“Sera helped me draw this!” she announces, grinning up at Miron. “She’s really nice.”
“She’s very good at drawing,” Miron agrees, surprising me. His tone is gentle, casual, the private violence of our last encounter banished, as if it never existed.
Sofia turns in his arms, squinting at me. “Are you coming with us, Sera?”
I shake my head, forcing a smile. “Not this time. Maybe later, okay?”
“Promise?” Liana asks, her gaze suddenly sharp and searching.
“I promise,” I say, meaning it more than I intend to.
Satisfied, the twins wave, still attached to Miron like shadows. “Bye, Sera!”
“Bye!”
They echo each other, then disappear down the hall, Miron carrying Sofia on his hip, Liana at his side, her little hand still tangled in his.
The silence that follows feels almost sacred. I linger a moment, letting my breath slow, the echo of their laughter settling deep in my chest. Miron doesn’t look back as he rounds the corner, but the image of his softened features, the curve of his mouth as he listened to the girls, lingers in my mind, strange and disorienting.
A maid passes, arms full of laundry, and pauses when she sees me standing in the hall. She glances after the twins, then lowers her voice to a confidential murmur. “They are Markian’s daughters—his cousin’s girls. He loves them dearly.”
I process that, something twisting inside me. “They seem… very close to him.”
The maid’s expression gentles. “They adore him. You are good with them. They like you already.”
I nod, unsure what to say. The information is both a comfort and a complication, crowding out the simple story I’ve built of Miron as an unfeeling monster. It doesn’t fit with what I’ve seen: how quickly the girls trusted him, how instinctively he cared for them. There’s history here, roots deeper than money or violence, something almost painfully human.
“Thank you,” I murmur to the maid. She nods, moving off down the hall, leaving me alone in the hush.
I lean back against the wall, trying to collect myself. The image of Miron’s tenderness with the girls won’t leave me.
It stirs up emotions I don’t want to name—envy, confusion, an aching sadness for a man who can hold a child with such gentleness but holds the rest of the world at arm’s length. I wonder what it would be like to be loved by someone with hands that steady, a heart that guarded.
For the rest of the afternoon, their laughter echoes in my memory, blurring the line between enemy and protector. The world is more complicated than I ever wanted it to be. I watch a patch of sunlight crawl across the floor, warm on my bare feet, and wonder if I’ll ever understand the man whose shadow rules this house and, somehow, has begun to shadow my heart as well.
I linger in the hall, my mind circling the image of Miron—his laughter, the gentleness in his hands, the way the girls pressed close without a trace of fear. For a long moment, I simply stand, the noise of the house washing past me, uncertain whether I should feel envy or relief.
He is a stranger again, impossible to pin down—one moment a captor; the next, a father, or at least something close.
When I finally move, it’s with a heaviness I can’t quite name. I slip back toward the living room, collecting the last stray crayons and scraps of paper. The twins’ drawings are bright with wild lines; unicorns, suns, a little figure that could be me or Liana or anyone with tangled hair and a hopeful smile. I tuck the papers into a neat stack, unsure why I want to keep them.
Somewhere nearby, Miron’s voice rises and falls, deep and warm as he answers the twins’ endless questions. It’s softer now, unhurried, with a patience I never would have believed him capable of. He listens to them, really listens, and it makes my chest ache in a way I’m not prepared for.
He appears a few minutes later, alone now, closing the door to the girls’ playroom behind him. When he sees me, his expression shifts. It hardens, then flickers with something unreadable. For a heartbeat, I think he might speak, offer some explanation, or even a warning. Instead, he nods, just once, the briefest acknowledgment, before moving past me down the hall.
I let him go, unsure what I would say even if I had the courage. I’m left standing in the soft hush of afternoon, caught between gratitude and resentment, my sense of him more tangled than ever.
It’s easier to remember his threats, his rules, the fear he taught me. Yet now, that image is blurred, colored by the memory of two little girls and the way Miron softened for them. If only for a moment, I carry that contradiction with me as I climb the stairs, the house echoing with distant laughter, and for the first time since my captivity began, I wonder if I’ve truly seen all there is to the man who holds my fate in his hands.
Chapter Fourteen - Miron
The city’s pulse changes as night falls. My office glows with the pale light of monitors, lines of code and satellite feeds crawling endlessly across the glass. I savor the order of it—every camera a watchful eye, every algorithm a lock on the world outside.
It’s in this sanctuary of data and steel that the first warning arrives—a curt, encrypted ping from one of my men on the street. Rivals moving on the east side. A familiar name resurfaces in the message, one I haven’t heard in months.
I forward the alert, doubling security on the gates, the perimeter, every soft spot. My instincts sharpen, irritation pricking at my composure.
Someone thinks they can circle my house, threaten my domain. The arrogance is almost amusing.
