7. Celeste
CELESTE
Three weeks in Viktor's world, and I'm finally starting to believe this is real.
He's been true to his word. He's shown me everything: the legitimate businesses that launder money, the network of loyalty and fear that keeps the Bratva running, the men who answer to him with a mixture of respect and terror.
I've met Alexei, who looked at me with curious eyes and told Viktor he'd chosen well.
I've learned to read the tattoos that tell a man's history, to recognize the hierarchy in a room full of soldiers, to understand the language of violence that Viktor speaks fluently.
It should horrify me. Sometimes it does.
But mostly, I just feel like I finally belong somewhere.
Tonight, I'm looking for Viktor to ask about dinner. We've fallen into a rhythm, meals together, nights tangled in sheets, mornings where he watches me like he still can't believe I'm real. It's domestic and dangerous and unlike anything I've ever known.
His study door is cracked open just wide enough that I can hear his voice drifting into the hallway before I even see him. He's on the phone, pacing by the floor-to-ceiling window that overlooks the courtyard, his shoulders tense with that particular rigid posture he gets during business calls.
"The Duval asset is secured," he says, his voice clipped and businesslike in a way I haven't heard in weeks. "There's no further leverage needed. The situation is resolved."
I freeze mid-step in the hallway, my hand half-raised to knock on the doorframe, my breath catching in my throat.
Asset.
The word hits me like a physical slap across the face, sharp and stinging.
"Marcel Duval is neutralized," Viktor continues, his tone cold and detached, nothing like the warm rumble I've grown accustomed to hearing against my ear in the dark. "His daughter serves a different purpose now. The arrangement has evolved beyond the initial parameters."
A different purpose.
I know I should announce myself. Should walk in and ask what he's talking about. But I can't move. Can't breathe. Can't do anything but stand here and feel my heart crack down the middle.
Asset. Purpose. Secured.
The words circle in my brain like vultures. I've heard this language before. From my father, when he talked about deals and opportunities. From every man who's ever seen me as a means to an end instead of a person.
I thought Viktor was different. I let him be different.
I'm an idiot.
I force myself to move, to walk away before he sees me. My legs feel like they belong to someone else. The hallway stretches endlessly, and by the time I reach my room, I can barely see through the tears.
I close the door and lean against it, sliding down until I'm sitting on the floor with my knees pulled to my chest.
He called me an asset. After everything we've shared, after every time he's told me I matter, I'm still just collateral with a different label. A tool he's using for a different purpose.
What purpose? That's what I can't figure out. What could he possibly need me for now that my father's debt is paid?
Unless the debt was never the point. Unless I've been played from the beginning.
The tears come then, hot and bitter, and I don't try to stop them. I've spent my whole life being worthless to the people who should have loved me. I thought Viktor was the exception. I thought for once, someone saw me.
I was wrong.
He finds me in the living room hours later, staring blankly out at the sprawling city lights that blur and shimmer through my tear-swollen eyes.
"You missed dinner." His voice is soft, genuinely concerned, edged with worry. He moves toward me with careful steps, and I can feel his presence like a physical weight pressing against my back, making the air in the room feel impossibly thick.
I turn to face him slowly, and whatever expression I'm wearing stops him cold in his tracks, freezing him mid-step.
"I heard your phone call." The words come out flat, emotionless despite the storm raging inside me.
His brow furrows in confusion at first. Then understanding dawns across his features like a breaking wave, and something like genuine panic flickers in those dark eyes I thought I knew. "Celeste?—"
"Asset." I throw the word at him like a weapon, sharp and bitter on my tongue. "I'm an asset now. That's what you called me. A different kind of purpose than my father's debt, but still just a tool you're using."
He goes pale. Actually pale, like all the blood has drained from his face in one terrible moment. His jaw works soundlessly before he manages to speak. "You heard that completely out of context?—"
"What context makes it better?" My voice is rising now, cracking under the weight of my hurt and anger. "What possible context makes me more than just something you're using for whatever game you're playing?"
"That's not?—"
"I believed you." The words rip out of me, carrying all the pain I've been holding since the hallway. "I let myself believe I could matter to someone, and I'm just collateral with a different label."
He reaches for me, and I flinch back so hard I almost lose my balance.
"Don't touch me." My voice breaks on the words. "I can't think when you touch me, and I need to think."
He stops. His hands fall to his sides, and the look on his face is devastated. Good. He should be devastated. He should feel a fraction of what I'm feeling right now.
"I was talking to Dmitri about business arrangements," he says carefully. "Using language he'd understand?—"
"Language like 'asset'? Like 'purpose'?"
"You are my purpose." He takes a step closer, and I take a step back. "Every decision I make now is for you. I used those words because if Dmitri knew the truth, if anyone in the Bratva knew how much you mean to me?—"
"Don't." I hold up a hand. "I've heard this before. 'This is for your own good, Celeste.' 'You're important to me, Celeste.' It always ends the same way."
"I'm not your father."
"No." I meet his eyes, and I pour every ounce of betrayal into my gaze. "You're worse. Because I actually believed you."
I walk past him toward the hallway, and this time, he doesn't follow. His footsteps don't echo behind me. The silence is deafening.
In my room, I lock the door for the first time since the beginning.
Ipack a bag with shaking hands.
I don't know where I'm going. I don't have money, don't have a plan, don't have anywhere to run. But I can't stay here. Can't look at him across the breakfast table and wonder what's real. Can't let him touch me without hearing the word "asset" echoing in my head.
The clothes in the bag are the ones he bought me, which feels like its own kind of betrayal. Everything I own now came from him. Even my freedom was a gift he gave. What do I have that's actually mine?
Nothing. I've never had anything.
I sit on the edge of the bed and stare at the bag. At the room that's become home over the past weeks. At the view of the city that used to feel like a taunt and started feeling like a promise.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I heard what I heard and interpreted it through the lens of every person who's ever hurt me. Maybe Viktor really was just speaking in code, protecting me in his own twisted way.
But how would I know the difference? How can I trust my own judgment when that same judgment is what led me down this path in the first place, when it convinced me to trust a man I should have feared?
I loved him. I still love him, despite everything I overheard. And that's exactly the problem, the cruel trap I've walked into. I don't trust my own heart anymore, can't rely on the feelings that pulse through me when he's near.
At 3 AM, when the penthouse has fallen into complete silence and even the restless city far below seems to have finally surrendered to sleep, I unlock my door with trembling fingers and slip into the darkened hallway.
The elevator requires a numeric code. I stand before the keypad, my pulse thundering in my ears as I run through the limited numbers I know, the few pieces of information I've gathered.
My birthday doesn't work—the numbers flash red and the panel beeps its rejection.
My mother's birthday doesn't work either.
Then, acting on desperate impulse, I try his birthday. October 15th. 1015.
The elevator doors slide open with a quiet hiss.
He told me his birthday once, mentioned it casually over dinner like it was inconsequential information, nothing important. And I filed it away without conscious thought, the way you do with details about someone who has come to matter to you, someone whose small truths you collect and keep.
I step inside, and my finger hovers over the lobby button. If I press it, I leave everything behind. The first person who ever saw me. The only person who ever made me feel worth something.
Maybe it was real. Maybe he loves me the way he claims to.
Maybe I'm making the biggest mistake of my life.
The door starts to close.
A hand catches it.
Viktor stands in the hallway, barefoot, wearing only pajama pants. His hair is disheveled, his eyes wild. He looks like a man who's been awake for hours, who's been watching monitors and listening to footsteps, who was ready to let me go and couldn't do it.
"Please." His voice is wrecked, barely recognizable. "Please don't go."
I stare at him, my heart pounding, the bag clutched in my hands like a shield.
Everything hangs in the balance.