Chapter 3 #4
The words landed heavy, deliberate, each one a strike against the fragile bubble of relief I’d been holding onto.
“All of us. He gave the Albanians the keys to our security system—codes, blind spots, guard rotations. They walked right in. Took everyone in the mansion that night. Ricci did it to get Bianca back. His bride. He thought if he handed us over, they’d release her from whatever hell they’d put her in. ”
My hand flew to my mouth.
The betrayal cut deeper than any wound I’d endured underground. “He... betrayed Dmitri?”
Giovanni nodded once, weighed with the sorrow of someone who had seen everything fall apart. “Desperate men make desperate choices. The Albanians took what he offered, then laughed in his face. Bianca stayed exactly where she was.”
“When the other families discovered what he’d done.
..” He shrugged, a motion heavy with resignation and disbelief.
“Lake Como has laws older than Italy itself. You don’t betray the circle to outsiders.
The penalty is death—or exile with nothing.
Ricci’s family chose execution. Public. In the town square. He’s been dead almost a year.”
My knees nearly buckled. The weight of it all pressed down—betrayal, loss, the years stolen from us, the women still trapped in those Albanian caves.
“Ricci is dead?” I whispered, the syllables breaking into fragments of horror.
“Yes.”
The word landed like a stone in still water.
Ripples of despair spread through me, cold and wide, striking every nerve.
Giovanni’s eyes caught mine, dark, urgent. “Penelope... I tried. I tried to save you, to save everyone. But some things... some things move faster than we can stop them.”
My mind went straight to Bianca—Ricci’s stolen bride.
Her name alone was enough to hollow me out.
I closed my eyes, and the memory came for me anyway—violent, merciless, as vivid as if no time had passed at all.
Eleven months ago. No—twelve now. Time had become slippery after captivity, measured not in days but in wounds, screams, and absences.
Inside that lightless Albanian cell, there had been no sun to mark mornings, no darkness to signal rest. Just stone. Damp. Rot. The metallic tang of blood and rust and despair baked into the air until it felt impossible to breathe without tasting it.
We were seven then.
Seven women chained together in a crude circle, iron links biting into our ankles, wrists raw from where we’d tried—again and again—to pull free.
The floor beneath us was permanently slick, layered with filth that never quite dried. Rats skittered along the edges, bold from hunger.
The guards laughed when we flinched.
Bianca had been taken earlier that day.
When they dragged her back hours later, it took us a moment to recognize her.
She stumbled through the threshold like a marionette with cut strings, reeking of urine and fear and something darker—something that made my stomach revolt.
Her shift hung torn and crooked, barely clinging to her shoulders. Her hair was soaked, plastered to her face and neck. She didn’t look at us. She didn’t look at anything.
An Arab man had paid extra for her. Wealthy. Cruel. One of the so-called guests the guards whispered about with admiration.
He hadn’t wanted sex—not really. He’d wanted degradation. Ownership. The kind of humiliation that hollowed a person out and left a shell behind.
They told us later, laughing.
He’d made her kneel in the corner while he urinated on her face, forcing her to look up at him, mocking her accent, her tears, her broken pleas. He’d laughed when she gagged. When she cried. When she begged him to stop.
The smell clung to her when they threw her back into the cell. It clung to her skin, her hair, her torn clothes—so strong it made Ana retch into the dirt.
Bianca collapsed in the center of our circle, knees drawn to her chest, arms wrapped tight around herself like she was trying to hold her body together by force alone. She shook so violently the chains rattled.
I didn’t think. I just moved.
I crawled to her, iron scraping stone, chains screaming protest. I wrapped my arms around her trembling frame despite the filth, despite the stench, despite the guards still watching from the doorway with bored amusement.
She clutched me like a lifeline, fingers digging into my back as if letting go would mean falling apart entirely.
She buried her face in my shoulder and sobbed.
Not pretty cries. Not quiet ones. Broken, animal sounds torn from somewhere deep in her chest—sounds that echoed off the stone and refused to die.
“Ricci will come,” she whispered between gasps, voice shredded. “He has to. He promised.”
Her breath hitched violently. “On our wedding night... he swore he’d never let anything happen to me. Never. He’ll find me, Penelope. He’ll burn this place down. I know he will.”
She clung to the words like scripture, repeating them over and over as if belief itself could bend reality.
“He won’t abandon me here forever,” she said again, weaker now. “He won’t.”
I stroked her matted hair, fingers tangling in damp strands, murmuring comforts I didn’t believe but needed her to hear.
“Shh, Bianca. Hold on. Just a little longer. We’ll get out. All of us. I swear.”
She lifted her head then.
Her eyes were swollen nearly shut, rimmed red and raw. Dried urine streaked her cheeks. Still, there was something achingly human in the way she searched my face.
“You believe that?” she asked.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I have to,” I said quietly. “We all do.”
For a moment—just one—her lips curved. Not a smile. More like the memory of one. Shattered, fragile.
“When I get out,” she whispered, voice trembling with exhausted hope, “I’ll tell him everything. And then we’ll leave this world behind. Just us. No more monsters.”
I held her tighter, whispering strength I didn’t feel, promises I wasn’t sure could exist.
Then the guards came for me.
They dragged me away for my own session, boots scraping, laughter echoing. I glanced back once—just once.
Bianca was still curled on the floor, rocking gently, whispering Ricci’s name like a prayer carved into bone.
Now Ricci was dead.
Executed for trying to save her.
And she would never know.
The present slammed back into place like a door locking shut.
Tears burned behind my eyes. I blinked hard, forcing them back. I would not break here. Not in front of Giovanni. Not again.
“Bianca was the only one who didn’t make it out,” I whispered, my voice barely holding together. “When we escaped—the tunnel—she was caught. The Kompania brothers took her.”
I swallowed hard. “God knows what they’re doing to her right now.”
Giovanni’s jaw tightened, muscle jumping beneath his skin.
He turned his face away, gaze drifting toward the lake glittering in the distance—beautiful, indifferent.
Giovanni finally met my eyes.
“I’m sorry, Penelope,” he said, and for once there was no performance in it. No polish. Just exhaustion. “I really am. But this isn’t the world we thought we controlled anymore. The Orlovs won without firing a single bullet.”
The words landed heavy.
I swallowed, my throat tight. “And you?” I asked quietly. “You’re wearing a ring.”
His gaze dropped to his hand. He turned the band once, twice, as though feeling its weight for the first time all over again.
“I was forced to marry Elena Orlov eleven months ago.”
He exhaled slowly.
“The Orlovs needed something permanent. They knew I could still betray them—because they failed to wipe my memories. They believed I would tell Dmitri the truth and undo the lies they planted in his head after stripping him of his memories.”
His jaw tightened.
“So they bound me by blood. Once I married Elena, once she carried my child, my loyalty would be split—between her, her family, and my boss, Dmitri.”
His fingers stilled on the ring.
“And the worst part,” he said quietly, “is that it’s working.”
I nodded slowly. I understood too well.
Another marriage forged in obligation. Another life bent around survival instead of choice.
Giovanni pushed off the railing, the stone scraping softly beneath his palms. “Be careful,” he warned. “Seraphina watches everything. If she decides you’re a liability—”
“I know,” I cut in. “She’s already made that clear.”
If I stayed here any longer, I would crack—and that was a luxury I could not afford.
“Why did you come back from Greece pretending to be someone you’re not?” he asked out of the blue, his accusatory gaze making it sound as though I were the cause of everything.
My pulse spiked.
“Do you think I’m blind like Dmitri?” he went on. “That I didn’t see through the ‘Pen’ act the moment you walked back into this house? You deceived him again. You kept his own son from him.”
Each word struck with precision.
“You watched him mourn you,” Giovanni said, voice low and lethal. “Every single day. You watched him punish himself for every cruel word, every failure. You watched him believe you were dead—and you said nothing.”
Silence stretched between us, thick and dangerous.
“That isn’t just unfair,” he finished. “That’s cruel.”
The accusation hit—but I didn’t flinch.
Instead, I stepped closer.
Close enough that he could see the fine tremor in my hands, the scars I didn’t bother hiding anymore.
“Cruel?” I echoed, voice sharp as broken glass.
“You want to talk about cruelty? Let me remind you of what he did. When Dmitri first forced me to marry him, he humiliated me in front of his men. Told me I was fat, useless, disgusting. Body-shamed me until I couldn’t look at my reflection without gagging.
Every day felt like an inspection. I wasn’t a person.
I was a thing to be controlled, measured, and discarded. ”
My chest heaved.