Roman and Julienne's heart desire
Chapter 49: When the Snow Sang

Chapter 49: When the Snow Sang

Inside, in a room that never changed, where time had folded in on itself, Irene sat in her lace-covered chair. Her hands, still elegant, held a ribbon once tied to a little girl’s braid. Twenty-four winters had passed. Twenty-four birthdays gone uncelebrated. And still, Irene waited.

Elias, her husband, entered without a word. He always moved like a man bearing storms inside his chest, but never letting them fall. He had money enough to buy silence from the world, and violence enough to keep it—but not enough to bring back a lost child.

"I’ve had the vineyards swept again," he said gently, placing a hand on her shoulder. "The search will resume tomorrow."

"You say that every day," she whispered, her eyes still on the snow.

"And I mean it every day," he replied. "One of them took her. And someone, somewhere, knows."

Their daughter had vanished without a sound. One second she was chasing a snow fox across the grounds—red scarf trailing like a flame—and the next, she was gone. Not dead. He had refused to believe it. There had never been a body.

Just a hole in the world shaped like a child.

Outside, a black car waited. Another lead. Another false hope. But Elias would follow it anyway. Because Irene was still breathing—and so must their daughter be.

The snow was already falling the day Selene was born—fine, slow, and relentless, the way it always fell in this part of the world.

Outside the estate’s reinforced glass walls, the world was white.

The private mountain road was barely visible beneath the snowfall, winding through woods hidden by ice-draped trees and silence.

Inside, under the golden glow of imported Murano chandeliers, Irene gripped Elias’s hand as the contractions rolled through her.

The heated marble floors did nothing for the cold in her breath.

She had gone into labor early, and the in-house medical wing hadn’t been prepared.

But Elias had acted quickly, his phone buzzing nonstop as he coordinated three doctors and a private surgical team via helicopter.

Still, he never let go of her.

"She’s stubborn," Irene gasped, her eyes fluttering closed for a moment as another wave hit.

"No," Elias whispered, brushing sweat from her brow. "She’s yours."

Hours later, in a birthing suite that looked more like a luxury spa than a hospital room, a baby girl cried—a sound that sliced through the cold and the silence like glass breaking.

They named her Selene, after the moon goddess Irene’s mother once told stories about in a Parisian nursery.

But this child was no myth. She was fierce and alive and loud—and suddenly, their world was too.

The estate came alive with her.

In her first year, Selene slept mostly on Elias’s chest.

Her nursery, custom-designed in creams and pale blues, overlooked a frozen lake they owned but never touched.

Elias—who once managed multi-million-dollar arms deals and made politicians nervous—spent his nights humming to her as he paced beneath 30-foot ceilings.

The staff adored her. They called her Snowlight behind closed doors.

Even the hardened ex-military bodyguards softened when she waddled past, clutching her plush fox.

The chef began designing menus around her moods.

A digital photo frame in the formal dining room displayed nothing but Selene’s expressions.

Her first word? Not mama, not papa—but tree.

She had pressed a hand to the triple-paned window and pointed to the frost-covered old oak at the edge of the property.

The security cameras caught it. Elias had it saved.

That spring, they let her plant her own tree—an imported silver birch flown in from Finland.

The gardeners protested the soil. Elias paid them silence.

They carved a little plaque that said "Luna," because that’s what Selene named it.

She fed it crumbs and left her stuffed fox at its base sometimes, whispering, "Take care of her while I nap."

By the second year, she was running—down grand halls floored in black Italian marble, past oil paintings older than the country, into the arms of security guards who once stood sentry in warzones.

Her favorite thing in the world was the red scarf her mother knitted from luxury cashmere—long and wide like a royal sash.

She wore it like armor, always dragging just behind her.

"She’s too fast," Elias grunted one evening as Selene rocketed past the fire-lit lounge.

"She’s joy," Irene said, holding a mug of white rose tea, her other hand resting gently on her belly.

She had hoped for a second child. So far, no luck. But she was content. Selene filled everything.

That night, they curled up in the home cinema room with The Snow Queen on screen.

Selene drifted off somewhere between the second and third act, her red scarf tangled in Irene’s lap.

"I want her to be safe forever," Irene whispered, barely audible above the snow hitting the windows. _{f\ree webn ovel(.)com}

"She will be," Elias promised, as always.

And then—

It was just another morning. The grounds were powdered in white again.

The estate’s motion sensors picked up a fox moving near the edge of the property.

Selene saw it from her bedroom and ran, calling it Clove like her toy.

She was dressed in her favorite snow boots, coat, and of course—the red scarf, trailing behind her like a flag of flame.

She slipped through a back glass door before anyone could stop her.

She ran past her tree.

Past the private garden.

Past the motion-triggered security lights.

And then—

Nothing.

No cry. No prints. No camera footage. The snow had covered everything within seconds.

Just a hush. And a ribbon of red caught on a bare branch.

The estate fell silent again.

Only this time, it wasn’t peaceful. It was haunted.

We focus now on the moments right after Selene disappears, the crumbling of Irene, and Elias breaking only when no one is watching.

The moment the staff realized Selene was missing, the estate became something else entirely.

Doors locked. Guards mobilized. The sleek security system—once a quiet background hum—flared to life.

The snow-covered grounds lit up under floodlights, and the private control room began replaying surveillance footage frame by frame.

Helicopters took off from the helipad within twenty minutes. Drones combed the forest.

They found nothing.

Not a footprint. Not a broken branch. Not a sound.

Just one thing: the red scarf, tangled on a branch just beyond the eastern edge of the property, where the cameras cut out. The wind tugged at it like it was still trying to follow her.

Irene stood in her daughter’s bedroom doorway, unmoving, while the world around her collapsed into motion.

Her eyes stayed fixed on the unmade bed, the fox toy on the rug, the breakfast tray untouched. A full plate of heart-shaped pancakes was still warm.

She whispered her name once.

"Selene..."

Then she fell.

Not like in stories—no dramatic wailing or screaming.

She simply dropped to her knees on the velvet runner in the hall, her silk robe slipping from her shoulders.

Her hands pressed flat to the cold marble, as if hoping to feel her daughter’s warmth still lingering in the stone.

She didn’t sob. She couldn’t. Her voice locked in her throat like someone else had stolen it. Her lips moved, but no sound came out.

"Mrs. Vassilis," the housekeeper whispered, kneeling beside her. "Please—"

Irene jerked back as if touched by fire. "She’s three," she said. "She wouldn’t go far. She just followed the fox. She’ll come back. She will."

But hours passed. Then a day.

Irene refused to sleep. She refused to leave the hallway. Her knees bruised from kneeling.

She didn’t eat. She barely blinked. Her hand stayed clutched around a corner of the red scarf, refusing to let it go.

Elias never left her side. Not in the first forty-eight hours. Not during the interrogations, the thermal scans, the aerial grid searches.

Not when they shut down the local town and mobilized contacts from Greece to Argentina.

The full weight of his power came down like a storm.

No one was allowed in or out of the region without clearance. No phone went unchecked. No satellite untouched.

He burned through millions like gasoline, fueled by the desperation that made men dangerous.

But still—no Selene.

He spoke with calm to his people. With strength to his staff. With comfort to his wife.

"She’s not gone," he told Irene every night. "She is hidden. And I will burn through the earth until I find her."

He held her hand. He brushed her hair. He sat by the foot of the bed, fully clothed, watching the snow outside while she wept into silence.

But when she finally slept—drugged by the estate’s private physician—he left the room quietly.

He walked to the far end of the house, into the chamber that used to be his private reading room. He locked the door behind him.

And there, in the dark—

He shattered.

Elias collapsed onto the leather couch like a man stabbed in the gut. His shoulders shook, silently at first.

Then it cracked out of him in a sound so raw, it could’ve brought down the walls.

He buried his face into his hands.

He had never cried in his adult life. Not at funerals.

Not in war. Not during the death of his brother.

But now?

Now, he wept for the little girl who used to wrap her arms around his leg and call him her giant.

He wept because he hadn’t been fast enough.

Because the estate had a thousand cameras, a thousand guards, a thousand layers of defense—

And she had still vanished.

In that moment, the most powerful man in the Eastern underworld fell completely to his knees, unseen.

The estate changed after that.

The nursery remained untouched—frozen in time. Irene insisted. Not a single toy was to be moved.

Not one curtain drawn differently. The linens changed weekly, but only with the same brand, the same scent, as always.

Irene no longer attended galas. She no longer dressed herself. She drifted through the halls like a shadow in silk.

She stopped playing music. She never smiled again.

And Elias—he turned the estate into a global operations base.

The former wine cellar became a digital archive room filled with satellite feeds.

The greenhouse became a drone command post.

Private security expanded into a full intelligence network, blacklisted and untraceable.

They looked for her every day.

For a month.

Then a year.

Then five.

Then twenty-four.

But Selene’s room stayed waiting.

Her scarf stayed folded in a locked glass case.

Her tree—Luna—grew taller each season, untouched by pruning, its roots curled in secrets.

And every morning, before business, Elias stepped into her room. Just once. Just to breathe in the ghost of her laughter.

Because deep down, beneath the power, beneath the silence—

He still believed she was out there.