Chapter 12 #3
“You never cheated on me,” I continued, voice shaking now.
“That night—I was wrong. They orchestrated it. They drugged you again, erased your memory, paid that man to stage the scene so I’d walk in and see exactly what they wanted me to see.
They wanted me gone. They wanted us ruined.
” I laughed weakly, bitter. “And I let them succeed.”
I bowed my head for a moment, breath coming uneven.
“I punished you for lies I was too arrogant to question. I called you a liar when you were telling the truth. I abandoned you during the first months of your pregnancy—when you were terrified, alone, carrying our child—and instead of protecting you, I demanded you abort him. I didn’t even listen. I didn’t want to hear.”
My throat closed.
“I locked you in that room,” I whispered. “Days without light. Without air. Without mercy. I told myself it was discipline. Control.” My voice cracked. “It was cruelty.”
Tears burned, humiliating and unstoppable. I didn’t bother wiping them away.
“The body-shaming. The words. The way I reduced you to something I owned instead of someone I loved.” My hands clenched into fists against the floor. “I shattered you, Penelope. I know that. I carved wounds into you that may never fully heal.”
I looked up at her again, forcing myself to meet her eyes.
“I don’t expect forgiveness to come easily.
Or at all. But I will pay for what I did—every day—for the rest of my life if that’s what it takes.
If my life is the price, take it. If my suffering gives you peace, I’ll accept it without complaint. ”
My voice dropped to a rasp.
“Just don’t cast me out. Don’t erase me from what remains. Let me atone. Let me show you—slowly, patiently—that the love I buried under rage and pride was real. Is real.” I shook my head once, helpless. “I’m begging you. Give us a future.”
I stayed on my knees, the cold tile bleeding through the fabric of my trousers, but it barely registered.
The pain inside my chest was sharper, deeper, relentless. Every breath felt like penance.
“I would be miserable without you,” I said hoarsely. “Completely. I don’t just want to be a father to our son—I want to be your husband in truth this time. Not by force. Not by fear.” My voice faltered. “By choice.”
I leaned forward slightly, as if proximity alone might bridge the chasm I’d created.
“I want to earn your love. Every day. I want to be the man who stands between you and the world, not the one you need protection from. Your provider. Your protector.” A bitter smile flickered. “Your partner. Not your jailer.”
My chest tightened. “You were always meant to be my everything. And I destroyed that.” I swallowed. “Please, Penelope. Give me the chance to prove I can be better. I am begging you.”
I searched her face for anything—any fracture in the ice. A flicker of doubt. A tremor of memory. The smallest softening around her mouth.
There was nothing.
Her expression remained immovable, carved from something harder than stone. Beautiful. Untouchable.
She tilted her head slightly, studying me with detached curiosity, as though I were no longer a man on his knees, but a puzzle she had already solved—and set aside.
“Since you seem to have recovered your memory so conveniently,” she said at last, her voice low, level, edged with frost, “tell me something.”
I stilled. Every muscle in my body went rigid, instinct screaming before reason caught up.
“Why,” she continued, eyes never leaving mine, “did you choose Seraphina over me?”
The question slid between my ribs with surgical precision.
I drew in a slow breath, forcing myself not to look away.
I didn’t deserve the comfort of escape.
“That night,” I said carefully, “someone let the enemy inside.”
Her brow flickered—just once—but she said nothing.
“I didn’t know it then,” I went on, “but I learned later. It was the Orlovs. They’d been watching us for months—mapping patrols, bribing secondary staff, studying routines. Waiting for a weakness.” I swallowed. “They used Seraphina as the key.”
Her lips tightened.
“She didn’t know,” I said quickly, because that mattered—to her, to the truth.
“They approached her under the guise of diplomacy. A quiet discussion about a business alliance. Nothing urgent. Nothing threatening. They fed her false intelligence—told her there was a credible threat against my life that could only be delivered in person. While she was there, they slipped a tracker onto her coat. By the time she crossed the gates, the Orlovs already knew everything.”
My hands curled slowly at my sides as memory surged back, brutal and unrelenting.
“They moved with terrifying precision. No alarms. No chaos. Just shadows.” My jaw tightened. “They neutralized the outer guards first—suppressed shots, nerve agents, knives in the dark. Men I trusted were gone without a sound.”
I exhaled shakily.
“I woke to the bedroom door exploding inward.”
Her breath caught. I heard it.
“You were still on me,” I said, voice dropping despite myself. “Warm. Asleep. We’d just made love.” My throat burned. “The sheets were tangled around us. Your hair was across my shoulder. I remember the smell of your skin—jasmine, salt, the sea drifting in through the open doors.”
I closed my eyes for half a second, then forced them open again.
“I didn’t want them to see you like that. I didn’t want anyone to see you like that.” My voice fractured. “I yanked the sheet up, wrapped it around you, covered every inch of you with my body as I reached for the nightstand.”
I held my fingers apart, showing her the distance.
“I was that close to my Glock.”
My lips twisted. “I never even lifted it.”
The first blow came from behind—hard enough to knock the breath from my lungs. Then another. Then another.
I felt them again now, phantom pain crawling up my spine.
“They beat me down like I was nothing. Like a stray animal.” My voice roughened. “I screamed at them. Not threats—pleas. I begged.”
I looked at her fully then. “I begged them not to touch you.”
My chest tightened painfully.
“‘Take me,’ I kept saying. ‘Take me. Kill me. Just don’t touch her.’”
My voice dropped to a whisper. “I don’t remember when I stopped screaming.”
I paused, swallowing humiliation that still burned years later.
“When I came to, I was blindfolded. My wrists were bound behind my back so tight my hands were numb. They dragged me across a concrete floor—cold, wet, reeking of blood and rot.”
Her fingers curled slowly into her palms.
“The first lash split skin across my back. I screamed again. Then another. And another.” My jaw clenched. “They wanted me broken before they spoke. They wanted fear.”
I laughed bitterly. “They didn’t get it.”
I lifted my gaze to hers again. “I demanded to know who they were. Swore they’d regret it. Swore I’d hunt them down. They laughed. Beat me harder. Blood filled my mouth—copper, salt. I remember thinking I was drowning in it.”
I drew a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
“Then one of them leaned close. I could smell cheap cigarettes on his breath. Sweat. Oil.” My hands shook now, though I didn’t stop them. “He said, ‘We have your woman.’”
Her shoulders stiffened.
“But then he smiled,” I continued quietly. “And said, ‘We also have Seraphina.’”
Silence pressed in around us.
“They dragged me through corridors. Past doors I couldn’t see. I could hear voices. Movement.” My voice lowered. “And then they told me the rules.”
I swallowed hard.
“They said they were taking me to both of you. That I would choose.” My chest constricted. “Choose who walked out alive.”
Her eyes didn’t blink.
“Choose Seraphina,” I said hoarsely, “and they’d let her go. Choose you...” My voice faltered despite everything. “...and they’d let us walk.”
I shook my head once, slow, devastated.
“Then they told me the truth.” My gaze never left hers now. “That the moment we stepped outside, they’d put bullets in our heads. Both of us. Execution-style. Clean.”
I let the words settle between us—heavy, suffocating.
“That,” I said quietly, “was the choice they gave me.”
I held her gaze and didn’t look away. I didn’t deserve mercy, but I owed her the truth—every brutal inch of it.
“They knew about the blood contract in Lake Como,” I said quietly. “The one that binds me to the council. Killing me would’ve triggered retaliation—war on a scale even they couldn’t contain. They wouldn’t have touched me. Not permanently.”
My throat tightened.
“But you?” I continued. “You had no such protection. No political weight. No consequences tied to your death.”
My voice dropped. “They would’ve killed you without hesitation. Slowly, if it amused them. I knew it. Not logically—instinctively. In my bones.”
I clenched my hands until my palms burned.
“So when they dragged me into that room,” I said, “when they forced me to look at you both—chained, bruised, terrified—I made a choice I will regret for the rest of my life.”
Her breath hitched once. She didn’t interrupt.
“I chose Seraphina,” I said. “Not because I loved her. Not because I wanted her. Not because she mattered more.” I shook my head. “I chose her because I believed—God help me—I believed it was the only way to keep you alive.”
Silence thickened the air.
“I thought,” I went on hoarsely, “that if I chose her, they’d let you go. That you’d walk out alive. That I could find you later. Protect you later. That I could live with your hatred if it meant you were breathing.”
Her jaw tightened, muscle jumping once.
Her voice, when it came, was quiet—too controlled. Brittle as glass stretched to its limit.
“You should have chosen me.”
The words cut cleaner than any blade. Deeper than the lashes. Deeper than the bullets I’d taken in my life.
She took a step back, putting space between us, as if distance itself were a shield.
“It’s better to be dead,” she continued, each word measured, devastating, “than to live with the memory of being used by savage men—passed from one to another like an object of desire. Better than my year as a slave in the Albanian underworld.”
My chest collapsed inward.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
The word felt obscene—too small, too fragile to hold the weight of what I’d done. “I’m so damn sorry. I thought I was saving you. I thought—”
“Get up.”
Her voice cut through me like ice water.
“Go back to your apartment,” she said flatly. “I need to prepare Vanya for the fact that you’re here. I won’t have him walking into this unprepared. He’s been through enough.”
She reached for the door, fingers steady despite everything.
“And Dmitri,” she added without looking at me, “do not appear in front of me again. I need space. Real space.”
I opened my mouth—desperate, foolish—but the door slammed shut before I could form a single word.
The sound echoed down the corridor like a gunshot.
Something inside my chest gave way.
I stayed exactly where I was—still on my knees, forehead hovering inches from the wood, hands limp at my sides.
The polished floor was cold beneath me, leeching warmth from my bones, but I barely felt it.
The world narrowed to the ache behind my ribs, the burn in my throat, the hollow where hope had dared to exist for a few fragile minutes.
I don’t know how long I stayed there.
Minutes. Maybe longer. Time lost all meaning.
My knees went numb, pins and needles crawling up my legs, my back stiffening into pain—but I didn’t move. I couldn’t.
I couldn’t face the empty apartment waiting next door.
I couldn’t face the mirror that would show me what I’d become.
Footsteps approached—soft, careful. A shadow fell across me.
“Mr. Volkov,” the butler said gently, his Greek accent rounding the words. “Do you require anything? Water, perhaps? Or assistance to your rooms?”
I lifted my head slowly, blinking against the corridor lights.
He stood a respectful distance away—middle-aged, immaculate, eyes kind in the way of men who have seen too much grief to judge it.
I stared at him for several heartbeats.
Then, without a word, I pushed myself upright.
My legs protested violently, blood rushing back in sharp needles, but I ignored it. I turned, crossed the handful of steps to my door, unlocked it with shaking fingers, and stepped inside.
The door closed behind me with a quiet, final click.
I leaned back against it, eyes shut, breath shallow and uneven.
“Do not appear in front of me again. I need space. Real space.”
Her words replayed in my head, again and again, each repetition a fresh wound—crushing my hope, draining my strength, leaving only the hollow ache of heartbreak.