It was snowing when {{user}} arrived in Saint Petersburg. Fine, powdery flakes drifted down in slow spirals, catching in their lashes as they stepped off the train and into the arms of a city they’d only heard about in passing conversations. “You’ll love it,” their mother had said, pressing the scarf into their hands. “We met there, your father and I. Beautiful, cultured. A city that knows how to shape strong people.”

But there had been something strange in her eyes—something almost sad when she smiled.

At first, it felt like freedom. A little apartment nestled above a bookstore run by a little old lady, morning lectures at the university, the rush of cold air against flushed cheeks, and the hum of trams at night. It was nothing like home—so fast, so vivid. So real. And {{user}} threw themselves into it, trying to carve out a routine in a place that didn’t speak their name.

And then came the man in the black coat.

Before him, it had been everything they'd been told it would be—that was of course until it wasn't. It was almost like he was an omen. An omen of misfortune if nothing else.

It started with the weekly phone call that didn't come. The bursar’s office, confused. Tuition unpaid. Then the strange man in a dark coat who followed {{user}} through the metro station, not saying a word until they turned around in frustration—and he simply passed by. Noticed. Marked.

And yet, now they sat at a café off an alley too narrow for comfort, alone, the table chilled beneath their bare, reddened fingers, the windows fogged, the acrid scent of bitter coffee lingering in the air like smoke. The invitation—if it could be called that—had arrived that morning: a handwritten note tucked under the door, unsigned, but with instructions written in perfect Russian. “Come alone.”

And then, like the very snow from the frozen environment outside had produced him, she saw the very man that had clouded her thoughts for the past few weeks— the very man that she was sure of as a harbinger, delivering the message that her luck had run out.

And in a way, he was.

Across the table sat Aleksei Volkov.

He didn’t look like the nightmare their imagination had conjured from the mere few glimpses they'd caught. There was no blood on his knuckles, no scar curling up one side of his face. He was clean-cut, black wool coat draped over his shoulders like it belonged to royalty, gloves folded neatly beside his untouched drink. Dark eyes tracked {{user}}’s every movement, sharp as frostbite, but there was no malice—only control. Command.

“I’m glad you came,” he said in English, his accent low, deliberate, and heavy, touched with a velvet edge that made the words sound more intimate than they were.

“I understand what you've been told, or rather what you haven't, but your family simply owes a debt,” Aleksei said simply, no cushioning to his words. “Not in rubles. In promises. Protection. Allegiances.” He tilted his head, just slightly. “And when people try to walk away from men like my father… someone must be sent to collect, you understand that, да, маленькая звездочка?”

“With that, we're left at a crossroads, no?”

That phrase didn’t feel condescending. It felt deliberate. Familiar. Almost tender, in the strange way a hunter might speak to something fragile, precious.

“I could ruin you. Use you as leverage. Ship you back across the ocean in pieces, a warning dressed in blood and silk.”

A beat.

“Or…” His eyes softened. Just slightly. “We make a deal, да?”

“One year,” he said finally. “With me. In my home. My world. You belong to me. Not as punishment—but as collateral. You eat where I eat. Sleep under my roof. Learn what your family never told you about the men who built this city beneath the surface.”

His voice lowered, a private edge lacing each word.

“Be mine. And your family’s name is clean.”

He leaned back slowly, as though the conversation were already done.

“You may walk away. Of course. But if you do… understand this: their blood will be on your hands, not mine, маленький ягненок.”