Chapter 3 #3
Seraphina sighed theatrically. “Don’t make me regret not smothering you while you were unconscious in this bed. It would have been so much cleaner.”
Then she turned on her heel and glided out, the door closing behind her with a soft, final click.
The sound echoed like a coffin lid.
I stood frozen in the center of the room, still wrapped in black silk pajamas that suddenly felt less like clothing and more like a burial shroud. My hands hovered near the doorknob, trembling—not from fear alone, but from the sheer force of everything I was holding back.
Part of me wanted to chase her. To scream. To claw truth into the walls until someone listened.
The smarter part knew that would only send me back into darkness.
I sank back onto the edge of the bed, elbows braced on my knees, face buried in my hands.
Escaping the Albanians was supposed to be the end of the nightmare.
I’d planned it all in my head during those endless nights underground: find Vanya. Take him. Disappear back to Greece. Live quietly. Heal slowly. Let the scars fade where no one could see them.
But Seraphina had stolen more than a year of my life.
She had stolen my son’s memory of me.
She had stolen Dmitri’s past—every cruel word he’d thrown at me, every reluctant tenderness he’d never admit to, every moment I’d bled for him because I couldn’t stop loving the monster who’d once been a boy I fell for at fifteen.
Dmitri had forgotten the hospital room where I took a bullet meant for him.
The way his hands had shaken as he held mine, blood still warm on his palms as he begged me not to die—his voice breaking, the mask slipping for once. He had sworn then that he would never forgive himself. That he would never let me go again.
He had forgotten all of it.
Forgotten the nights I slipped back into Lake Como after five years of hiding, drawn by a love I despised myself for but couldn’t outrun.
Forgotten the arguments, the reconciliations, the quiet moments when he let himself be human with me—only me.
Forgotten every scar I carried because of him.
Forgotten every time I chose him anyway.
And Vanya...
My beautiful, bright boy—who used to press his forehead to mine before bed, who used to whisper secrets like I was the safest place in the world—now looked at me like I was a curiosity. A woman he’d pitied. Someone interesting, maybe even kind.
But not his mother.
The pain of it was sharper than any blade I’d endured underground.
Tears burned behind my eyes, threatening to spill, but I forced them back.
I would not cry here. Not in this room. Not in a house that no longer belonged to me.
Not where Seraphina might have cameras hidden in the corners, might be listening for weakness like a predator waiting for blood in the water.
I lifted my head slowly and stared at my reflection in the darkened window.
The woman staring back at me barely resembled who I’d been a year ago. Bruised. Hollow-eyed. Skin stretched too tight over bone. But alive. Still breathing. Still standing.
They hadn’t broken me.
Not completely.
I would play along.
I would be whoever they needed me to be—Penelope the ghost. The nameless rescue case.
The wounded stranger Dmitri’s son had dragged home out of misplaced compassion.
I would smile at Seraphina’s manufactured kindness, thank Dmitri for his reluctant charity, answer Vanya’s innocent questions with careful half-truths that neither frightened nor betrayed him.
I would become small.
And while they underestimated me, I would watch.
I would listen.
I would gather proof—recordings, documents, witnesses. Anything. Everything. Something that could unravel the forged diary, expose the memory wipe, tear holes in the lies Seraphina had wrapped so tightly around this house.
And when the moment came—when the leash loosened even a fraction—I would take my son and vanish.
Not back to Dmitri.
But to Greece. To safety. To anonymity. To whatever quiet, fragile life we could rebuild far away from men and families who thought human beings were pieces on a board.
I stood slowly, testing my legs. They still trembled, pain flaring along my ribs, but they held.
Seraphina thought she’d won.
She hadn’t.
She’d only given me time to plan.
And I had nothing left to lose.
I couldn’t stay in that room another second.
The walls pressed in on me, heavy with Seraphina’s threats, her presence lingering like smoke in my lungs. I slipped out quietly, easing the door shut behind me, bare feet silent against the cool marble corridor.
The villa stretched endlessly in both directions—arched hallways, recessed lighting, expensive art mounted with clinical precision. I moved slowly, careful, following memory more than instinct until I reached the balcony that overlooked the grand living room below.
I paused there, fingers curling around the wrought-iron railing.
The space beneath me was breathtaking.
Exactly as I remembered it.
And completely wrong.
Double-height ceilings soared overhead, crowned by an elaborate crystal chandelier that caught the late-afternoon sun and shattered it into rainbows across cream-colored walls. The effect should have been warm. Inviting.
Instead, it felt cold.
The furniture was all new. Low, modern sofas upholstered in pale gray velvet. A massive marble coffee table veined with gold. Abstract sculptures scattered throughout the room—jagged, aggressive shapes that looked less like art and more like weapons frozen mid-strike.
Seraphina’s fingerprints were everywhere.
Sharp angles. Expensive minimalism. The kind of elegance that didn’t invite you to sit down—it dared you to disturb it. Control disguised as taste.
It hadn’t been like this when I lived here.
Back then, despite the tension, despite Dmitri’s temper and the unspoken power struggles, the house had felt lived-in. There were books left open on side tables. Vanya’s toys tucked into corners. Signs of life.
Now it looked staged.
Like a showroom.
Like a house waiting to be admired, not inhabited.
I leaned harder into the railing, staring down at the empty expanse.
Was Seraphina married to Dmitri now?
Had the forged diary convinced him they’d been lovers all along? That she’d always been the woman at his side? That Vanya had always called her “Aunt” out of affection rather than necessity?
The thought made my stomach twist violently.
Vanya had said Dmitri mourned me.
He’d said it so casually, like it was a fact everyone knew.
That meant Dmitri had grieved. Carried guilt like a second skin. Lived with a hole he couldn’t explain.
Yet he couldn’t remember why.
I didn’t know whether to hate him for believing the lies or pity him for being so thoroughly erased.
The thought clawed at me like a blade pressed to bone. Every memory of Dmitri, every stolen moment, had been rewritten. Not only by Seraphina, but by everyone who had silently allowed it to happen.
My mind flickered to Ruslan Baranov. The Greek legend who had taken me in, nurtured me, kept me safe in that sun-drenched villa for five years without ever asking for a thing in return.
If I could reach him, if I could send a word across the miles... he would come.
He would tear through walls, bodies, and fire just to get me back. But how? I had nothing. No passport, no money, no clothes beyond these black silk pajamas that felt both soft and absurdly inadequate.
Crossing borders barefoot, penniless, hunted by people with infinite resources—it was a fantasy. A beautiful, impossible dream. And even if I made it to Greece, explaining this nightmare would take more time than I had, and more energy than I could summon in my blood-soaked, bruised state.
Footsteps echoed from the right corridor—measured, deliberate, familiar.
I turned.
Giovanni.
The sight of him stole the air from my lungs. Almost the same: tall, broad-shouldered, dark hair swept back, sharp jaw shadowed with a day’s stubble.
Radiant in that effortless way mafia men sometimes are—someone who commands attention without trying.
Yet it wasn’t his posture, or even the elegance of his tailored black shirt, open at the collar with sleeves rolled to the elbows, that froze me.
No. It was the thick platinum band on his left ring finger.
Married?
“Giovanni,” I said softly as he reached the balcony.
He stopped, eyes widening fractionally—recognition, followed instantly by caution.
“It’s me,” I pressed, voice trembling with a mix of desperation and resolve. “Penelope. I was never dead.”
He glanced over his shoulder, then back at me. His voice dropped, a low, warning murmur. “Don’t say that name here. Not out loud.”
“Why?” I stepped closer, refusing to let the gap between us feel like safety.
“Seraphina already told me. She wiped Dmitri’s memory.
Vanya’s too. They think Penelope Volkov died in New Jersey years ago.
But you...” My eyes searched his face, desperate.
“Your memory wasn’t wiped. You know the truth.
So why haven’t you told Dmitri? Why didn’t you look for me?
Where were you when we were taken twelve months ago? ”
Giovanni exhaled through his nose, a long, weary sound that seemed to carry the weight of every secret he’d held.
He leaned against the railing beside me, forearms braced on the iron, gaze fixed on the empty living room below.
“Sadly, Penelope,” he said quietly, almost to himself, “we lost the war before it even started.”
I stared at him, a flicker of fear and disbelief warring with hope. “What does that mean?”
He didn’t answer immediately. Fingers drummed once against the cold metal railing, then stilled.
The silence stretched, oppressive, filled with all the things neither of us wanted to say.
“Ricci Ferraro sold us out,” he said at last.