The bond we shared had been unbreakable. She was my other half. The only family I had left. Losing her didn’t just hurt—it hollowed me out. Left a permanent echo inside my chest where certainty used to live.
Our father, before he died, had given us both the same name.
Elena.
He said it was tradition. That names carried power. That sharing one would keep us close even when the world tried to tear us apart. Elena Senior and Elena Junior—two halves of the same soul, he’d said, laughing as though it were something charming instead of a prophecy.
Now, sitting in the back of a sleek black Ferrari that smelled of new leather and quiet menace, I stared at the little boy beside me—Yannis—and felt the weight of that prophecy settle like a noose.
“...And if you ever hear his name... run.”
Yannis’s fingers were warm in mine. Trusting. Small.
I looked at him and then, unwillingly, at his father’s reflection in the rearview mirror.
Ruslan Baranov didn’t look like a man who forgave.
Everything about him radiated control—violence held on a leash so tight it might snap at any second. The set of his jaw. The stillness in his shoulders. The way his eyes never stopped assessing, calculating, cataloging threats.
Did he know?
Did he know who I was?
Was that why the hatred in his gaze felt so intimate, so personal—like something sharpened over years rather than minutes?
Or was it simpler than that?
Was I just a woman who stood too close to his son?
My throat tightened painfully. I forced myself to keep breathing, to keep my face calm, to keep my hand steady in Yannis’s. Whatever Ruslan believed—whatever lies had been fed to him, whatever truths twisted by men who benefited from chaos—I couldn’t afford to show fear.
Not now.
Because one thing was already clear, vibrating beneath every mile of asphalt between the chapel and his home:
I hadn’t married a man.
I had married a war.
The car glided through iron gates that opened without a sound, as if the estate itself recognized Ruslan Baranov and bowed.
Beyond them lay one of California’s most exclusive gated enclaves—The Estates at Pelican Crest, Newport Beach—a place so insulated from the real world it felt unreal.
Private roads curved through manicured hills like veins of polished stone.
Mansions rose on either side, architectural statements rather than homes: white stucco and steel, glass walls reflecting the dying sun, infinity pools spilling seamlessly toward the Pacific as though gravity itself obeyed wealth here.
Cameras hid behind flowering bougainvillea, discreet and omnipresent. No sidewalks. No children’s bikes. No noise.
Silence lived here.
And it was expensive.
Homes didn’t sell for less than thirty million. Most never hit the market at all—passed quietly between people whose names didn’t appear in headlines, only in sealed court documents and whispered threats.
The Ferrari eased into the garage of a sprawling modern villa carved into the hillside—pure white, sharp lines, cantilevered levels that made it look like it floated above the earth.
Floor-to-ceiling glass revealed interior lights already on, the house waiting.
