The Devil's Favourite Obsession

Rafael occupied the armchair to the left, one elbow on the armrest, his chin resting on his fist. His expression hovered somewhere between bored and amused. He had the look of a man watching a play he had already read the ending of.

Lorian sat in the chair nearest the window. His jaw was tight. His fingers gripped the armrest.

Tatiana occupied the single sofa at the far end. She sat with her hands clasped together in her lap, her head slightly lowered, her eyes on the floor.

And Olga Romanov stood.

She stood because sitting felt like surrender. She stood because the words she was about to say required the full weight of her body behind them. She stood because after everything she had learned, after Cassian’s revelations, after kneeling beside a daughter she could not claim, she had decided that silence was no longer something she could afford.

”If Tatiana does not want to marry into this family,” Olga said, her voice was steady, ”she has my full support.”

The air in the room shifted.

”Olga!” Lorian shouted, desperately trying to halt the chaos that had overtaken his wife since he confessed to the planned murder of their daughter. Perhaps he should have kept her in the dark.

”I am not talking to you, Lorian.” She did not look at him. Not once. Her eyes remained fixed on the Crown family. ”I am talking to the Crown family.”

The temperature in the room dropped. Not literally. But the quality of the air changed, the way it changes when someone breaks a rule that everyone present assumed was unbreakable.

Michael, who had been sitting with the calm composure of a man who considered raised voices a sign of poor breeding, did not change his expression. He uncrossed his ankle. He placed both feet on the floor. He rested his hands on his knees.

Then he spoke. ”Are you certain, Mrs Romanov?” His voice was tender. ”Because I assure you, things will not end quite peacefully for you or your husband. We made a deal. And I would appreciate it if you kept your end of the bargain.”

Olga did not flinch. Her jaw tightened, but her eyes held his without wavering.

”That is what I am trying to rectify.” Her voice strengthened. ”They are children. Living beings. Not items to trade and bargain over like livestock at an auction.” She straightened her shoulders. ”I have made up my mind. I want to do right by my daughter’s side.”

She meant both daughters. Michael did not know that. Nobody in the room knew that, except Olga herself and the absent Devil who had given her the truth as a leash.

”Olga, we can discuss this privately.” Lorian leaned forward in his chair. His voice strained to remain controlled. He could not show the Crown family how furious his wife was making him. Why could she not have spoken to him first? Why had she chosen to deliver this in front of strangers? Should they not have discussed this between themselves before airing it in another family’s parlour?

”No.” Olga’s reply was flat. Final. ”I think I am done keeping quiet.”

She did not spare Lorian a single glance. She looked at the wall behind Michael’s head, at the painting of the Crown family crest that hung there, at the gold and green and the snarling lion at its centre, and she addressed the room as though her husband were not in it.

Michael saw it. Tamara saw it. Rafael, who had been watching the exchange with the half-smile of a man genuinely entertained, saw it too.

Instead of speaking to Olga, Rafael turned his head toward the single sofa at the far end.

”I wonder,” he said lightly, ”what Tina has to say about this?”

Tatiana’s head lifted.

She had been sitting in silence since the meeting began, her hands clasped so tightly that her knuckles had turned white. She looked at each person in the room, one by one. Her father, whose jaw was clenched. Her mother, who was standing like a woman prepared to fight a war. Michael, who was watching her with the patient, assessed the gaze of a man for whom all people were variables in an equation. Tamara, whose expression revealed nothing.

And then she looked at Rafael.

Her gaze stayed on him longer than on anyone else.

She looked at his face. The way he sat in the armchair, relaxed and unbothered, his chin resting on his fist, his dark eyes watching her with an expectation that carried no pressure but absolute confidence. He already knew what she was going to say. She could see it in the faint curve of his lip.

She turned to her mother.

”I want to marry Rafael, Mom.” Her voice was quiet but certain. ”I have already made up my mind.”

Olga’s composure cracked along a new line. ”Tina, I think you should really think this over.”

”No.” Tatiana shook her head. ”I left everything in Russia and came here. Rafael and I have talked. We both want to marry each other.”

The words fell into the room with the weight of a decision that had already been made and could not be unmade by the woman who had given birth to the girl making it.

Rafael had promised her the world. And Tatiana would take it. He might be reckless. He might be foolish. He might carry the last name of a family that operated in shadows and blood and silence. But he had promised her luxury and thrill and a life that looked nothing like the crumbling dignity her parents had been clinging to for twenty years.

She would take it.

Olga stared at her youngest daughter. The daughter she had kept. The daughter she had raised. The daughter she had protected from every storm, every debt, every secret that Lorian had built around their family like walls of a prison disguised as a house.

And now that daughter was choosing to walk into a prison. Willingly. With her chin raised and her mind made up, and the unshakeable confidence of a young woman who believed she understood the world because a handsome man had told her she did.

Olga’s throat tightened. She had lost one daughter to the Crowns twenty years ago.

And now the second one was giving herself to them voluntarily.

The irony was so cruel it nearly made her laugh. Instead, she pressed her nails into her palms and said nothing. Because there was nothing left to say. Not here. Not now. Not in this room full of people who had turned her family into currency and her daughters into collateral.

Michael leaned back on the sofa. A faint, satisfied smile crossed his face. Not triumphant. Merely confirmed. ”Well,” he said quietly. ”It seems the matter is settled.”

Lorian exhaled through his nose. His grip on the armrest loosened. He looked at Olga. She did not look back.

Rafael uncurled from the armchair and rose to his feet. He crossed the room, slow and unhurried, and stopped in front of Tatiana. He extended his hand.