Chapter 3 #2
Vanya shifted his weight, clearly reluctant. “Will you come with me?” he asked. “He gets really strict when I mispronounce things.”
Seraphina laughed quietly and reached out, ruffling his hair in a gesture so intimate it made my stomach clench. “Of course, sweetheart. I’ll be right behind you.”
That was all the reassurance he needed.
He shot me one last look—shy, polite, distant—and offered a small smile that felt like a blade sliding between my ribs. Then he turned and padded down the hallway, the soft sound of his footsteps fading far too quickly.
The door remained ajar.
For a few heartbeats, neither of us moved.
Then Seraphina closed it.
The click of the latch echoed through the room like a gunshot.
She crossed the space slowly, deliberately, heels silent against the polished floor.
Instead of standing directly in front of me, she drifted to the side and leaned against an antique writing desk, folding her arms beneath her breasts, settling into a pose that was half casual, half calculated display.
“Surprised?” she asked.
Her voice was smooth. Satisfied.
I lifted my chin, meeting her gaze without flinching. “Explain.”
She smiled wider, clearly enjoying that I hadn’t begged or broken yet. “You’re not crazy, Penelope. Just... inconveniently alive.”
The words were delivered almost fondly.
“Twelve months ago,” she continued, tilting her head as if reminiscing, “when we were both tied to chairs in that charming little warehouse, Dmitri was presented with a choice.”
My fingers curled into the mattress.
“Save one woman,” she said, tapping her manicured nail against the desk, “and condemn the other.”
She paused, savoring it.
“He chose me.”
Silence stretched between us.
“Do you know why?” she asked softly.
I didn’t answer. I already knew the version of the truth she intended to sell.
“Because,” Seraphina said, pushing herself upright, “deep down, he’s always known you were nothing.”
There it was.
“A placeholder,” she continued calmly. “A stand-in for a woman he truly loved and lost. His first wife. The real Penelope. You were familiar. Convenient. Warm.” Her lips curved. “But never irreplaceable.”
Rage surged hot and violent, but I locked it down. Rage was what she wanted.
“I am Penelope,” I said instead, my voice low and steady. “And I never died.”
Seraphina’s laugh drifted through the room—soft, almost musical.
It reminded me of glass breaking under silk.
“Of course,” she said mildly, tilting her head as though indulging a foolish question. “I knew you were Penelope the moment you returned from Greece.”
She studied my face, clearly searching for cracks.
“Antonio knew,” she went on. “My entire family knew. You never fooled anyone who mattered.” A pause, deliberate. “Only Dmitri and Giovanni swallowed the little Pen performance you staged so carefully.”
She pushed away from the desk and began to circle the room, heels tapping against the marble floor with metronomic precision.
Each step felt timed—measured—as though she were counting down to something catastrophic.
“Do you remember,” she continued lightly, “when we had to take Vanya from Giovanni for those few precious hours—on the day of your secret little wedding to Dmitri—before we struck a deal that required me to return him?” She smiled faintly. “We snipped a lock of his hair.”
My breath hitched despite my effort to stay composed.
“Oh, don’t look so shocked,” she added, smiling. “We were meticulous. Gentle, even. We already had Dmitri’s DNA—from the Four Families summit months earlier. Men shed hair everywhere. Such careless creatures.”
Her eyes flicked back to mine.
“A simple DNA test,” she said. “The results were... predictable. Vanya is his son. Undeniably.”
The room seemed to constrict around me.
“You kidnapped a child,” I said, my voice dangerously quiet.
“Borrowed,” Seraphina corrected smoothly. “And returned without so much as a bruise. We’re not monsters.”
She stopped in front of the windows, sunlight gilding her profile, making her look almost angelic.
“We found it... amusing,” she went on, “that you kept up the lie. That you insisted on pretending to be some insignificant woman named Pen. That you allowed Dmitri to believe Vanya wasn’t his.”
Her gaze sharpened.
“It made everything easier. Dmitri could never fully love a woman he believed capable of lying about something so fundamental. A child. Blood.” She shrugged. “Men like him need certainty.”
She turned back to me slowly.
“So when the choice came in that warehouse,” she said, voice lowering, “save the liar... or save the woman who had always been honest—he chose me.”
She smiled then, small and satisfied.
“Because he knows my value.”
Her gaze slid over me like I was something scraped off a shoe.
“And you?” she finished softly. “You’re just a worthless bitch who got in the way.”
The insult struck—but I didn’t give her the reaction she wanted. I kept my expression blank, my spine straight, my voice controlled.
“Why do I feel like your family orchestrated the entire choose-who-to-save, choose-who-to-condemn spectacle?”
Her brows lifted a fraction.
The memories surged without warning.
Damp stone floors. Iron chains. The smell of blood and fear. Women screaming in the dark until they learned screaming only made it worse. The things done to us—things I still couldn’t shape into words without bile rising in my throat.
I swallowed hard, forcing the images back down.
Seraphina stepped closer, her perfume thick and cloying now, filling my lungs.
“My family doesn’t stoop to such crude theatrics,” she said coolly. “We don’t need kidnappings to win wars.”
She leaned in slightly.
“But of course,” she added, “we were the ones who arranged Dmitri’s release after he was captured.”
My pulse spiked.
“In exchange,” she continued, “we asked his captors for a very small favor.”
This time, she watched my face closely.
“To wipe his memories,” she said. “Clean. Efficient.”
Then, softly—almost kindly:
“And they wiped Vanya’s too.”
The room tilted.
“They removed the parts that inconvenienced us,” Seraphina went on, almost conversational. “And then we gave Dmitri something to anchor him.”
She reached into the drawer of the desk and withdrew an imaginary object, miming its weight.
“A diary,” she said. “Written in his own handwriting. Every page forged. Every memory we wanted him to have, written by a man who trusted his own hand more than anyone else’s.”
My jaw slackened.
They had rewritten my son’s.
The realization settled into me slowly, like poison seeping through bone.
Everything my son and I had shared—the nights curled together in our tiny apartment in Greece, the way Vanya used to insist I stay until he fell asleep, his fingers knotted in the hem of my shirt as if I might vanish if he let go—gone. Erased.
Every whispered story about brave princes and clever mothers. Every soft, ‘sacred Mama’ breathed into my skin after nightmares.
All of it stripped away.
Replaced with Seraphina’s polished lies. Her syrup-sweet bedtime tales. Her gifts wrapped in silk and obligation. Her presence, pressed into the empty spaces where I used to live.
My fists clenched until my nails bit crescents into my palms. I felt the ache distantly, like it belonged to someone else.
What I really wanted—to lunge, to tear, to wrap my hands around her elegant throat and squeeze until that smug light finally dimmed—burned hot and bright in my chest.
But I didn’t move.
Because I knew better.
One wrong step. One raised voice. One crack in the careful silence—and she’d have me back in chains before dawn. Shipped off like damaged property. Forgotten again.
Seraphina saw it anyway. The violence I kept caged behind my eyes.
Her smile widened.
“No one will believe you,” she said calmly, almost kindly, “if you claim to be Penelope.”
She let the name hang between us, fragile and deliberate.
“Not Dmitri. Not Vanya. And certainly not anyone in Lake Como.” She shrugged lightly. “Penelope Volkov is dead. Buried in New Jersey, according to every record that matters. Death certificates. Police reports. Church registries.” Her eyes gleamed. “A very convincing grave.”
My throat tightened.
“So when Dmitri asks who you are,” she continued, unhurried, “you give him a new name. You stay what you already are to him—a grateful stranger his son felt sorry for. A woman he allowed into his house out of mercy.”
She leaned closer, lowering her voice.
“Anything else,” she whispered, “and I’ll make sure the Albanians come to reclaim their property.”
The word property scraped something raw inside me.
“You want to know how easy it would be?” she went on, almost conversational now. “I know exactly which clan bought you. Names. Routes. Payment ledgers. A single phone call is all it would take.”
She straightened, pacing slowly, like a lecturer addressing a captive audience.
“There’s a partnership contract,” she said. “Signed in blood. Between the Lake Como families and the Albanians. Mutual extradition clauses. Legal. Binding. Ironclad. Neither side wants to break it—too much money, too many bodies already buried.”
She stopped in front of me.
“They’ll claim you as theirs,” she said softly. “And Dmitri will hand you over without hesitation. Because to him...” Her gaze flicked downward, dismissive. “You’re nothing. Just a filthy stray his child dragged home out of misplaced kindness.”
I felt hollow.
Seraphina smoothed invisible wrinkles from her blouse, reclaiming her composure.
“So be careful, Penelope.” She smiled again. “It’s not Dmitri you should fear. Not Vanya.”
Her eyes locked onto mine, sharp and absolute.
“It’s me.”
She paused, savoring it.
“I hold your leash now.”
The word wrapped around my throat.
“I really must learn to call you something else,” she mused. “Any preferences? Or shall I choose for you?”
I said nothing. My jaw ached from holding itself steady. My hands throbbed from how tightly I’d curled them into fists.