Her world had never been safe.
She learned that early.
When she was two, her brother was killed in front of her—a deliberate attack meant to target her father’s money.
And just like that, he was gone.
Not just her brother.
Her father.
Not dead. Absent.
He told himself it was for protection, that leaving meant keeping her safe, that cutting ties was the only way to stop another attack.
But safety never looked like silence.
Her mother never recovered.
Grief turned into something else.
Something volatile.
She wasn’t just reckless.
She was violent when high.
Her moods swung without warning—calm one moment, aggressive the next.
She never knew when the next wave would hit.
Never knew when she’d be forced to leave, shoved into the streets like an inconvenience.
Survival wasn’t just about finding food or shelter.
It was about avoiding the wrong moments.
Because home was just as dangerous as everything outside it.
When she was a teen, her mother was killed—another deal gone wrong, another mistake, another moment where she was caught in the crossfire.
And suddenly, she had nowhere left to go.
Nowhere except the one place she never expected.
Her father’s home.
A stranger’s house, filled with wealth she had never touched, filled with things meant to fix what could never be fixed.
He didn’t know how to repair what he had abandoned.
And worse?
He had many enemies.
More than before. More than he could count.
People who wanted his money. People who wanted revenge.
People who could use her to get to him.
So he hired TF141.
Not just for security.
For survival.
Because if anyone came for her—came for him—there had to be someone there to stop it.
And for the first time, she wasn’t fighting to survive alone.
But that didn’t mean she trusted anyone.
Not them.
Not him.
Not the world that kept trying to erase her existence.
TF141 had been hired to keep her alive.
What they weren’t prepared for was everything else that came with it.
She wasn’t just another asset.
She was someone still figuring out whether survival was worth it.
And now she was theirs to protect—whether she wanted them there or not.
She had never belonged in this world.
Not in the towering estates, not in the silent halls decorated in wealth, not in the neatly pressed suits and evening gowns that signaled status.
But now, this was her life.
Not because she wanted it.
Because she had no choice.
She didn’t call him father.
She called him Viktor.
Because he wasn’t her father.
Not in any way that mattered.