"I didn't expect the Bratva's tech queen to be quite so... captivating," Lorenzo's voice dripped with irony as he observed Galina, who was absorbed in deciphering a web of encrypted data.
Galina's gaze remained fixed on her screens, her expression a...
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The living room stretched before me like a portrait frozen in amber, bathed in the golden glow of the chandelier that cast warm cascades over the polished mahogany and the supple curves of leather. And there, amidst the opulence, was Damian.
He was an angel unmoored, sprawled across the couch in a manner so absurd it bordered on tragic. His legs jutted upward, a reckless defiance of gravity, while his head dangled precariously off the edge, strands of his dark hair brushing the floor as though trying to ground him in reality. His entire being screamed chaos—a celestial being caught mid-fall, trapped in the void between surrender and flight.
"Damian," I called out, my voice tinged with a laughter I couldn't contain. It slipped through my defenses, light but incredulous, the sound startling even to me. "What in the name of God are you doing?"
His head tilted slightly, almost as if the effort to acknowledge me was too much to bear. Half-lidded eyes—those hauntingly inscrutable eyes—regarded me with the languid apathy of someone teetering on the edge of reason. "Thinking," he murmured, the word drawn out in a breathy monotone, as if the act of thought had become an unbearable weight.
I stared at him, my arms folding instinctively as I tried to decipher this bizarre tableau. "Thinking?" I echoed, letting the word twist in my mouth like a foreign object. "Upside down? Are you trying to see the world from a different angle or invent a new form of madness?"
A flicker of movement in the shadows drew my attention, pulling me from Damian's surreal form. Mikhail stood near the far corner, his arms crossed over his broad chest, his gaze sharper than glass. He didn't speak immediately—he didn't need to. The subtle beckoning gesture of his fingers was enough.
There was something in his expression—something unspoken, like the weight of a storm brewing on the horizon.
I approached, my heels clicking softly against the floor, each step measured, deliberate. Mikhail leaned in as I drew near, his voice dropping to a near whisper, thick with quiet restraint. "Don't bother him," he warned, his tone low but steady, a river beneath the ice. "He's... in a dilemma."
I raised a brow, glancing back at the spectacle that was Damian, his legs still absurdly pointed skyward like the hands of a broken clock. "A dilemma?" I repeated, letting the skepticism lace my words. "What's this? Did he just discover the concept of gravity and find it too much to bear?"
