Lucien
Selene's room didn't feel like a place meant to be lived in—it felt constructed, precise down to the smallest detail. The space was wide, Dark green walls—her father's color—absorbed the muted gold light that bled softly from hidden fixtures, leaving no harsh edges, only controlled shadows that never fully settled. The air carried that same engineered chill as the corridors, a quiet reminder that even temperature here was a decision, not a condition.
I woke up, my eyes fluttered and the lights cut through my lenses making me wince. But the pain that shot through my skull was unbearable, like a bullet wound, hole filled with gore and blood flowing in an unceremonious way, the blunt rip told me I wasn't actually dreaming when it happened to me.
I felt a shift, calculated and stilled afterwards. Too much like Selene, she moved like this, thinks twice before moving, the ceilings in her room was high,
The bed stood low and perfectly aligned, untouched by disorder, more deliberate than inviting. But as i was turning to fully look at the ceiling, i realised the pristine sheets crinkled and bloody splotches are everywhere. And beneath it all, barely noticeable unless you listened for it, the faint mechanical hum persisted, constant and alive. I could smell Selene, a distant rain, like a plant which tilts during storms.
I felt stared at, I looked around slightly, the blinding pain subsided leaving the after shock of the pain. I saw Selene sitting on her rocking chair, reading a book. Too still. She's too still when she was devastated. I didn't know If it was a pang in my heart or just a flutter. A reaction atleast from my heart which doesn't jump anymore.
Selene's beauty was one of a kind, like rougher edges, not a flawless skin, little splatter of pimple breakouts everywhere. She was brown, caramel skinned almost, but there was a hint of maroon which comes from the tree barks. Unfinished, raw but sophisticated, her silence is a crown on her head, she could do nothing but keep her quietness and would create havoc not uttering a single word. Like she did when we had met at her 18th birthday party. I was 23. Didn't want to visit her house, which was an apartment right across our penthouse, mom had helped them secure it. We knew they had a mafia, a syndicate different than ours, but mom was sure, they wouldn't past through their grief and create an unexpected and exceptional mafia business. It was all Selene, glasses heavier than her gaze, her nerdy questioning gaze always on scenarios she shouldn't even have looked at. But she did, she did look, without any hesitation, without any shakyness or nervousness. Selene wasn't a mystery, she couldn't hide anything, so she didn't, but she shared in ways people didn't get the hang of it anyway.
She didn't talk to me for a year
Not even now
She was huddled in the staircase of their apartment
With a big book in her hands
Thickest I had ever seen
Reading like her life depended on it
I had asked about what she was reading
She said,
" how to kill with a butter knife"
I chuckled but then she glared at me with those big chunky eyes, like a bambi and I stopped laughing. She made feel embarrassed, younger and out of her league, in every chance she got. I didn't even know how this woman once had agreed to marry me or share a bed with me.
She used to wear those jumpers of different colors everyday
Hair tied in a tight ponytail
No makeup
No accessories like everyday did in her age
But she caught my eye the night she cut of one of the servant's wrist with a blunt knife
Surprisingly calm after
She had said
" kept touching me"
I had killed than man later, dragging him down to the pool and drowned him. Selene didn't need to know, not even now.
A pause.
Then—
"You're slower than I thought."
Selene.
I jerked back to reality and looked at her. Still the similar shaped eyes, bambi, but the shape of glasses has changed and so did the power maybe. She was one deer alike. But now open hairs, brushed but not kept, she was gut wrenching beautiful, how could people breathe near her, how do people survive around her.
Same posture. Same stillness.
Like she hadn't moved since I got here.
Like she didn't need to.
"How long?" I asked.
"Eight hours."
Too precise.
She'd been counting.
I let that sit.
"You kept me alive."
Not a question.
She looked at me, intently as if didn't even care that I was breathing or not, as if irritated that I ruined her perfect white pristine bedsheet with my blood.
Her gaze didn't shift.
"You were useful."
A breath left me. Something that might have been a laugh—
if it didn't hurt.
It did
I studied her.
Not openly. Not obviously.
You don't look at Selene like that.
You observe around her. No visible damage. No cracks. No sign of what last night did to her.
But—
her stillness had changed.
She was too still
The last time she was too still
When she found out about Lily and me
"Who did you think it was?" I asked.
Her eyes didn't leave mine this time.
"Don't waste time."
Fair.
I shifted and immediately regretted. My one side totally numb and the shot of pain jolted me to the side. But Selene didn't move. Didn't come to me as if she hated it as well. She hated me. Hated me to the core of her black heart.
Memory flickered—
Hands.
Impact.
Darkness cutting in too fast.
Not clean.
Not professional.
Wrong.
"It wasn't supposed to go like that," I said.
" Lucien, maybe you didn't hear me. Why wasting my time. Tell me a name"
She said in a composed way
Formally
But gut was cut open for a second
"Lily"
She nodded as if already decoded it. Naturally, she was Selene Marcellus.
" why"
Straight to the point
" don't know, she knew I was going to be back from Russia to meet you, she came to meet me at my mansion, straight through the entrance, we were talking in my....bedroom and...and then I felt I heard a thud until I realise the bone cracked on my own skull, kind of pain and lost my consciousness."
The room stilled.
Selene didn't move.
Didn't blink.
Didn't react the way most people would.
She processed.
Fast.
"What did you talk about?"
She asked
" Asked, why I was back and if I could stay back in her place because apparently according to her, I was in danger"
Selene nodded as if it didn't matter to her anymore. No sign of jealousy or pain or hatred. She was confused and annoyed. As I said, Selene's nonchalance would kill people. Like it was killing me. At this point literally.
I laid back down straight looking at the ceiling
" did she hit you from behind or it wS someone else"
I thought about it
"It was someone else but...the thing is....she didn't try to stop it, even If her reaction was violent"
Selene nodded
" your car's ready downstairs
I had informed the Voss members, they came to escort you. Leave"
That was Selene Marcellus
Ruthless and cruel to people who hurt her. And I. The biggest bastard in her story which keeps getting twisted.
Selene stood.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Every movement calculated down to the second.
"Victor checked the underground routes," she said.
So she'd already moved.
Of course she had.
"And?" I asked.
She didn't answer immediately.
She walked closer instead.
Not rushed. Not hesitant. Controlled.
"Opened from the inside," she said.
I smiled.
Just slightly.
" I don't know what your lover is doing Lucien. But you know. I am not a merciful woman"
My heart stopped for a second. Not because I was worried about Lily. Lily was non existent. But Selene made me exist and also makes rhe existence painful as hell. Selene once had talked to me softly. As my wife. This woman on the other hand, is the love of my life, who wants to end my life in her own timeline. And God if she wasn't wildly beautiful for that. I could kiss her but maybe that would be a deaths kiss by now.
" what does she want from me. She took enough"
I stiffened but kept silent for a while.
"Maybe your silence"