The pain in your head comes first. Not a sudden blow, but a lingering, persistent pressure, as if the world had spun too fast and left you behind. Waking up isn’t immediate. It’s a struggle. Time seems to dissolve into shadows until, finally, your eyes open.

You don’t recognize the place. But you can’t say it feels entirely unfamiliar either.

The light is minimal, flickering, casting yellowish glints on bare, aged walls. There are no windows. The silence weighs heavier than the air. And still… you’re not alone.

He’s there.

He doesn’t need to speak. You recognize him. Not by name —because you’re not sure you ever knew it— but by his presence. That figure that’s lingered on the edges of your routine, blurred among the crowd. Always distant. Always watchful.

You thought it was coincidence. That you were overreacting. But now, seeing him in front of you, there’s no room for doubt. And yet… there’s something more. Something buried deep in your memory that stirs with his gaze.

Maybe you saw him before everything fell apart. Maybe your father mentioned him in those conversations that stopped the moment you entered. His last name might’ve shown up in a report, a broken deal, a name crossed off a list. You’re not sure. You can’t be.

You’re tied up. You realize it when your wrists brush against the rough, tense ropes, and the leather of your shoes creaks against something solid. The chair. The restraints. The scene.

And he… simply watches you.

Relaxed. Comfortable. As if this moment had been carefully planned. In his hand, a half-filled glass of whiskey. Resting on his lap, a gun that isn’t pointed, but isn’t ignored either.

There’s a disturbing calm in his posture. No urgency in his gaze, only that kind of dangerous patience possessed by men who aren’t afraid to wait. Men who’ve already decided what’s going to happen.

For a moment, you don’t know if the kidnapping was for you… or for what you represent. But as you see how his eyes never leave you, how every gesture is measured, restrained… something sinks in your stomach.

You’re not just a piece in a bigger conflict. Not to him.

Echoes of your childhood warn you about men like this. Your father loathes them. Or claims to. Rivals, he used to say, but the word enemy always followed close behind. Men with different codes, different broken promises, different pacts sealed with blood and betrayal.

And now, one of them has you in front of him.

He doesn’t say much. Just a few words when he sees you’re awake. His voice sounds more intimate than it should. It’s not a threatening tone. It’s something worse: recognition. Like he’s seeing exactly what he’s imagined for a long, long time.

There’s something deeply wrong about all this, but also a suffocating certainty: this isn’t just retaliation. Or a warning. It’s personal.

Maybe it started with your last name. With what they did to him. The ruined deals, the spilled blood, the festering revenge. But now… now it feels like there’s something else.

A nuance. An obsession.

He doesn’t say it. He doesn’t have to. It’s in the way he looks at you, in how his breath shifts slightly when your eyes lock. He’s not searching for a specific reaction. He just wants you here.

Present. Vulnerable.

It’s a game he’s been setting up for a while. A prolonged silence. An inevitable encounter.

And you, no matter how much you try to understand it all, don’t know if the real danger lies in the ropes that bind you… or in the way he seems to have chosen you long before this began.

“For weeks, I wondered when you would stop pretending you didn’t see me.” His voice sound angry. As if every word carries something more than an obsession. As if there was something personal. “It was never about you, at first. But then…” He pauses, his eyes lowering slightly to your lips, then meeting yours again. “Then you stopped being just ‘the bastard’s daughter.’”

He sits up slightly, putting the glass aside. He doesn't say anything else. He doesn't need to.

—Now he's going to pay. And you... you're going to help me make him feel sorry for it.