~ Prologue ~
The radiator in the tiny kitchen groaned before sputtering unevenly to life, the sound carrying the familiar warning that sooner or later even this room would stop holding warmth.
Lune Blanche sat cross-legged on the only chair in the apartment that was still mostly stable, surrounded by a battlefield of notes, highlighted pages, empty coffee mugs, and half-finished calculations spread across the scratched kitchen table. The overhead light buzzed faintly above her, weak but usable. Everywhere else in the apartment flickered too violently to study in for long without getting a headache.
She leaned closer to another page, blinking against the ache gathering behind her eyes. Third night without proper sleep.
Just one more year.
One more year and she would finally be free of this place. No more scholarships hanging over her head like threats. No more wealthy students glancing at her worn shoes before deciding exactly what kind of person she must be. No more pretending not to hear the comments whispered when they thought she was too far away.
The university uniforms helped a little. Without them, she would have stood out immediately.
Still, people noticed things.
The cheap perfume from drugstores instead of expensive brands. The old backpack with repaired stitching near the straps. The fact she arrived by train while everyone else stepped from polished cars that cost more than her entire apartment.
People like them always noticed.
Lune tightened her grip around her pen and only realized her nose was bleeding when a drop of blood stained the corner of her notes.
"Oh, seriously..."
Her voice sounded hoarse from exhaustion.
She grabbed a tissue from the counter and pressed it against her nose before standing carefully from the chair. The television still murmured quietly from the living room, some late-night reporter discussing politics to an audience that had probably already fallen asleep hours ago. Pale blue light flickered across peeling wallpaper and old furniture that looked as tired as the people living beside it.
Lune stepped carefully between empty vodka bottles scattered near the couch.
Landmines.
Her father seemed to need alcohol with the same desperation other people needed oxygen.
He had fallen asleep sometime earlier, one arm hanging loosely toward the floor. In sleep he looked older than he really was. Smaller somehow. Like grief had slowly hollowed him out over the years until only the outline remained.
Quietly, Lune pulled the thin blanket from the back of the couch and draped it over him.
Sometimes she thought it would have been easier if she could hate him.
Then moments like this happened, and all she could see were fragments of another life entirely.
Her father carrying her on his shoulders through crowded parks while her mother laughed behind the camera. Blanket forts built across the living room during storms. The two of them making ridiculous faces at each other until Lune laughed so hard she could barely breathe.
Her childhood had once been warm enough to miss.
That was the cruel part.
When Lune was little, she learned quickly that her mother belonged more to the world than to their apartment. Lilian Blanche was brilliant, ambitious, constantly traveling from one assignment to another while her father stayed behind to raise their daughter in a country that had never fully become his own.
Still, none of it mattered whenever her mother came home again.
There were men who loved their wives.
Her father had worshipped his.
When they married, he had taken her surname despite the mockery from other men around him. Lune remembered hearing the jokes even as a child. He never cared enough to defend himself.
He loved Lilian more than pride.
Maybe more than himself.
And when she died, something inside him seemed to die with her.
Afterward came the drinking. Temporary jobs that never lasted. Borrowed money from dangerous people. Better days where he still brought home her favorite ice cream as though nothing had changed.
And worse days where the bottle won instead.
He had never been cruel to her. Life had simply broken him faster than either of them knew how to survive.
At ten years old, standing beside her mother's grave in clothes too formal and uncomfortable for a child, Lune watched her father collapse to his knees in the rain, crying hard enough that his entire body shook.
"Now it's just us, Katyonok."
Even now the memory pressed painfully against her ribs.
Lune brushed a hand gently through his messy hair before returning to the kitchen.
Her gaze drifted toward the old photograph standing beside the microwave.
The frame had cracked years ago near one corner. She still straightened it every time she passed by.
In the picture, her mother smiled brightly into the camera, milk-tea blond hair glowing beneath summer sunlight while her father stood behind both of them with one arm wrapped securely around their shoulders. Between them sat a younger Lune, grinning with missing front teeth and squinted jade-green eyes.
A real smile.
Not the smaller, tired versions she wore now.
Her parents had loved her. She knew that much.
But love and attention were not always the same thing.
"Not now, sweetheart. Mama's busy."
"We'll do it later, Katyonok."
"That can wait a little, right? Your mother and I need some time together."
They never meant harm with those words. They were simply tired adults too consumed with surviving their own lives to notice what their daughter quietly learned from them instead.
That her needs could wait.
That wanting too much attention made her difficult.
That asking for help felt dangerously close to becoming a burden.
Lune exhaled softly and reached for another page of notes before noticing the trash bin beside the counter.
Frowning, she crouched beside it and pulled out the stack of crumpled envelopes she had thrown away earlier.
Bills.
Debt warnings.
Final notices marked in aggressive red lettering.
Her father must have dug them back out at some point before throwing them away again, as though hiding them long enough might somehow make the problems disappear.
It never did.
At ten years old, Lune learned what grief looked like.
At thirteen, she learned hunger.
Real hunger.
The kind that hollowed out your stomach until it hurt to focus in class. The kind that followed you home and waited beside your bed at night.
She still remembered sitting exhausted in school after nearly two days surviving on dry toast and tap water, listening while richer students complained about cafeteria food they could afford to waste.
One boy noticed the holes in her shoes and laughed loudly enough for everyone nearby to hear.
Lune remembered the embarrassment.
Then the anger.
And finally the expensive wallet sticking halfway out of his school bag.
The decision had taken less than a second.
Fear came afterward.
Her pulse hammered violently the entire walk home. She had been convinced someone would stop her at any moment, accuse her, search her bag—
Nobody did.
And later that evening, sitting alone with real hot food bought using stolen money, Lune experienced something far more dangerous than guilt.
Relief.
After that, stealing became easier.
At first she targeted careless tourists, distracted teenagers, elderly people unlikely to notice quickly enough.
Until the guilt became unbearable.
So she changed her rules instead.
Men selling drugs behind clubs. Drunk idiots with too much cash in their pockets. People already ruining lives worse than hers.
And with a face most people underestimated and a mind quick enough to improvise through almost anything, Lune became very good at escaping consequences.
Almost.
Because once, she made a mistake.
"You look a little young for clubs."
The amused voice still lived vividly in her memory.
Seventeen-year-old Lune had frozen instantly beside the alley, a stolen wallet halfway inside her jacket pocket while the man in the leather jacket calmly held her wrist.
Not tightly enough to hurt.
Just enough to stop her from running.
Markus Black.
The man who changed her life.
"I am too young," Lune admitted after a moment, glaring at him while mentally calculating every possible escape route. "Which honestly makes this entire situation embarrassing for both of us. Especially since I anticipate a different face inside that leather jacket."
One dark eyebrow lifted slightly.
"And here I thought robbing military personnel was part of your long-term career plan."
Despite the panic clawing through her chest, Lune sighed dramatically.
"In my defense, life pushed me toward crime and unfortunately I lack the moral strength to resist destiny."
To her surprise, Markus laughed.
Actually laughed.
The sound startled her enough that she momentarily forgot to panic.
"If I wasn't the intended target," he asked eventually, "who was?"
And for reasons she still didn't fully understand, Lune told him the truth.
About the men behind the club every Thursday night. The hidden weapons. The marked delivery trucks. The license plates.
She expected disbelief immediately. Adults rarely took seventeen-year-old girls seriously.
Especially criminal ones.
Instead Markus went very quiet.
Then he opened the passenger door of his car, shoved her inside, and locked it behind her.
Lune reacted exactly as expected.
She shouted through the windows, threatened police reports, accused him loudly of kidnapping minors and several other crimes she absolutely would not have followed through on.
Markus ignored every word.
Then disappeared into the rain for nearly forty minutes.
Only when police lights flooded the street outside and Markus finally returned soaked to the bone with blood running from his nose did Lune realize—
He had believed her.
That was the moment everything changed.
Markus leaned tiredly against the side of the car, grinning despite the blood still staining his mouth.
"Get the highest score in your final exams," he told her. "Become the best."
Lune remembered narrowing her eyes suspiciously.
"And then?"
"And then," Markus said, "I'll make sure you never have to steal again."
And somehow, he kept his promise.
The scholarship arrived months later.
Along with an aggressively overprotective self-appointed father figure.
A faint smile touched Lune's mouth as she settled back into her chair.
The memories were dangerous things to linger in too long.
She still had another chapter to summarize before morning, and at least a few hours of sleep to steal before tomorrow's café shift.
