"You promised me, Nico." Her voice is steady. Controlled. The voice of a woman who has rehearsed this conversation in her mind a thousand times, knowing it would come eventually. "Your father promised my father. I was told since I was sixteen that I would marry into this family. That I would be Mrs. Konstantinos. My father built our future around that promise. And then you chose HER."
"So, you chose Viktor Reznikov."
"I chose survival. My family's standing. Our future. You took all of that from me when you looked past me in that room."
"I never promised you anything."
"Yourfatherdid. And you let his promise die with him."
The words land. They land because she's not entirely wrong. My father made promises to Alexandros Drakos. Arrangements discussed over dinners I was too young to attend, agreements that shaped Elena's childhood the way my father's death shaped mine. I inherited those promises and discarded them when I saw a woman in a green dress at the Ricci function tell a man to go fuck himself and I couldn't look away. I chose desire over duty. I chose Siobhan over Elena. And Elena paid for that choice with her standing, her family's position, the identity she'd been building since she was sixteen years old.
Her rage is justified. Her betrayal is not. The tragedy of Elena Drakos is that she's simultaneously right and wrong, wounded and weaponized, a woman who was offered no good options and chose the worst one because the hand that extended to her belonged to Viktor Reznikov and nobody else reached out at all.
"What did you tell Viktor about my wife?"
The composure flickers. A crack in the mask — the first since she sat down.
"Security. Schedules. Movements. What he needed."
"The restaurant. The lunch. You noticed she was unwell."
A beat. Her eyes hold mine.
"I told him she seemed ill. That's all I knew. That's all I told him."
She doesn't say pregnant. She may not have put it together. Or she may have and she's holding that piece as leverage for a conversation exactly like this one. I can't tell. The ambiguity sits in my chest like a blade I can't remove without causing more damage.
"What happens to me?"
"That depends."
"On what?"
"On my wife."
Elena's composure cracks. Not much. Enough. The woman underneath the mask is terrified and defiant and twenty-eight years old and the world she built her identity around has just collapsed and the man across the desk is deciding whether she lives or dies.
I have her taken to a room in the Elysium basement. Not a cell. A room with a lock. Guarded. She'll stay there until I decide what to do with her, and I won't decide until Siobhan tells me what she wants.
Evening. The penthouse. Siobhan is on the couch with her laptop, Ward Risk Advisory, the professional life she maintains because she is not a woman who lets a war dissolve her identity. I sit across from her, and the words feel like shrapnel in my mouth.
"It was Elena."
She looks up from her screen. The cursor blinks.
Her face changes. Not fast. Slow. Each emotion arriving and settling before the next replaces it. Disbelief first: the refusal of the brain to accept information that rewrites months of memory. Then recognition: the pieces clicking into place, the pattern she almost saw and didn't. Then hurt: raw, personal, the specific pain of being betrayed by someone you trusted.
Then fury.
"She was myfriend." The word cracks in her mouth. "She helped me pick my wedding dress. She held my hand at lunch and asked if I was alright coming out of that bathroom and I—" She stops. The bathroom. The restaurant. Elena noticed. Elena saw.
"She asked about the security. At the dinner. I was sitting right there. I watched you tell her and I didn't think twice because she wasfamily." The word family lands like an accusation. Directed at both of us. At him for trusting. At herself for not seeing.
"What did she tell Viktor about me?"
"That you seemed unwell at the restaurant. She says that's all."
Siobhan's hand moves to her stomach. The gesture I've seen a dozen times. A hundred. The unconscious press of her palm against her abdomen that I've filed as a habit, a comfort, a tic. She does it when she's processing. When she's afraid. When she's thinking about things she won't say.