The Woman In His War

Chapter Sixteen: Truth Between Empires

The phone rang at two in the afternoon.

She was in the library sitting at the table with a book when it happened. She was actually reading this time, the compound became quiet around her after a morning of high operation. She looked at the screen. Papa. Her chest did something she didn't have a name for. Something that was not quite hope and not quite dread but lived exactly between them, a feeling that had been waiting since the foundation suspension and Dante's voice through a screen saying she is gone and I don't know where she is. Serena looked up and Dante was already in the doorway, leaning against the frame with his arms crossed and his eyes on the phone in her hand.

"He called," she said.

"I know." He pushed off the frame and came into the library. "Answer it."

"You're staying?"

"Yes."

She looked at the phone and picked it up.

"My love."

Viktor 's voice sounded warm and unhurried. The same way that it had always made her feel, regardless of the circumstances, that she was the most important person in whatever room he occupied.

"Papa… "

"Are you alright? I've been trying to reach you," he said

"I'm alright."

"Serena, whatever they have told you or made you believe in that place... I need you to understand that I am working to bring you home with every resource I have."

She shifted her gaze to Dante across the table. His eyes were still fixed on her and he could also hear their conversation.

"I know you are," she said to her father.

"Then tell me where you are." Viktor sounded gentle now. "Just that. Just the location and I will handle everything else."

"I don't know where I am."

"Serena… "

"I genuinely don't know, Papa. They haven't told me."

"Are you being treated well? He said. You have what you need. Food. Clothing."

"Yes."

"Nobody has hurt you."

"No."

He exhaled slowly. The exhale of a man receiving information he needed and absorbing it with relief. Serena watched Dante across the table. He hadn't moved. His hands were flat on the table.

"Papa." She tried to keep a voice low, this time. "I need to ask you something."

"Anything."

"The foundation… Was that you?"

Viktor hesitated for a few seconds. Then… "The audit was already pending and the timing was unfortunate."

She looked at the table. "That's not an answer."

"It's the accurate one. The legal process moves independently of… "

"Papa, please."

Silence. She had learned, from the man across the table, that silence asked questions better than words did. Her father said nothing for a long moment.

"I am protecting you the only way I know how," he said

Serena closed her eyes briefly and opened them. "From what?"

"From a man who is using you. See, whatever he has told you about his reasons, about why he took you, about what I have done. You are hearing one side of a history that is far more complicated than he is capable of presenting honestly."

She looked at Dante and he was looking back at her.

"Tell me your side," she said to her father. "Right now. Tell me what happened."

A pause. The longest one yet.

"That is a conversation for when you are home," he said. "When you are safe and I can look at you while I tell you."

"I'm asking now."

"I know you are." Something real moved through his voice. It was not a performance, the one of a man who loved his daughter and was choosing, in this moment, his love for his empire over his love for her without fully acknowledging to himself that he was making a choice at all. "Trust me. Come home. And I will tell you everything."

She sat with that for a moment because she had always trusted him for twenty-eight years, through her mother's disappearance, the foundation and every gala. She looked at Dante across the table. Two men. The same withheld truth. Different reasons. Different costs.

"I'll call you when I can," she said to her father.

"Serena… "

"I love you, Papa."

She ended the call and the library became very quiet. Dante was already watching her knowing fully well that what Serena needed now was an explanation. Starting from what happened between him and her father, the foundation audit and the statement he made earlier this morning with the press.

"You both know what happened. You've always both known and neither of you are going to tell me."

The silence that followed was not empty. It was full of everything Dante knew and had decided she couldn't have yet. The weight of a man who had built his entire existence on the careful management of truth. Serena nodded carefully as she picked up the phone, put it in her pocket and walked to the door. At the threshold she stopped but didn't turn around.

"When you decide I've earned it," she said. "I'll be here."

Then she left.

Dante remained silent as he watched her leaving. He has never considered Serena to be more than a leverage. But what on earth was this guilt he felt toward Viktor’s daughter?