Chapter 5 #2
There was a pause—sharp, stunned. He hadn’t expected defiance. Not from me. Not after everything.
“Penelope.”
Marco’s voice crackled through the speaker again, smooth and paternal in that way that had once fooled me. Now it only made my skin crawl.
“I’ll ask you one last time—and think very carefully before you answer, because I can send a single message to the Albanians with your exact location within the next sixty seconds. Will you come home, or not?”
The room felt too small, the air too thin.
Vanya’s face flashed behind my eyes.
Here, in this gilded prison overlooking Lake Como, I was still close enough to him to matter.
Close enough to hear his laughter echo down the halls.
Close enough to catch stolen glimpses of him racing through the gardens, cheeks flushed, curls bouncing.
Close enough to memorize the way his hair curled at the nape of his neck when he bent over a book.
Painful? Yes.
Torturous? Every second.
But it was proximity. It was something.
If I left, that fragile thread snapped. I’d be an ocean away—powerless—while Seraphina tightened her grip on my son’s heart and Dmitri, memory-wiped and distant, let it happen. Let her happen.
The silence stretched, thick and suffocating.
Seraphina stood two steps above me, arms folded, her posture relaxed but alert.
She watched my face with the patience of a predator who already believed the outcome was inevitable.
“Fine,” I said at last.
The word tasted like defeat.
Marco exhaled on the other end—a satisfied sound, the kind he made when a deal closed in his favor.
“Good girl. Your mother and I can’t wait to reunite with you. Extraction is set for 2:00 a.m. Someone will meet you at the service gate behind the east wing. They’ll guide you to the private jet waiting on the airstrip ten kilometers north. Pack light. You won’t need much.”
The call ended with a soft click.
I stared at the darkened screen long after the call ended, my throat tight as if invisible fingers were wrapped around it.
Anger burned low and steady in my chest. Not just at Marco for his threats, his smug certainty that he still owned my fate—but at myself.
Helpless.
Again.
After everything—the tunnel slick with blood, the gunfire, the escape that had cost more than I wanted to remember—I was still being maneuvered like a pawn, nudged across someone else’s board by men who spoke softly and destroyed efficiently.
I hadn’t escaped them.
I’d just changed cages.
Seraphina sat beside me. Her thigh pressed against mine—deliberate, intimate. The kind of closeness meant to unsettle, to imply alliance where none existed. As if we were two women sharing confidences instead of enemies locked in a silent war.
Laughable.
Mocking.
I didn’t move away. Let her have the illusion. Let her believe this was surrender and not restraint.
“I wonder,” she murmured, voice silk-smooth, conversational, “what Marco has planned for you once you’re back in New York.”
I said nothing.
She tilted her head slightly, studying my profile. “Surely nothing pleasant. Your father never did anything without an angle.” A faint smile curved her lips. “A new marriage, perhaps? Another memory wipe?” She paused, letting the silence stretch. “Or something more... permanent.”
My gaze stayed fixed on the opposite wall—on the massive abstract painting fractured with jagged lines of black and violent streaks of red. It reminded me too much of shattered glass. Of blood on concrete. I refused to give her the satisfaction of flinching.
Seraphina leaned closer, close enough that I felt the warmth of her breath brush my ear.
“Don’t worry about Vanya,” she whispered. “I’ll take excellent care of him while you’re gone.”
The words landed like a blade sliding slowly between my ribs.
“I’ve been doing it for a year already,” she continued lightly. “He calls me Aunt now. It’s rather sweet.” Her lips curved. “But give it time. Children adapt. They forget. Especially when the replacement is... consistent.”
My fingers curled into fists in my lap, nails biting into skin. My pulse roared in my ears. Still, I said nothing. I would not beg. I would not crack.
Seraphina’s hand came to rest on my thigh—light, possessive, uninvited.
She left it there for several long seconds, as though branding territory, then slowly withdrew and stood.
She smoothed her skirt with elegant care, as if we’d just concluded a pleasant exchange instead of a calculated execution.
“Greet your parents for me when you get to New York,” she said sweetly.
I finally turned my eyes to her then, and something in my gaze must have pleased her—because her smile sharpened.
“And anytime you hear the name Orlov from now on,” she added softly, “run.”
She reached the top of the stairs and paused, glancing back over her shoulder, triumph undisguised now.
“As you can see, we defeated Dmitri Volkov before the war even began,” she said. “Right, left, and center.” A final smile. “Enjoy your flight, Penelope.”
Her heels clicked away, the sound crisp and final, fading into the upper corridor.
I didn’t turn to watch her go.
The night beyond the tall windows had deepened to ink. Stars glittered coldly above the black mirror of the lake, distant and indifferent.
I rose slowly, my legs unsteady, and walked to the edge of the landing. The marble chilled my bare feet, grounding me in the present.
I pressed my palms to the railing and stared down into the foyer far below—empty, immaculate, untouched by the violence threaded through its walls.
Leave tonight?
Walk out the service gate at 2:00 a.m.
Climb into a waiting car with tinted windows and silent men.
Board a jet already warmed, engines humming, ready to lift me out of Italy and erase this place from my life.
Disappear back to New York.
Back to Marco’s estate.
Back to whatever fresh hell he’d designed with that calm, meticulous cruelty of his.
The thought made my stomach twist.
They’d done it before—wiped pieces of my memory like smudges on glass. Back when I was younger. Softer. Still na?ve enough to believe that blood meant protection.
That family meant safety. I remembered the confusion afterward more than the procedure itself. The blank spaces. The way everyone insisted I was fine while I felt... hollow.
They could do it again.
Easily.
The realization settled like ice in my veins.
What if this time they took something bigger?
What if they took Vanya from me—not physically, but completely?
What if they erased him from my mind the way they’d erased fear, rebellion, inconvenient truths?
Made me forget I’d ever had a son. Made me forget the weight of him in my arms, the sound of his laugh, the way his brow furrowed when he concentrated.
Made me forget the pain.
The love.
The fight.
My chest tightened until each breath scraped.
Fear rose fast and sharp—raw, animal, unmanageable. This was the terror I never let myself feel fully, because once it took hold, it didn’t let go.
I’d survived the Albanians by clinging to one unbreakable truth: Vanya needed me. Even if he didn’t know it. Even if he never remembered.
He needed me to exist.
But if I left tonight, that truth died with the distance. Shrunk into something symbolic instead of real. Something helpless.
I closed my eyes.
Ruslan’s name surfaced like a prayer I wasn’t sure anyone still answered.
I pictured the letter I’d sent him—three pages of stripped-down honesty, of confessions I’d never said out loud, of desperation I’d folded into every line.
If he read it.
If he believed it.
If he moved fast enough.
The words stacked like fragile cards.
But 2:00 a.m. was hours away. Too close. Too certain. Time wasn’t on my side—it never had been.
I opened my eyes again and stared out at the lake. It reflected nothing but darkness now, the stars swallowed whole. No answers. No signs. Just a vast, silent body of water that didn’t care whether I stayed or vanished.