Chapter 4
PENELOPE
I LEANED BACK AGAINST the balcony railing, the iron cold beneath the silk of my pajamas.
The coolness seeped into my palms, anchoring me.
My pulse throbbed, loud enough that I felt it in my skull. “Dmitri is not going to send me back to the Albanians... is he?” I whispered, though the wind carried my voice into nothing.
The air held no answer, only the distant lap of water against the stone docks below, the faint hum of evening insects beginning to stir.
I couldn’t stay still any longer.
My legs moved on instinct, carrying me down the sweeping marble staircase, the polished steps echoing beneath my bare feet.
Each footfall reverberated in the vast foyer, magnifying the emptiness, the alien perfection of this house.
Every corner seemed both familiar and foreign, overlaid with Seraphina’s cold, precise aesthetic.
The orchids in their crystal vases seemed too perfect, the air too scented, the photographs on the walls—black-and-white views of Lake Como in heavy silver frames—sterile rather than nostalgic.
My fingers brushed along the wall as I passed, trailing over the smooth paint, lingering on texture.
The sound of the front doors opening stopped me mid-step, heart hammering violently in my chest.
A low, resonant click echoed through the marble hall. I spun toward it, muscles tight, eyes wide.
Dmitri Volkov stepped inside.
He looked... impossibly real.
Tall, broad-shouldered, every inch the man I remembered, yet altered somehow by absence, grief, and the weight of a year he hadn’t truly lived.
The charcoal suit fit him like armor, top button of his shirt undone, sleeves rolled once to reveal forearms thick with subtle muscle.
Dark hair slicked back from the lake mist, catching the last rays of light in faint streaks.
And those eyes. Piercing blue, ice beneath the surface, deeper than I remembered. Shadowed. Distant. The kind of gaze a man carries after staring too long into voids he can’t escape.
Eyes that had mourned me, that had carried a year of regret, guilt, and longing—though he didn’t know why.
He paused, taking a breath, as if sensing the shift in the room, the subtle tremor of my presence.
His gaze swept me once, slow, calculating.
Recognition flickered—perhaps in muscle memory, in subconscious lines of familiarity—but his face remained unreadable, emotion masked beneath years of discipline and pain.
His entire body locked, as if some invisible line had been crossed and his instincts had slammed the brakes before his mind could catch up.
I stood there barefoot on the marble floor, black silk pajamas clinging softly to skin still mottled with bruises, hair loose and tangled down my back.
For one suspended moment, neither of us moved.
“Hey...” I said finally.
The word came out smaller than I meant it to—fragile, unguarded, like it had slipped past defenses I’d spent years perfecting.
His gaze dragged over me with brutal precision.
Not leering. Assessing. Cataloging. The way a man looks at something that shouldn’t exist but very clearly does.
“Considering how badly you were bleeding yesterday in my car,” he said at last, voice low, even, “I didn’t expect you to be upright.”
I swallowed. My throat felt tight. “I heal fast,” I said, then corrected myself. “But... thank you. For saving me, Mr. Volkov.”
Something flickered across his face at the sound of his name—surprise, sharp and fleeting.
“You know who I am.”
“Yes.” I forced a careful smile, the kind that didn’t bare teeth. “I already met your... household. Miss Seraphina. And your son. Vanya. They introduced themselves. Welcomed me.” I paused, choosing my words with surgical care. “They told me a little about you.”
His eyes narrowed—not in anger, but calculation.
For a long beat, he simply watched me. As if waiting for a tell. A crack. Something familiar he could almost—but not quite—place.
Then he gestured toward the seating area near the fireplace. Two low leather chairs faced one another across a narrow table.
“Please.”
I crossed the room slowly, every step deliberate. I felt his gaze follow me, tracking the subtle hitch in my stride, the way my shoulders stiffened when I lowered myself into the chair.
I sat, folding my hands in my lap to keep them from shaking.
He took the opposite seat, long legs stretching out as he leaned back with controlled ease.
He pressed a discreet button on the side table.
A soft click.
Hidden lights bloomed to life, bathing the room in a warm, amber glow. Firelight flickered across stone and glass, catching in the angles of his face, carving him into something both familiar and unbearably distant.
Footsteps approached from the hall.
An older woman entered—mid-fifties, solid, composed. Silver threaded her dark hair, which was pulled into a severe bun.
She wore a black dress beneath a crisp white apron. Her eyes flicked to me briefly: sharp, assessing, then neutral.
“Agnes,” Dmitri said without taking his eyes off me. “A Negroni. Dry.”
“Immediately, sir.”
She inclined her head and retreated, leaving silence in her wake.
The kind of silence that pressed.
My heart hammered painfully against my ribs.
I hated that sitting across from him still did this to me.
That memories surged without permission—the boy with the reckless smile who’d met my eyes across a crowded room when I was fifteen; the man who’d once whispered my name like a promise against my throat; the same man who’d later called me worthless, locked me away, ordered the termination of a life growing inside me as if it were a scheduling inconvenience.
And yet here I was.
Still reacting.
Still unraveling under the weight of his attention.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
The question was deceptively simple.
I inhaled. “Penelope.”
The effect was immediate.
He went completely still.
Not tense—frozen.
His hands tightened on the arms of the chair until the leather creaked softly under the pressure. I watched goosebumps rise along his forearms, the reaction involuntary, betrayed by muscle memory he didn’t understand.
“Penelope?” he repeated.
The word sounded wrong in his mouth. Like a shard of glass he didn’t know how he’d cut himself on.
“Yes.” I lifted my chin. I’m done hiding it. No more pretending. No more lies.
Agnes returned quietly, carrying a silver tray. The crystal tumbler caught the firelight, the deep red of the Negroni glowing like spilled blood.
She set it down beside him, eyes carefully averted, and left without a sound.
Dmitri didn’t touch the drink.
His gaze never left my face.
“That’s my late wife’s name,” he said quietly.
The word late landed like a blade.
“I’m... sorry for your loss,” I said, and meant it in more ways than he could ever know.
He exhaled sharply, then looked away for the first time—his attention shifting to the fire, jaw tight, as if he were wrestling something just out of reach. When he looked back at me, whatever softness had surfaced was gone.
In its place: ice.
Calculation.
Control.
“You are Albanian property,” he said flatly. “Our agreement with them is ironclad. Keeping you here—even overnight—is illegal under the partnership accords. They can demand you back at any time.” His eyes hardened. “Legally.”
The word echoed in my chest.
My chest plummeted as though the floor had vanished beneath me.
“I was a slave there,” I said, the words scraping my throat raw.
“Treated worse than animals. We slept chained. Ate scraps off the floor. I helped six other women escape through a tunnel we dug with our bare hands—months of digging, hiding the dirt in our clothes, praying every night we wouldn’t be discovered.
” My breath stuttered despite my effort to keep it even. “If I go back...”
I couldn’t finish the sentence. I didn’t need to. We both knew what happened to women who tried to run.
I swallowed hard. “Please. I can’t go back to that place. I won’t survive it. I’ll do anything. Anything to stay out of their hands.”
Dmitri watched me without expression, blue eyes unreadable.
He didn’t interrupt. Didn’t soften. He let the silence stretch until my pulse roared in my ears.
“They’ll find out eventually,” he said at last.
The words hit like a verdict.
“Then let me be gone before they do,” I thought desperately—Greece, Ruslan, anywhere that wasn’t that gilded cage—but I didn’t dare say it aloud.
Instead I said, “Or... let me stay. Put me to work. In the kitchen. Cleaning. Laundry. I don’t care.” I leaned forward, hands twisting together. “I’ll earn my keep. Just don’t send me back to those monsters.”
He shifted in his seat, leaning forward slightly, elbows resting on his knees. His fingers steepled together with deliberate calm.
“You’ll do anything not to go back?” he asked.
“Yes.” The answer came without hesitation. “Anything.”
He hummed—a low, thoughtful sound that made my skin crawl.
“I could use a sex slave,” he said casually. “You’re attractive enough.”
The words slammed into me like ice water.
For a second, the room tilted. The fire blurred.
My breath caught painfully in my chest.
“Sex... slave?” I echoed, my voice thin, almost unrecognizable.
He tilted his head, studying me as if I were a problem to be solved. “Isn’t that what you were to the Albanians? Why the surprise?”
Something inside me recoiled violently. Old fear clawed up my spine, dragging memories with it—hands, laughter, commands barked in languages I didn’t speak.
“With all due respect,” I said carefully, forcing steel into my voice, “I am not a slut.”
A smirk curved his mouth—sharp, humorless, devoid of warmth. “You are whatever I say you are... Penelope.”
He lingered on the name this time, letting it sink into the space between us. I felt it like a bruise.
“Don’t mistake my hospitality for freedom,” he continued coolly. “Keeping you here is already a liability. A significant one. So I’ll ask one last time—before I pick up the phone and tell the Albanians to come collect their property—will you be my sex slave?”