Darkest Addiction (Doomed Vows #4)

Chapter 1

PENELOPE

The Albanian wind cut through me like a blade sharpened by cruelty.

It slipped beneath the thin scraps of fabric clinging to my body, finding skin, bone, memory—everything.

I stood in line with six other women in the courtyard, my bare feet numb against the cracked concrete, my breath fogging faintly in the cold air.

The walls around us rose impossibly high, ancient stone reinforced with steel and crowned with coils of razor wire that gleamed dully beneath a sky forever threatening rain.

There was no horizon here. No escape. Just stone, wire, and the constant reminder that the world had ended at these walls.

We were dressed to humiliate, not to cover.

A ragged robe hung loosely from my waist, the knot worn thin from repeated use, offering only the barest illusion of modesty.

Another strip of cloth crossed my chest, rough and stiff with old stains, doing nothing to hide the chill or the fact that my body no longer belonged to me.

The fabric smelled of sweat, mildew, and despair—layers of women before me who had stood in this same place, stripped of dignity piece by piece.

I kept my shoulders straight anyway. It was the only thing they hadn’t managed to take yet.

A shadow fell across us.

Our so-called master stepped into view, his boots heavy against the concrete, each step deliberate.

He was massive, built like a butcher rather than a man, with a face carved by scars that spoke of violence worn proudly.

His eyes were flat and glacial, the kind that didn’t flicker with curiosity or lust—only ownership.

In his hand, he held a long braided whip, thick and darkened with age. He cracked it once against the ground, the sound echoing off the stone walls like a gunshot.

One of the women beside me flinched. I didn’t.

That earned me a slow, considering look.

“Eyes forward,” he said, his voice thick with an accent sharpened by contempt. “You are not here to think.”

None of us answered. Silence was safer.

To them, we weren’t women. We were inventory—numbered, catalogued, replaceable.

In this rotten corner of Europe, hidden beneath layers of legitimate business and political protection, slavery hadn’t disappeared. It had simply evolved.

We were the currency of a modern empire built on blood, drugs, and human bodies traded in silence.

I had learned that quickly.

Each woman in this line carried her own version of ruin.

Some had been dragged screaming into vans on city streets.

Others had followed lovers or employers across borders, chasing promises that dissolved the moment the doors locked behind them.

I had been careful once. Smart. That hadn’t saved me. Nothing did.

This place wasn’t a prison in the legal sense. There were no trials, no sentences, no chance of release for good behavior.

It was privately owned, funded and protected by the most powerful mafia families in Europe—men who lived above the law because they had bought it. To call it a prison was almost generous. It was a holding pen.

The men who ruled it clung to beliefs that belonged to another century, and they enforced them with modern efficiency.

I’d heard their ideology repeated often enough to memorize it, barked by guards or murmured with satisfaction by the masters themselves.

“Women exist to serve.”

“A woman’s body is her only value.”

“A wife is property—obedience is her duty.”

They spoke these words as fact, not opinion.

We saw proof whenever their wives appeared—silent, exquisitely dressed, eyes lowered as they walked a step behind their husbands.

I watched them closely whenever they came, those women who lived in gilded cages instead of stone ones.

I wondered if they knew how thin the line was between us.

These women—paraded as trophies—were draped in diamonds and silk that did nothing to conceal the truth etched into their bodies.

Bruises bloomed beneath emerald bracelets.

Finger-shaped marks darkened pale arms where sleeves slipped just enough to reveal them.

Their eyes were the worst part—empty, dulled by fear so deep it had settled into their bones. They moved like ghosts haunting their own lives, silent and careful, trained to exist without drawing attention.

They fetched drinks with bowed heads, knelt beside their husbands’ chairs as though the floor were their rightful place, and spoke only when spoken to.

Even then, their voices were soft and trembling, obedience sharpened by terror.

I learned quickly that silence was survival—but speech, when permitted, was its own kind of punishment.

Once, during a lavish feast held in the courtyard—a grotesque mockery of celebration—I watched a visiting don’s wife spill a single drop of red wine onto the stone floor. It was barely noticeable. A mistake any human could make.

Her husband didn’t raise his voice. He simply backhanded her.

The crack of skin against skin echoed louder than the music.

She fell to her knees instantly, not crying, not protesting—only apologizing. Over and over. She crawled forward, gathering the spill with her own skirt, scrubbing stone until her fingers bled.

The men laughed, amused, lifting their glasses as if watching entertainment. No one intervened. No one looked away.

That moment branded itself into me.

This was my twelfth month in hell.

Time here didn’t move forward—it collapsed inward.

Days blurred into each other, stitched together by labor, humiliation, and the quiet calculation required to stay alive.

Hunger became familiar.

Pain became background noise.

Hope was dangerous; it made you careless.

I had been taken from Lake Como, Italy—a place that now felt almost gentle in comparison.

Lake Como was another mafia-controlled territory, yes, but one dressed in luxury and sunlight.

It was an open prison masquerading as paradise, built and owned by Italian syndicates who understood optics.

Women there were allowed the illusion of freedom: manicured gardens, polite dinners, carefully supervised outings.

Some even worked—safe, meaningless jobs meant to convince the world that everything was normal.

No whips. No public punishment.

But freedom there was conditional.

Here in Albania, the mask was gone.

This was raw savagery. Ownership without apology. Women reduced to commodities, discarded the moment they broke. There was no pretending this place was civilized. It thrived on cruelty, and cruelty was the point.

And yet, my story hadn’t started in Europe at all.

I was born in New York City—raised among glass towers and relentless ambition, where the world felt vast and full of possibility.

My life had been school deadlines, late-night laughter with friends, and dreams that felt attainable simply because I’d been young enough to believe in them.

Then I turned fifteen.

That was when I met Dmitri Volkov.

Back then, he was nothing like the man who would later destroy my life.

He was quiet, almost gentle, with dark hair that fell into his eyes and a shy smile that made my chest ache.

His gaze held warmth—real warmth—and when he laughed, it felt like something private, something just for me.

We were reckless in the way teenagers always are, convinced the world couldn’t touch us. We kissed beneath the trees in Central Park, whispered promises we were far too young to make, believed love could shield us from anything.

And then something went wrong.

Something I never fully understood.

One day he was there—and the next, he was gone. No explanation. No goodbye. Just absence, sharp and unresolved, leaving behind a wound that never quite healed.

Ten years later, on my twenty-fifth birthday, Dmitri returned.

Not as the boy I loved—but as a storm made flesh.

He forced me into marriage.

“You belong to me now, Penelope,” he said, his voice low and unyielding, as he shoved the ring onto my trembling finger.

I screamed. I fought.

It didn’t matter. His power swallowed every ounce of resistance I had.

After the wedding, he took me from New York—ripped me away from the only city that had ever felt like home—and delivered me to the shores of Lake Como.

That was where I ceased to exist as a person and became his possession.

His villa at Lake Como was breathtaking—ancient stone, manicured gardens, windows that looked out over the lake like a painted dream—but it was nothing more than a beautifully disguised cage.

Isolation was Dmitri’s first weapon.

He kept me confined to opulent rooms for days at a time, surrounded by luxury that mocked me with its uselessness.

Silk sheets I cried into. Chandeliers that glittered while I stared at the ceiling, counting cracks to keep from screaming.

Servants came and went, polite but distant, loyal to him—not me.

I was never struck. Dmitri didn’t need violence to shatter me.

His punishments were precise.

He starved me of affection, of touch, of acknowledgment—then appeared suddenly, unpredictably, just to remind me he was still in control.

His words were weapons, delivered deliberately.

“You hurt me once, Penelope,” he would murmur during our rare confrontations, trapping me against the wall with nothing but the weight of his body, his breath scorching my ear. “And for that, you will pay for every breath you take in my house.”

I would shake, fury and fear tangling in my chest.

He’d continue cruelly, "You'll pay for every tear I shed because of you.”

There was no reasoning with him. No pleading, no explanation could erase the crimes he imagined I had committed.

And then—the cruelty escalated.

While Dmitri was away on what he called “business”—months-long absences meant to remind me how easily he could erase me from his life—someone else saw an opening.

My ex—Antonio.

A man from my past in New York, violent in subtle ways.

He orchestrated a kidnapping.

I barely had time to scream before he struck—fists pounding me until darkness claimed me.

When I awoke, I was in Rome, trapped inside his father’s estate.

He had underestimated Dmitri Volkov.

Within hours, Dmitri had me brought back to Lake Como.

That was when Dmitri discovered my pregnancy.