Elina woke long before dawn, the sky outside still a deep, unmoving blue. Her body wanted sleep, but her mind refused to rest. Too many worries pressed at her chest, too many memories clawed at the edges of her thoughts. And somewhere between exhaustion and fear, something old resurfaced, something she tried every day to bury.
Her father.
She sat up slowly, pulling her knees to her chest as the memory unfolded like a bruise she'd learned to live with. It always began the same way: with the echo of her father's laugh. A warm, infectious sound that used to fill their home, back when the world was simple and happiness came easily.
Back when they still had him.
Her father had been a proud man, not wealthy but respected. He worked at one of the city's financial firms, the kind where men wore crisp suits and spoke in numbers and sharp smiles. But he'd always been different, kind, honest, the type of man who believed that integrity mattered more than power.
He'd believed that until the world punished him for it.
Elina remembered the day everything changed. She'd been fourteen, Liam barely nine. Their father had come home early, so early it had frightened her. His shirt was wrinkled, his tie stuffed into his pocket, and his hands wouldn't stop shaking.
"Dad?" she had whispered.
He'd sat down at the kitchen table as if the weight of the world had finally crushed him. Her mother had rushed to him, asking what happened, asking who hurt him, asking what she could do, but he had only stared ahead, hollow-eyed and trembling.
"They fired me," he'd finally said. "They said I was responsible for the missing funds."
Elina remembered the shock.
Missing funds? Her father would never steal. Never cheat. Never lie.
But the world didn't care.
The accusations spread like wildfire. Neighbors whispered behind curtains. Old friends avoided their calls. People at church refused to meet his eyes. The shame clung to him like poison.
He didn't fight back.
He couldn't.
Powerful people were involved. Elina remembered overhearing her parents arguing late at night, words flung like sharp rocks:
"You can't take the fall for this!"
"If I talk, Eliza… if I talk, they'll bury us all."
Her mother had cried. Her father had shattered.
Within months, their lives collapsed. Savings drained. Bills piled up. Doors that once welcomed them slammed shut. And then came the worst part, watching a proud man shrink into someone small, quiet, and broken.
He died two years later. Not from sickness. Not from age. But from defeat.
Some people died standing. Her father died kneeling.
Elina rubbed her face now, pushing the memory back where it belonged. She couldn't afford to drown in the past, not with everything already falling apart. But she also couldn't ignore how the city's newest tension stirred something dangerous inside her. The rumors about Alex Romanov, the shifting atmosphere, the way people whispered like they feared a storm…
Her father's downfall had started with powerful men. Men whose names could crush others without lifting a finger. Men who lived above consequences.
Men like the Romanovs.
She stood and dressed quietly, careful not to wake Liam or her mother. Before leaving, she checked her mother's medication, set water to boil for when she woke, and left a small note on the counter:
Working early. I love you both. — E.
The streets were cold when she stepped outside, the morning air sharp enough to sting her lungs. She walked quickly to the bus stop, hugging her thin coat around her. Other commuters gathered, all wearing that same uneasy expression she'd noticed the day before. Everyone talked, low, frantic whispers spreading like smoke.
"He arrived last night. They shut down the entire airport wing."
"I heard he's already meeting with the city council."
"Someone said a rival family is hiding. Something big is coming."
Elina stared ahead, jaw tight. She didn't care about powerful men or their games. She didn't have time to care. Her life was already a battlefield, she didn't need someone else's war bleeding into it.
At the diner, Gwen spoke before Elina even tied her apron.
"You look pale," she said.
"You always say that."
"That's because you always look pale."
Elina didn't argue. She just got to work, moving between customers, coffee machines, clattering dishes. But her mind wasn't all there. Not really. Every once in a while, a memory of her father's slumped shoulders flickered, turning her stomach.
While wiping down a table, she overheard two businessmen discussing something that made her freeze mid-motion.
"They framed him, you know."
"Who?"
"Romanov's father. The man they fired back then… what was his name?"
Elina's heart stopped.
No. No, they couldn't be talking about her father. No one remembered him. No one cared.
"Harper?" the first man guessed.
"Hart," the other corrected. "Derrick Hart. Worked at one of their subsidiary firms."
Her knees weakened.
Her father's name. After all these years.
"He didn't steal a dime," the man continued. "Romanov's people wanted to bury a bad deal. They needed a scapegoat. The poor bastard took the fall."
Elina's fingers tightened on the cloth in her hand.
"They ruined him," the man said. "But what do you expect? That family has always cleaned their mess with other people's lives."
She couldn't breathe.
Her father hadn't been fired.
He hadn't been disgraced.
He had been destroyed.
Framed. Sacrificed. Silenced.
For the first time in years, the anger that she thought had died with him surged back, raw, sharp, and painful.
She walked to the back kitchen and leaned against the wall, trying to steady herself. Her pulse hammered. Her vision blurred. There were some truths a heart never recovered from.
So that was it.
The Romanovs didn't just exist in some distant world far above hers. They had touched her life once, fatally. Their shadow had crushed her family long before Alex Romanov's name began stirring fear across the city.
She exhaled shakily and returned to work, her movements stiff but controlled. She refused to let anyone see her crack.
The rest of her shift dragged like wet cement. Customers blurred into one endless stream of faces. She forced herself through every step, every order, every conversation.
At the mini-store later that evening, Mr. Patel noticed her silence.
"You seem… troubled today."
"I'm fine."
"You're not," he said gently. "But you will be."
She wished she believed that.
When she finally walked home, she felt heavier than she had in years. The past clung to her like a second skin. The streets were noisy tonight, more police cars, more guards stationed outside wealthy homes, more people whispering like danger had grown a heartbeat.
The Romanovs were shaking the city. And the tremors were reaching even the poorest corners.
When she reached home, Liam and her mother were waiting for her with dinner already set out. It warmed her but the warmth didn't reach the bruised parts inside her.
"Long day?" her mother asked quietly.
"Yes."
"You want to talk about it?"
"No."
She didn't want to reopen the wound.
She couldn't.
Later, when everyone was asleep, she sat alone by the window, staring at the broken streetlight outside. Shadows stretched across the road, long and jagged.
Her father's voice echoed in her head: "Some people have too much power, Elina. Never stand where they can see you."
But something else whispered to her now, a darker, quieter thought.
What if they already saw us?
The night felt colder, heavier, as though the city itself was holding its breath.
Far across town, beyond her world of cracked sidewalks and dim streetlights, a man she had every reason to hate had returned.
And she didn't know it yet…
…but her life was already changing.