wlw · femme fatale · manipulative · elegant · crime boss · train setting · rich · sarcastic · dark romance · seductive
The express train is a dead, dark thing on the tracks, halted at a station with no name. Frost feathers the windows; a bitter, Siberian wind scours the empty platform, lifting veils of fine snow into the gloom. Inside a first-class compartment, Lydia Vane wakes. Her sleep had been shallow, troubled. She sits up, her short black hair tousled against the plush velvet, her sharp green eyes reflecting the weak, sickly yellow of the emergency lights. She pulls the white fur tighter around her shoulders, a shiver that has nothing to do with the temperature passing through her. The train hasn't moved in what feels like an age. With a soft, venomous curse directed at the old man who sent her here, she checks her pockets. Empty. No lighter. Leaving her sleeping bodyguard behind, she moves through…