Chapter 4 The Cost of a Pact

He returned just before sunset, as if summoned by the ache in my chest.

No guards. No footfall echo to warn me. Just Damien, leaning against the doorframe like he belonged there, with a glass of something dark in one hand and the ghost of violence resting across his shoulders. The pendant from the day before was gone. But its weight still lived in the silence between us.

I didn't rise. I sat in the high-backed chair where I'd planted myself for hours, tracing the veins in the wood grain like they might splinter under the pressure of my thoughts.

He said nothing at first.

Then: "You want answers?"

"I want a gun," I said, flat and sharp.

That earned me the faintest curve of his mouth. Not a smile. Something colder. "A reasonable request."

He stepped inside, closing the door behind him, and walked past the untouched tray of food on the table like it didn't exist. The orchid had wilted completely. I felt no guilt.

He didn't sit. Just stood at the edge of the rug, as if closer meant giving something away.

"I was twelve," he said. "When my father signed the alliance. Volkov and Moretti. You remember the stories? End the Balkan trade war. Give your father control of the eastern ports. In return, we got full immunity in the north."

"And?" I asked, even though I already felt the story bleeding through the air.

"And Anton believed in it," he said, voice lower now. "He thought it meant something. He believed we could build a world without barrels full of bodies and teeth pulled before death."

The bitterness in his throat was raw.

"Your father sold us out," he said. "Gave our coordinates to the Albanian cartel. Claimed it was a clerical error."

He looked at me then, and I swear the chandelier's light bent between us.

"They intercepted the convoy outside Cluj," he continued. "Burned the trucks. Burned him."

My jaw locked. "Why would he do that? Why would he destroy an alliance he, "

"Because he never cared about alliances. Just leverage." His voice was sharp now. "Your father made promises with one hand and slit throats with the other. You were always just a chip."

My breath was shallow. My skin was too tight for the bones beneath it.

"You still are," Damien said.

I wanted to scream. Instead, I whispered, "Then why am I here?"

He took a sip of his drink like the truth tasted better than silence.

"I didn't want you," he said, quiet. Calm.

A pause. A hammer in my chest.

"I wanted your father's grief."

He left without waiting for a response.

The door clicked shut behind him.

And I sat there in the dying light, with the last warmth draining from the air, and a sentence I couldn't erase ringing through me like a gunshot on loop.

The estate's halls bled shadows that night. Long corridors of cold stone and quiet judgment. I didn't bother trying to find sleep. Instead, I paced the length of my room until my muscles ached, until my throat was raw from unshed screams.

If he was telling the truth... then I wasn't a captive.

I was a message. And the message had already been sent.

Across the continent, where the wine was richer and the suits always pressed, Viktor Sokolov threw his phone across a marble floor.

"She was taken?" he barked. "When?"

His voice echoed through the villa, carved into northern Milan's richest hillside, a castle pretending to be a home.

Don Moretti didn't flinch. He sat in an armchair like a monarch at rest, swirling red wine in a crystal glass.

"She'll be fine," he said, like discussing the weather.

"You knew?" Viktor demanded. "You knew and didn't stop it?"

Don Moretti smiled thinly. "Damien needed something. I gave him something. That's how survival works."

"She's not a token."

"She's not yours, either."

The glass shattered against the wall.

Red dripped down white stone like a wound.

"I won't be humiliated," Viktor hissed.

Don Moretti raised his glass in mock toast. "Then win her back."

Viktor's eyes narrowed, turning to steel beneath the weight of calculation.

"Or bury them both."

The cold air in the Carpathians didn't sting anymore. I think I'd grown past pain.

I tested the edges of my new cage. Every hallway patrolled. Every window reinforced. Every door coded in tech I couldn't breach. I wasn't just inside a house, I was inside a fortress built by a man who trusted no one and forgot nothing.

But I wasn't entirely alone.

There was a guard, tall, thick-necked, with a scar just below his left temple. He watched me. Not with hunger. Not with pity.

Curiosity.

It unnerved me.

I passed him once near the west stairwell. Then again, by the balcony that overlooked a forest too thick to escape. The third time, I turned abruptly.

He looked away.

Too fast.

I froze.

He shifted his weight, glanced toward the other end of the corridor, then, he winked.

Just once. Casual. Like we were playing a game.

I stepped toward him, heat rising under my skin. "What's your name?" I asked, voice low.

He didn't answer.

A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, subtle and strange.

Then he walked away, disappearing into the corridor like fog.

I stood there, unsettled.

Not because he didn't answer.

But because he didn't need to.

Something shifted in the air.

Behind me, the soft mechanical hum of the surveillance camera powered down. One blink of red. Then gone.

Someone was watching.

Someone had just stopped.

And I was no longer certain which part of the game I was playing, pawn, prisoner... or prophecy.