The day after the secret room, the air inside the Moretti estate shifted.
It wasn't obvious—not a broken window or a shout echoing through the halls. No alarms or slammed doors.
But Elena could feel it.
Like the way an animal senses the coming of a storm, long before the first thunderclap.
Lucian didn't leave the house that morning.
He paced instead.
Papers strewn across his office desk. Phone calls whispered in a voice that carried too much weight to ignore. His control, once effortless, now frayed at the edges.
Elena stood outside the room, silent.
Listening.
She caught pieces.
"Volkov… No, it doesn't add up… Budapest was clean… Tell Massimo to hold—no movement until I say."
She stepped back before he saw her.
It wasn't fear that pushed her away.
It was the growing suspicion that the man she was starting to understand might be unraveling in real time—and no one knew what he looked like without the mask.
Later, Rosa found her in the study. The older woman's face was tense, her tone clipped.
"Lucian wants you in the sitting room. Now."
Elena stood. "What happened?"
But Rosa only shook her head. "He didn't say. But you should hurry."
Elena followed.
The sitting room was dim, the curtains drawn against a sky that couldn't decide between rain and sunlight. Lucian stood at the center of it, arms crossed, a tall man in a gray suit seated across from him.
The stranger didn't rise when she entered.
"Elena," Lucian said, voice low. "This is Dr. Hugo Velasquez. He's here because I asked him to be."
"A doctor?" she asked warily.
Dr. Velasquez offered a soft nod. He was in his early forties, dark eyes framed by heavy glasses, hands folded calmly.
"I'm a profiler," he said. "Psychological forensics, trauma response, threat assessment."
Elena stiffened. "You think I'm a threat now?"
"No," Lucian said before the man could speak. "But I want to know what they want from you."
Her spine went rigid. "So you brought in a shrink to dissect me?"
"It's not about you. It's about them. The ones watching us. The ones who left that note."
Elena glanced at Dr. Velasquez again. He wasn't judging. Just observing.
"I can walk you through what I know," she said, voice flat. "But I don't need to be psychoanalyzed to know they want me dead."
Velasquez didn't flinch.
"They may want more than that," he said. "This isn't a hit. It's a slow play. They're drawing you out."
"Why?"
Lucian answered this time. "Because you're the last thread to pull. Your mother's gone. The past is sealed. But you… you're still alive."
"And that bothers someone," Velasquez added quietly. "Enough to send a message. Enough to watch."
The session took hours.
Velasquez asked careful questions—nothing invasive, nothing cruel.
Just… curious.
"Did your mother ever mention the name Mikhail Sidorov?"
"No."
"Did she ever take you out of the country unexpectedly?"
"No."
"Do you remember her having any scars?"
Elena hesitated. "A small one. Under her left collarbone. I saw it once when she was changing."
Velasquez exchanged a sharp glance with Lucian.
"That confirms it," he said.
"Confirms what?" Elena asked.
"She was marked," Lucian said quietly. "The Volkov family marked their defectors. With the ouroboros. That scar—it was a brand."
Elena swallowed hard.
"Why would she hide that?"
"Because she didn't want you to see the weight she carried," Velasquez said. "She wanted to give you something normal. But secrets never stay buried."
She looked down at her hands.
They were trembling.
When she glanced at Lucian, she found him already watching her.
Not like a man studying leverage.
But like someone who didn't know how to fix what he'd helped break.
After Velasquez left, the silence in the house felt heavier than before.
Elena drifted toward the piano in the east parlor. She didn't know how to play—hadn't touched one since she was a child—but her fingers hovered over the keys like they remembered something she didn't.
Lucian found her there.
"Rosa says you haven't eaten," he said.
"I'm not hungry."
"Starving yourself doesn't protect you."
"Neither does telling me half the truth."
He didn't respond.
Elena looked at him, expression unreadable.
"Did you love her?" she asked.
Lucian didn't pretend not to understand.
"Yes," he said finally. "But not like you're thinking."
"She was just leverage to you?"
"She was hope," he said quietly. "That people like us could choose different. That we didn't have to drown in what we were born into."
"And when she died?"
Lucian's gaze darkened. "I stopped believing in hope."
She turned away.
"That's not an excuse."
"I'm not offering one."
That night, Elena couldn't sleep.
She sat on the edge of her bed, staring at her mother's photograph—the one from the secret room. The gloves. The quiet strength in her stance. The shadow beside her.
Was that who she would become?
Was that what waited for her?
A knock at the door made her jump.
"Who is it?"
"It's me."
Lucian.
She hesitated—then opened it.
He didn't speak at first.
Just looked at her. No mask. No cold detachment.
Only a man with too many ghosts, and no idea what to do with the one standing in front of him.
"I had another room prepared," he said. "If you don't want to sleep alone tonight."
The meaning hung in the air—carefully ambiguous.
Elena didn't answer right away.
Then: "Only if you promise not to lie."
"I won't."
"Even if the truth makes me hate you?"
Lucian's voice was low. "Even then."
They didn't touch.
Not that night.
He lay beside her in the wide bed, fully dressed, eyes open in the dark, and she listened to the sound of his breathing like it was a lullaby made of fire.
For the first time in weeks, she slept.
Not because she felt safe.
But because she knew if anything came for her now, it would have to go through him.