror for what felt like hours. Searching for pieces of a woman she'd never known she came from.
Claire Volkov.
Why hadn't her father ever told her?
Or maybe… he hadn't known.
That thought scared her more.
Because it meant the only parent she had left had gambled her away without even knowing who she really was.
The next day, Elena woke late to find Rosa in her room again, this time with a letter.
No envelope. No signature.
She opened it.
You're not safe there. He's keeping you for a reason. Ask him about Budapest. Ask him about the train.
Her fingers trembled.
"Who gave this to you?" she demanded.
Rosa looked startled. "No one. I found it under your door this morning."
Elena read it again. The ink was smudged, as if someone had written it in haste.
Budapest. A train.
None of it made sense.
But her instincts screamed again.
That voice last night in the hallway. The man who'd spoken her name like a promise.
This wasn't over.
Not even close.
Lucian returned that afternoon.
She didn't wait for him to speak.
"What happened in Budapest?"
He froze, just inside the doorway.
"What?"
"The note. It said to ask you about the train in Budapest."
His expression didn't change. But his eyes—those careful, impenetrable eyes—darkened just enough to confirm it.
"You should stay out of things you don't understand."
"I don't have the luxury of ignorance anymore."
Lucian's silence stretched, long and brittle.
Then he spoke. "Ten years ago, I was involved in an arms deal that went south. A man double-crossed me. He tried to flee on a private line through Hungary."
"And?"
"I let him board the train. Then I had it intercepted. Everyone on it died."
Her breath caught.
"You killed innocents?"
"No," he said. "There were no innocents on that train."
Elena stepped back.
"You're not the man I thought you were."
"You thought I was a villain. You weren't wrong."
"But you're worse."
He didn't deny it.
And that was worse than anything he could've said.
That night, Elena sat alone again.
Another piece of the puzzle clicking into place.
Not only was she descended from bloodlines soaked in violence—she was now bound to a man who knew how to weaponize silence, who had blood on his hands and refused to wash it off.
Still, something lingered at the back of her mind. Not the horror of Budapest.
But the warning.
He's keeping you for a reason.
And for the first time, Elena stopped fearing Lucian.
She started fearing what she didn't know about herself.