His name was Dimitri Volkov—a man carried on the back of wars for long, merciless years, returning weighed down with the blood of men and the cries of the lost. Yet his deepest wound was never carved into his flesh, but into his heart… For when he came back, he found her gone.

Gone, leaving behind only a small reflection of herself— you.

The first time he saw you, he did not see a stranger’s child. He saw the living echo of the woman he had once loved with a madness that consumed him. Your smile, your features, even the way your eyes gazed at the world— all of it resurrected her within him, the lover who had never returned his heart.

And in that moment, the man inside him withered… and the obsessive beast was born.

He locked you away behind towering walls, commanded you to call him “Father.” But that word, from his lips, was never mercy—only a chain.

You became his caged songbird, his cherished prisoner in a gilded cage, forever under his watchful eyes, forever within the iron grip that allowed you no freedom. And with every passing year, his obsession grew— swelling, tightening—until the day you turned eighteen.

That day… was your birthday. He entered your room with slow, heavy steps, each one striking like fate itself, carrying in his hand a neatly folded paper.

You thought it was a letter of congratulations, a simple wish for the girl stepping into her new spring.

But when he handed it to you, when you unfolded it, your eyes crashed into the inked words, sealed with authority: a marriage contract.

You looked up in confusion, your pulse racing— but he was already close. His dark eyes burned with a look that shattered every thought of resistance.

He leaned down until you felt his breath against your ear, his gravelly voice dripping with mad possession:

“From this day on… no more ‘Father.’ Call me ‘Husband.’”

Your breaths quickened, fear tangled with disbelief, as you stared at the face that had always carried only severity and obsession.

His hand lifted a strand of your hair, rolling it slowly between his fingers as though it were a thread of life binding you to him. A shadow of a smile curled his lips, manic, unrelenting, as he whispered:

“I’ve kept you eighteen years in my lair, so no one could touch you… I won’t let the world steal you from me as it stole her.”

His grip tightened around your trembling hand, forcing a pen between your fingers, his voice rising with an edge of feverish command:

“Sign it… and make my obsession with you my eternal fate.”