Chapter 32 Mikayla
Mikayla
I stared out the window and watched the distance stretch wider with every mile.
Trees blurred past. Roads unfolded. Turns I didn’t recognize and refused to claim. Each one felt like something being torn loose inside my chest, the space between me and Gianni widening until it stopped being distance and became something permanent. Something final.
I had gone and fucking fallen in love with him.
That was the real crime. Not doubting him. Not leaving or choosing to stay. But loving him. Letting him get so deep under my skin that the thought of existing without him felt like punishment.
Now I welcomed death with open arms, because living without him felt like a sentence I didn’t have the strength to serve.
I didn’t want to kill myself—no, I wasn’t brave enough for that.
I was selfish. I wanted someone else to do it for me.
I wanted Archie to end it cleanly, so I wouldn’t have to keep waking up with this hollow, screaming absence lodged behind my ribs, rattling every time I breathed.
The road changed the further we got from Montalcino.
At first, it was all the same soft hills and neat rows of vines, the kind of Tuscany people put on postcards. Sun-warmed stone and dry grass. The smell of wine and dust drifting in through the cracked window. It almost felt wrong to be afraid in a place that pretty.
But then we started to climb.
The air shifted first. I noticed it in my skin before I noticed it in my head. The warmth slipped away, replaced by something thinner and sharper, like the day was pulling back from us. I drew my arms in closer, even though the car was still warm, and watched the landscape tilt and rise.
The vineyards gave way to trees.
They weren’t the normal scattered olive groves or tidy rows of cypress. These were darker, taller, packed close together like they were trying to keep secrets. The light thinned out, trapped in the thick canopy above us, and the road narrowed as it wound higher and higher into the mountains.
“Where are we?” I asked, staring up at the trees crowding in around us, their dark branches pressing close like they were trying to listen.
“Somewhere no one would think to look, in case anyone got any ideas,” Archie said after a pause that felt too deliberate.
“Somewhere so far off the map you’ll start to understand how small you are.
” His eyes slid to mine. “And if you do manage to run, the forest will finish what I don’t. The wolves are just faster.”
“Where are we?” I asked again.
Archie ignored me and turned away, looking forward as the car travelled on.
The temperature dropped fast.
I watched my breath fog faintly against the window and felt the cold creep in through the door seams. The trees closed around us, swallowing the last bits of open sky. Everything looked darker up here. Heavier. Even the air felt like it had weight.
The farther we climbed, the quieter it got.
No farms. No houses. Just forest and rock and the thin, twisting road cutting through it all. I imagined the world we’d left behind shrinking with every mile. Montalcino, with its golden hills and warm afternoons, felt like a story someone had told me once, not a place I’d actually lived in.
This was where you brought someone when you didn’t want them to be found.
I pressed my forehead against the cold glass and watched the trees blur past, tall and black and endless. The mountain loomed ahead, hidden in mist, and for the first time since Archie had taken me, something in my chest tightened with a new kind of fear.
Not panic or dread, but a real sense of something evil waiting at the end of the road.
The house rose out of the trees, all dark stone and towering walls, its shape cutting into the grey mountain sky with cruel confidence.
Ancient and immense, it looked less like a home and more like a warning, the kind of place built to last through wars, plagues, and the quiet suffering of anyone trapped inside it.
Ivy crawled over its walls like veins, and narrow windows stared down at me like unblinking eyes, giving nothing away.
It was beautiful in the way storms are beautiful—powerful, cold, and completely indifferent to the small life standing in its shadow.
The car slowed.
Turned.
Stopped.
When the door opened, I climbed out on stiff legs, my body moving on instinct alone.
“Welcome to Monte Amiata,” Archie said, spreading one arm like he was showing off a holiday villa instead of a stone monster on a mountain.
Monte Amiata.
The name slid through me, sharp and familiar.
For a second I couldn’t place it—and then it hit.
Gianni had told me about it over dinner.
That night. That table. The way his voice had dropped when he talked about this place, about the dark forests and the history buried beneath the mountain like bones.
I shook my head, hard, as if I could knock the memory loose. Thinking about him now was dangerous. It made my chest ache in ways I couldn’t afford.
I followed Archie into the house without resistance.
Because resistance required hope. And I was fresh out of that spice.
He took the handcuffs off my wrists before we walked into the house.
He didn’t take me to his bedroom.
That alone was enough to cut through the fog for a second.
Instead, he led me down a quiet corridor and opened the door to a room that looked like it had been waiting for me. It didn’t look like a temporary room. It had been prepared in neutral colours, spread with fresh sheets pulled tight enough to bounce a coin off.
I frowned before I could stop myself.
He noticed. Because of course with Archie, there was no getting anything past him.
A soft chuckle slipped out of him, like I’d amused him without meaning to.
“I’m a devout Russian Orthodox man,” he said lightly. “No sex before marriage.”
I shot him a sideways look sharp enough to slice him down to size, but didn’t say what was really on my mind: that Archie Popovich didn’t have a religious bone in his body.
I crossed the room and set my backpack by the bed, like I was claiming territory I never intended to keep.
“I thought you’d be happier to be home,” Archie added.
I turned and looked at him properly. Met his eyes. Held them.
“Let’s get one thing straight,” I said. “This will never be my home. You may as well kill me now and save us both the trouble.”
He sighed, like I’d failed to laugh at a joke he was proud of making.
“So dramatic, Mikayla,” he said. “I won’t be doing that—at least not until after the wedding. Everyone understands you got cold feet the first time. Happens to the best of brides. But you won’t get a second chance to make a fool of this handsome villain.”
He smoothed a hand down the front of his vest, admiring himself like the room might agree with him if he tried hard enough.
I stared.
Then I balked, the sound tearing out of me before I could stop it.
“Whatever,” I muttered.
He smiled like that was close enough to consent.
I kicked my shoes off without bothering to aim. One of them skidded across the floor and hit the wall with a dull thud. I didn’t watch where the other landed. I just threw myself face-first onto the bed, like a petulant child.
The mattress dipped under me, soft and deep, like it was trying to swallow me whole. I stared at the wall, arms folded beneath my chest, sulking in the most undignified way possible—because dignity had already been stripped from me, and this was all I had left.
“My, Mikayla,” Archie said behind me. “You’ve come back a little sulky. Did Cavalho not feed you properly?”
I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling, rolling my eyes so hard it actually hurt. The stone was rough and old and utterly beautiful—exactly the kind of thing you focused on when you didn’t want to look at the man standing behind you.
“Please,” I said flatly. “One villain I can tolerate. Don’t make me relive the other.”
The room changed.
Not in any way you could point to, not a sound or a movement—but the air shifted, thickened, like it had decided to pay attention. His amusement didn’t vanish. That would’ve been easier. It sharpened instead, honed down to something precise and dangerous.
I felt him step closer without needing to look. His presence pressed in, too close, too certain of itself, like he already owned the space around my body and was just waiting for me to catch up.
“But there’s only one villain you belong to, Mikayla,” he said softly.
Pleasant. Almost gentle.
“And that’s me.”
I closed my eyes.
Not because I was afraid.
Because if I didn’t—if I let my mind drift even an inch in the wrong direction—I would think about Gianni.
About the weight of his hands, steady and careful.
About the sound of his voice when he said my name.
The way he looked at me, not like an object or a problem to solve, but like a person who mattered.
And I would break.
Archie didn’t deserve to see me at my worst. Even that, in my opnion, was too intimate an act to share with him.
I lay there, breathing slow, counting the seconds between heartbeats like it was something I could control. The bed creaked softly as he shifted closer, close enough that I could smell him—clean, expensive, familiar in a way that made my skin crawl.
“You know,” he said lightly, as if we were sharing a private joke, “most women would be relieved to hear that. Reassured, even.”
I kept my eyes shut. “Most women haven’t met you.”
He laughed at that. A real laugh. Warm. Amused. It was the laugh he used when he wanted people to let their guard down and feel safe - right before they realized they shouldn’t.
“You always did have a mouth on you,” he said. “It’s one of the things I’ve missed.”
I said nothing.
Silence stretched between us, heavy and loaded. I could feel him watching me, waiting for something—tears, anger, a crack. Anything he could slide his fingers into and widen.
Instead, I stayed still.
Finally, he sighed—long and patient—like a man indulging a child who refused to learn her place.
“Get used to being here, Mikayla,” he said calmly. “You’re not going anywhere. And you will be my wife—by the end of the week.”