Chapter 3: Keres’ Mother’s Announcement
Night | 6:58 PM
The sleek black car pulled up in front of the Eisenthurn mansion like a predator returning to its den, its headlights cutting through the evening gloom before dying with a soft click. The engine hummed for a moment longer, then fell silent. For a few seconds, nothing moved. Then the driver’s door opened.
A man in a crisp uniform hurried around the front of the vehicle, his polished shoes clicking against the cobblestone driveway, and reached the rear passenger door.
He pulled the handle, swung the door open, and bowed deeply at the waist—not because he had to, but because he had learned long ago that Keres Eisenthurn expected nothing less than absolute respect in every gesture, no matter how small.
Keres stepped out into the cool night air.
She did not acknowledge the driver. She did not thank him, nod at him, or even glance in his direction. She simply walked away, her expensive shoes striking the stone pathway with the same rhythm she used in her office—measured, commanding, unhurried.
Behind her, the driver straightened up, closed the door with a respectful click, and returned to the front seat. The engine rumbled back to life, and the car glided away toward the private parking area tucked behind the mansion’s east wing.
Keres stopped at the foot of the front steps.
The mansion loomed before her, massive and luxurious, its stone walls covered in climbing ivy that had been there since before she was born. Warm light spilled from the tall windows, casting golden rectangles onto the manicured lawn.
Somewhere inside, she could hear the faint clinking of silverware and the low murmur of voices. A family dinner. A normal, mundane, utterly suffocating family dinner.
Her face was not happy.
She could tolerate attending dinner gatherings—barely—because it was her parents who asked her. Anyone else would have been met with a flat refusal and a dial tone. But her mother had a way of asking that wasn’t really asking, and her father had a way of looking disappointed that made her feel like she had kicked a puppy.
So here she was. Standing outside her own childhood home like a reluctant guest at someone else’s party.
"Shit." The word escaped under her breath, barely audible, a small rebellion against the evening she was about to endure.
She pushed herself to take a step forward, then another, until she was climbing the stone stairs and reaching for the massive oak door.
It opened before she could knock.
Two maids stood in the entrance hall, both dressed in the traditional black and white uniforms that had been standard in the Eisenthurn household for generations. They moved in perfect synchronization—one stepping forward to receive Keres’s long black coat and her leather business bag, the other kneeling down at her feet without a word of hesitation.
The second maid unlaced Keres’s shoes, slipped them off, and replaced them with a pair of comfortable flip-flop slippers that had been waiting by the door. The whole process took less than ten seconds. Keres did not watch them. She had grown up with this level of service, and by now, it was as invisible to her as breathing.
"Where are my parents?" She asked, her voice flat and cold. Not angry. Just... Neutral. Disinterested. The voice of someone who was already mentally calculating how soon she could leave.
"They’re waiting in the dining area, young master," the first maid replied, her eyes fixed respectfully on the floor.
Keres did not reply. She simply walked past them, through the grand foyer with its vaulted ceilings and chandeliers, down the long corridor lined with portraits of ancestors she barely remembered, and toward the dining hall, at the heart of the mansion.
Her footsteps echoed against the marble floors. Her expression did not change. She was not happy to see her parents. She was not unhappy, either. She was simply... Here.
Going through the motions. Fulfilling an obligation because it was easier than explaining why she didn’t want to.
But the moment she stepped into the dining hall, her parents greeted her with such unrestrained excitement that even Keres’s cold composure cracked for just a fraction of a second.
"Keres! You’re here!"
Her father, Alfonso Eisenthurn, rose from his seat at the head of the long dining table with the kind of eager energy that seemed almost comical coming from a man of his size and reputation. He had been the former mighty ruler of their crime empire—a man whose name had once made hardened criminals tremble and rival families beg for mercy.
His hands had signed death warrants and brokered peace treaties in equal measure. His eyes had watched enemies fall and allies betray. But all of that power, all of that ruthlessness, melted away the moment he looked at his daughter. He had been like this since the day Keres was born—soft, warm, almost embarrassingly affectionate—and he had never changed, not even now that Keres was twenty-three years old and fully capable of ordering her own hits.
"Daughter." Her mother, Faye Eisenthurn, approached from the other end of the table, her elegant gown trailing behind her like a shadow. She leaned in and pressed a kiss to Keres’s cheek—not the airy, performative kind of kiss that society women gave each other at galas, but a real one, warm and firm and lingering just long enough to be noticeable.
Keres stiffened. "Mom and Dad, for goodness’ sake." Her voice was sharp, but there was no real bite to it—more like the reflexive protest of someone who had been saying the same thing for twenty years and had long since given up on being heard. "I told you. I’m no longer a toddler."
Her parents exchanged a glance—that particular glance that parents have, the one that says here we go again without a single word being spoken. Then her mother smiled, slow and knowing, and held up one elegant hand.
"Here we go again," Faye said aloud, echoing the unspoken thought with a chuckle. "Fine. We’ll no longer treat you like a baby." She paused, letting the words hang in the air for just a moment too long. "But... After you hear what we’re going to say."
The shift was immediate. Faye’s tone changed—still warm, but with an undercurrent of something serious, something weighty.
Keres felt the change like a drop in temperature, and her face immediately composed itself into something sharper, more alert. Her shoulders straightened. Her eyes narrowed. The cold mask she wore in the office slid back into place, but this time it was not for intimidation. It was for defense.
"Yeah?" Her voice was low, cautious. "What is it?"
Keres hated surprises. She always had. The unpredictability of them, the loss of control, the way they forced her to react instead of act. Surprises were for people who trusted the universe to be kind, and Keres Eisenthurn had never trusted anything that she could not dominate.
The only people she could tolerate almost everything she hated were her parents—and even then, her tolerance had limits.
"Have a seat, sweetheart," Faye said, gesturing to the chair across from them.
Keres did not move immediately. She watched as her mother settled into the chair next to her father, as both of them placed their hands on the table and intertwined their fingers—a gesture of unity, of partnership, of we are in this together. Their faces were... strange.
Happy, but not casually so. Excited, but with a nervous edge that Keres rarely saw from either of them. There was something they wanted to say, something they had clearly discussed at length, and for the first time in years, Keres could not read what was on their minds.
That unsettled her more than she wanted to admit.
Still, she walked to the opposite end of the long dining table—not the seat next to them, not even close. She chose the chair farthest away, the one positioned like a throne at the other end of the polished marble floors expanse. She sat down, crossed one leg over the other, and fixed her parents with a stare that had made grown men weep.
"Okay," she said slowly, her fingers drumming once against the armrest. "Can you at least make it quick? I don’t have all night."
"Don’t be so eager, darling." Faye’s voice was calm, unhurried, infuriatingly maternal. "We’re just starting." She took a breath, and when she spoke again, her words were measured, deliberate, as if she had rehearsed them a hundred times in the mirror.
"Me and your father have fully decided to let you have full control of the family’s businesses and everything in our empire."
Keres blinked.
It was a small movement, barely perceptible, but for someone like her—someone who prided herself on never showing surprise—it was the equivalent of a scream.
Her fingers stopped drumming. Her jaw tightened. Her eyes flickered between her mother and her father, searching for the lie, the joke, the hidden trap.
"Really?" The word came out quieter than she intended. "But you both said I wouldn’t have it yet. Not until I’m twenty-four." She leaned forward slightly, her elbows resting on the table.
"And now we’re talking about this... What’s going on? You don’t just hand over an empire for no reason."
"Nothing much." Alfonso shrugged, then ruined the casual gesture by giggling—actually giggling—and exchanging a giddy look with his wife. "Me and your mother never doubted you, dear. Not for a single moment."
Their odd behavior was making Keres uncomfortable. Not scared—she didn’t get scared—but unsettled, off-balance, like walking through a room where the floor had been tilted slightly to the left.
Her parents were acting like children who had just hidden a birthday present and could barely contain their excitement. But Keres had learned long ago that nothing in her family came without strings attached.
"What’s the catch?" Her voice was flat, hard, cutting through the warm atmosphere like a knife. "I’m sure you both wouldn’t be doing this without one."
Her parents sighed in unison. They glanced at each other—a long, heavy look filled with silent communication, the kind of wordless conversation that only came from decades of marriage and shared secrets. Then Faye elbowed her husband in the ribs.
"Alfonso," she said sweetly. "Go and tell your daughter."
Alfonso’s eyes went wide. He shook his head frantically, his jowls wobbling, and held up both hands as if warding off a physical blow. "Why me?!" he hissed, loud enough for Keres to hear every word. "I thought you would be the one saying it!"
Faye’s sigh of irritation was so deep, so theatrical, that Keres could almost hear her mother counting to ten in her head. She turned back to Keres, her expression shifting from annoyance to something more serious, more direct.
"Well." Faye folded her hands on the table and met her daughter’s gaze without flinching. "I’ll be straightforward with you. The catch is that you’ll be marrying the third daughter of the Auclair family."
The announcement landed like a bomb.
Keres froze.
Not physically—her body remained still, her posture unchanged, her face carefully blank. But inside, something detonated. A shockwave of disbelief, then fury, then something colder and uglier that she couldn’t name.
Her hand tightened into a fist on the table, her knuckles turning white, the tendons standing out against her skin like wire cables.
"What?" The word came out barely above a whisper, but it carried the weight of an earthquake. Keres could not wrap her mind around the information. It was absurd. It was impossible. It was a bomb being dropped so casually in front of her, like it didn’t explode in her face and set fire to everything she had ever planned for her future.
"Before you get angry, hear me out," Faye said quickly, holding up a hand. She paused—a long, deliberate pause, the kind that was meant to force Keres to stop and listen.
Then she added, "Her name is Asteria Csilla Auclair. I met her a long time ago. A very long time ago. I made her a promise—something she took so lightly, she probably doesn’t even remember it. But she agreed. Casually, without thinking."
"So?" Keres’s voice rose, cracking through the quiet dining hall like a whip. "Why the hell am I involved with that shit?! Why the fuck am I the one fulfilling the promise you made to that girl?!"
"Because you are the main reason why I made that promise in the first place!" Faye retorted, her voice sharp but controlled—trying not to yell, but coming dangerously close.
The affectionate atmosphere from earlier had evaporated completely. In its place was a tension so thick, so heavy, that Alfonso shifted uncomfortably in his seat and stared at his plate.
He was a man who had faced down rival gang leaders and survived assassination attempts, but he did not want to be in this room right now. He did not want to name the thing that was crackling between his wife and his daughter like lightning before a storm.
Keres’s jaw was set, her teeth grinding together. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
Faye took a slow, steadying breath. When she spoke again, her voice was quieter, almost gentle—and somehow that was worse than the yelling. "You will understand one day why I am choosing Asteria for you, Keres. Not today. Not tomorrow. But one day, you will understand. And maybe... maybe then you’ll thank me."
"Whatever the reason," Keres said, pushing back from the table with enough force to scrape the chair legs against the marble floor, "I hate her already." She stood up, her hands braced against the table, her eyes burning. "You want me to marry her? Fine. But don’t expect that I’ll be kind to the woman you chose for me. Don’t expect gratitude. Don’t expect anything from me!"
She slammed her chair—not hard enough to break it, but hard enough to make her point—and walked out of the dining area. Her footsteps echoed through the corridor, sharp and angry and final.
The door did not slam behind her, but only because she had better control than that.
In the dining hall, Alfonso and Faye sat in silence for a long moment. Then Alfonso tilted his head, his brow furrowed in genuine confusion.
"Our daughter is a lesbian," he said slowly, as if working through a complex math problem. "Why doesn’t she want to get married to a girl? That’s... That’s what lesbians do, isn’t it? Marry girls?"
Faye closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Ugh." The sound was long and suffering and deeply, deeply weary. "I’m just so glad our daughter didn’t inherit your imbecility."
Alfonso’s lower lip pushed out into a pout—a genuine, childish pout that looked absolutely absurd on the face of a former crime lord. He folded his arms across his chest and slumped in his chair, muttering something under his breath about wives who didn’t appreciate genius.
It was their usual banter. Their usual rhythm. The same teasing, the same insults, the same easy affection that had carried them through decades of marriage and countless crises.
None of the words were meant to hurt. None of them landed anywhere except in the safe, familiar space between two people who had loved each other for longer than they could remember.
But outside, in the cold corridor, Keres was already pulling out her phone and dialing a number she knew by heart. Her hands were steady. Her voice, when she spoke, was ice.
"Sandro. I need you to find everything you can on someone. Asteria Csilla Auclair. Third daughter of the Auclair family." A pause. "No. Not a target. Not yet."
She hung up and stood alone in the shadows of her family’s mansion, staring at nothing, her reflection caught in the dark glass of a nearby window. She looked calm. She looked composed. She looked like a woman who had everything under control.
But her fist was still clenched.
