Chapter 20 Elena
ELENA
"God, have I missed you, too, Leni."
The words hang between us, fragile.
His face shifts, and the hardness cracks.
The truth settles in me, heavy and undeniable.
He didn't abandon me.
The resentment that's been eating me alive, the anger, the bitter accusations I screamed at him hours ago, it evaporates. Just... gone, because now I understand.
My chest relaxes. In this moment, there's no panic or shame, just some much-needed relief.
I reach my hand out toward him, my fingers trembling.
Adrian moves before I can second-guess myself.
He's out of the chair, crossing the space between us, and his hands close around mine. His big hands are warm and comforting.
He bings my hand up to his cheek. “My angel,” he breathes, and smiles at me.
I start crying again, the relief making its way out of me.
"I thought you left me," I say, my voice cracking. "I thought... I thought you didn't want me anymore."
"What? Never," he says, his voice absolute.
He pulls my hands against his chest, pressing them flat over his heart, and I feel the powerful rhythm beneath my palms.
"You are my one," he says, his voice low. "My everything. I would have torn the world apart sooner to find you if I thought you were alive."
I look up at him, and for the first time, I feel like I'm not in that room anymore. I'm not chained to Maxim's world. I'm here, with Adrian, and he never stopped looking.
The tears come harder, but I don't fight them. I just let them fall, let them wash away the poison Maxim planted in my mind.
Adrian doesn't say anything. He just holds my hands against his chest and lets me cry.
Minutes pass, maybe longer. I don't know.
Eventually, the tears slow, and I open my eyes.
He's watching me, his jaw tight, his dark eyes searching mine.
For the first time since he burst through that door at the chateau, I feel him.
Not the killer who shot Maxim in the face or the stranger who stood over me in a room full of blood.
But Adrian. My Adrian.
The boy who rode bikes with me all over the city. The one who kissed me by the fountain in Bra?ov. The one who held me while I cried after my grandmother died.
I smile.
It's small and fragile and maybe hard to see, but it's real, and it's the first time in a very long time that I have.
Adrian stares at me, and then he smiles, too.
"There you are," he says, wiping my tears away from my cheek with his thumb.
This moment makes me warm and steady, and I realize I don't want to talk about anything negative.
I don't want to talk about the chateau, or Maxim, or the pills. I don't want to think about any of it.
I want what they took from me, my safe place, back.
I lean closer, my hands still pressed against his chest.
"Talk to me about us, Adi," I say softly. "Anything but the last eighteen months. Please."
His expression shifts, relief mixing with something gentler, something that reminds me of the boy I fell in love with all those years ago, before I even knew what love was.
He nods, then sits down on the bed beside me, and I can see him thinking for a moment.
"You remember the summer when it was so hot we thought we'd melt? And so when it was dark, we snuck onto Mr. Popescu's roof?"
A breath of laughter escapes me before I can stop it.
"The one with the mean dog?"
"Yeah. That dog never stopped barking."
Adrian grins, and the sight of it sends warmth flooding through me.
"We brought that cheap beer Matei stole from the corner store," he continues, "and those awful cigarettes I bought off that guy by the train station."
I shake my head, smiling despite myself. "They tasted like burnt rubber."
"I'm pretty sure they were burnt rubber."
We both laugh, and the sound fills the room. It's funny how that works with him. In an instant, it all can feel so normal.
Adrian's gaze drops to the floor, like he's seeing the memory play out in front of him.
"You couldn't stop coughing," he says. "You kept saying you were fine, but your face was red, and your eyes got all watery."
"I was fine," I protest.
He shoots me a look.
"Please, you threw up in the gutter on the way home."
"That was the beer."
Adrian laughs again, and the sound is perfect.
I sit up and move over a little toward him and look down at his hand holding mine, letting the memory wash over me.
The night air. The distant sounds of the city. Adrian's arm around my shoulders as we climbed back down.
"You kissed me that night," I say quietly.
His gaze shifts back to me, soft and steady.
"I did."
"On the roof. Under the stars," I say. "I thought it was so romantic, even if my mouth tasted like rubber."
He laughs. "Still, best kiss of my life."
My chest gets tight and Adrian's voice drops even lower.
"That's not what we say is our first kiss, though. You remember that one? Our first real date?"
"Bra?ov."
"Bra?ov," he repeats, his smile widening. "We all took the train up for the weekend, and you insisted we walk around Pia?a Sfatului for hours."
"It was beautiful."
"It was. And then you made me carry your bag."
I laugh, the sound breaking free before I can stop it. "You offered!"
"I was trying to impress you."
"Well, you did."
Adrian's gaze holds mine, and something shifts between us, something warm and familiar and tender.
"We stopped at that fountain," he says softly. "The one in the middle of the square."
"You bought me gelato."
"Strawberry," he says, nodding.
"It melted all over my hand."
Adrian grins. "You were so mad."
"I wasn't mad. I was too nervous to have any, because your brother told my sister you were going to kiss me, so I was too afraid to have any."
"Is that why you threatened to throw it at me?"
"I did not..." I stop, laughing. "Okay, maybe I did."
Adrian shakes his head, his expression softening.
"Well, at least Matei's big mouth didn't ruin it," he says. "I kissed you, by the fountain, with half of Bra?ov watching. Though to be fair, no one noticed until my brothers and your sister started howling."
The memory floods back, his hand on my cheek, the warmth of the sun, the taste of strawberry on his lips.
"That was the day I knew," Adrian says. "The day I knew I'd never love anyone else the way I love you."
The words settle into the space between us, and I feel the spark, the one that died eighteen months ago, flicker back to life.
For the first time in so long, I feel alive.
Adrian shifts closer, my knees touching his thigh.
"You remember the first time you tried to make us breakfast?" he asks.
I groan, rolling my eyes and looking away. "Oh God, don't..."
"You used buttermilk instead of milk."
"I didn't know!"
"The eggs tasted like sour yogurt."
"You said you loved them."
Adrian laughs, loud and unrestrained, and the sound fills the room.
I start laughing too, the sound bubbling up from somewhere deep inside, and for a moment, we're just two people laughing hard together like nothing bad has ever happened.
No Volkovs. No kidnappings. No Maxim.
Just us.
Adrian leans back, still laughing, and we keep talking for hours and hours.
We reminisce about the time Matei got drunk and tried to fight a street performer in Bucharest.
I tell him about the time my sister convinced me to sneak out to meet him, and we got caught by our father on the way back in.
We laugh. We tease. We fall into what we had before, what we always had, the easy back and forth that define us.
I find myself getting animated, my hands gesturing as I talk, my voice rising and falling with excitement.
It feels good, normal even.
But then, without warning, in the middle of my story, the memories come flooding back.
The cold concrete floor. The metal door. Maxim's voice in my ear.
My body tenses, and I pull back, the smile fading from my face.
Adrian notices immediately.
"Leni?"
I shake my head, trying to push the images away, but they cling to me.
I can't keep doing this. Burying my head in the sand isn't how you get over shit.
I know that. I do.
But God, it's easier to laugh about things like burnt cigarettes and sour eggs than it is to face what happened.
Adrian's hand gently rubs my face.
"You okay?"
I take a shaky breath and force myself to nod, but I'm not okay, and I won't be okay until I start talking about it.
Until I start dealing with it.
The laughter we've been sharing feels like a lifetime away right now.
I need to break the cycle and stop running.
So I do the only thing I can think of.
I just say it.
The name that's been burned into my mind since the night I first saw him, since the first time he locked me in that room.
"Do you know who Cornel Lupu is?"
Adrian goes completely still.
His hand freezes, and his jaw tightens.
"What?"
I take another breath.
"Cornel Lupu. Do you know who he is?"
Adrian's eyes darken, and I see the shift, the enforcer sliding into place beneath the surface.