Chapter 5
PENELOPE
The drive to Dmitri Volkov’s wedding blurred past in streaks of neon and shadow, my mind spinning faster than the city lights.
My fingers strangled the Audi’s steering wheel, knuckles bone-white.
Why did I secretly wish Dmitri had pressed harder—dragged me onto that chopper to Italy, claimed me the way he’d threatened?
The thought was madness, yet jealousy coiled low in my stomach at the idea of him standing beside another bride.
It shouldn’t matter.
Ten years should have buried the memory of the boy who once handed me lemonade on my porch, who’d smuggled me a cupcake at fifteen, who’d teased me about marrying him at twenty-five.
That boy was dead. In his place stood a man who’d nearly crushed the life from me at the docks.
I couldn’t still love him. Could I?
Antonio should have been the one in my thoughts—the bastard who’d tricked me with promises and vows, only to leave me gutted at the altar.
His family’s contract with the Romanos still bound us on paper, but he’d run to Italy after his betrayal, hiding behind the Bellantis’ influence.
My father and uncles wouldn’t risk open war—not when retaliation would spill innocent blood. But a shadow execution? A quiet end in a foreign street? That was the Romanos’ way.
Antonio’s deception had scarred me. Yet it wasn’t his ghost trailing me now.
It was Dmitri Volkov—his voice, his threat, his storm of hatred—that consumed me.
The devil who’d shattered my life sent an invitation to his wedding—addressed to me alone, my family deliberately erased.
Why?
The question gnawed like teeth in my chest as I drove, my emerald dress clinging to my curves, my inhaler in my clutch like a talisman against fate.
The hall rose before me, less a venue than a fortress of power.
Marble walls gleamed under harsh floodlights, gold-trimmed arches curving like crowns over the courtyard where black SUVs sat in rigid formation, their tinted windows hiding Italian mafia soldiers.
The air itself felt staged—thick with roses and gunpowder, perfume and death—a reminder of the mafia’s creed.
At the entrance, two guards in tailored suits shifted to block me, earpieces flashing under the lights. One held out a sleek biometric scanner. His voice was mechanical.
“Name. Fingerprint.”
My pulse spiked, but I pressed my thumb against the cold glass.
The machine beeped, green light flaring.
Approved. Expected.
Dmitri had planned this. Dmitri had wanted me here.
The guards stepped aside in silent unison.
My heels struck marble, the sound echoing in the cavernous foyer like a countdown. I was inside his world now.
Inside the hall was a cathedral of decadence.
Men in bespoke suits stood like sentinels, their faces hard, eyes scanning the room like Secret Service agents guarding a president.
Women in designer gowns sipped champagne, their diamonds glinting, but the air was taut, every glance calculated, every whisper a potential threat.
I felt exposed in my casual emerald dress, chosen for defiance, not ceremony, my hair loose around my shoulders.
And then—I saw him.
Dmitri stood at the altar, alone.
No bride in sight, only the empty arch of roses framing him like a cruel joke.
His tailored black suit molded to his broad frame, the fabric catching the light with a subtle sheen.
His dark hair was slicked back, his jaw sharp as a blade under the chandeliers. He looked like a god of war dressed for the coronation of hell itself.
And his eyes—those glacial, merciless eyes—were locked on me. From the moment I entered, as though he’d been waiting.
As though the entire hall, the entire spectacle, was nothing more than a stage set for this moment.
My pulse stuttered, confusion lacing with dread. Where was his bride? Why had he summoned me?
I moved toward a row of seats, praying to dissolve into the silk-draped crowd, but the air shifted.
His voice cut through the music, sharp, echoing against the vaulted ceiling.
“Penelope.”
My heart froze, my body rooted to the spot as every eye turned to me.
The orchestra faltered mid-note, the silence swallowing the hall whole. A hundred gazes bore down on me—mafia bosses in silk ties, their lieutenants with dead eyes, their jewel-encrusted wives clutching champagne flutes like daggers.
I wanted to vanish, to sink into the polished marble floor, but Dmitri’s stare held me captive.
His eyes were glacial, burning through the crowd and fastening me to the altar as if no one else existed.
“What?” I stammered, my throat raw, the word barely a whisper but loud in the suffocating hush.
Dmitri’s lips curved, not into a smile but a blade of mockery.
His voice carried, low yet resonant, every syllable coiled with menace.
“Didn’t you promise to marry me at twenty-five... or did you think I’d let you forget?”
My breath caught like a snare tightening around my lungs.
He remembered?
After everything—the monster he’d become, the horrors whispered of him killing his own parents, burning their remains as ash and legend—I’d thought all traces of the boy I once knew had been obliterated.
Yet here he was, dragging a childhood promise into the light, binding it to me like chains on my 25th birthday.
Laughter, bitter and mocking, rippled through my memory—the way he’d teased me under the lemon trees, asking if I’d marry him when I was grown. I’d laughed, cheeks hot, fifteen and na?ve.
A joke, a fleeting thing. And now... a sentence.
I stood dumbfounded, the weight of his words pressing down, my mind clawing for an escape, a response, anything.
What did he expect me to say?
That I’d been waiting?
That I still loved the boy who’d vanished ten years ago?
That I’d forgive the monster he had become?
The answer was ripped from me before I could speak.
A shadow detached from the crowd, moving with predatory grace.
Scarred cheek, pale eyes—it was him. The brute who had dragged me to Dmitri’s tent.
He stopped at my side, looming, his breath cold against my ear.
“You’re the bride everyone’s been waiting for,” he whispered, gravel thick in his tone. “Step to the altar... your husband is waiting.”
My heart thundered so violently I thought it might shatter my ribs.
The opulent hall blurred at the edges, the velvet-draped walls closing in.
My emerald dress—the one I’d chosen in defiance—now felt like a cruel joke, as if fate itself had dressed me for my own undoing.
A laugh escaped me, brittle and edged with hysteria.
“Wait—what?” My hand shot to my arm, nails digging into flesh, the sharp sting confirming this wasn’t a nightmare I could wake from.
The scarred man leaned closer, his shadow swallowing me whole.
“You heard me right,” he said, firmer now. “Step to the altar. Now. And pledge your vows to the great Dmitri Volkov—your husband.”
My chest seized, lungs burning with the threat of an asthma attack.
I glanced down at myself—at the simplicity of my dress, the clutch still in my hand—then back to Dmitri.
He was at the altar, unmoving, his gaze fastened to me like a predator sighting its prey.
And then the truth clawed through me. There was no bride.
I was the bride.
“No,” I rasped, the word ripped from my lungs. “I never agreed to this.” My voice cracked but carried, trembling yet defiant.
The scarred man’s expression didn’t falter. “Your father agreed on your behalf. That’s enough.”
My father.
The betrayal sliced through me sharper than Antonio’s deception, deeper than Dmitri’s threats.
My father—my protector, my blood—had bartered me like currency.
There was movement at the altar, a ripple of tension that silenced even the air.
And then I saw him.
Dmitri descended the steps with measured grace.
Gasps rippled through the crowd, but no one moved. No one would dare.
I stumbled back a step, my hands trembling.
I couldn’t breathe—wouldn’t breathe—if it meant walking willingly into his snare.
He stopped before me, towering, the scent of sandalwood and smoke wrapping around me like chains.
The scarred man retreated a few paces, his presence still looming but secondary now, as if even he bowed to the greater danger standing inches from me.
His lips curved into a slow, merciless smirk.
He raised his hand—not to strike, but to brush his knuckles along my cheek, tender as a lover, cruel as a predator savoring the inevitable.
“You’ll walk down that aisle, Penelope,” Dmitri said, his voice a blade—merciless. “You made the promise, and you’ll honor it.”
I glanced down at myself, my defiance cracking beneath the weight of his gaze.
Even wrapped in white silk, I would never marry him. “I won’t step onto that podium,” I said, forcing steel into my tone, even as fear coiled like a snake in my gut.
His smirk deepened.
In an instant, his hand snapped to my jaw, his grip punishing, pinching hard enough that pain flared sharp through my bones.
I winced, a hiss escaping my lips.
His breath brushed my face, venom in every word.
“Whose death would sting less?” he murmured, eyes glittering with malice as he glanced at his watch with calculated ease.
“Your grandmother and mother—sitting at home, waiting to sing you happy birthday? Or your father, the proud patriarch who sold your soul to me? With a single call, I can silence them all. Three minutes, Penelope. That’s all they have. ”
My heart thundered, panic surging hot in my veins.
Nonna’s soft laughter. My mother’s warm embrace.
My father’s weary, guilty eyes. Their faces flashed before me, and bile rose in my throat. He wasn’t just threatening me—he was dangling their lives on a ticking clock.
Tears burned, but fury tangled with my fear. “I don’t know who you are anymore,” I whispered, voice breaking. “The boy I knew is dead. I can’t keep that promise. I don’t want to be your bride.”
He released his iron grip on my chin, his expression twisting into the cruel smile of a man who thrived on torment.
“Sadly, Penelope,” he said, drawing out each word like a sentence passed, “what you want stopped mattering years ago.”
He extended his hand toward me, dark eyes gleaming as the crowd watched, spellbound.
“Two minutes left,” he added, his tone almost playful. “And when their blood runs, it’ll stain your conscience, not mine. Hell —” his smirk sharpened, venom and delight mingling, “I don’t even have one.”
I swallowed hard, my throat sandpaper-dry, the weight of a hundred eyes pressing into my back.
A curse slipped from my lips, a bitter attempt at strength, but my hand betrayed me—shaking as Dmitri seized it.
His grip was iron, unbreakable, swallowing mine whole as though my body existed only to be tethered to him.
He tugged me forward, his stride unyielding, mine stumbling to keep pace.
The orchestra swelled again, a dirge disguised as a wedding march, each note a mockery of vows I never agreed to.
The crowd shifted, parting like obedient subjects before a king and his unwilling queen.
Faces blurred into a mosaic of greed, awe, and fear; jeweled wives whispered behind painted lips while stone-faced bosses watched like hawks, calculating every flicker of my resistance.
Heat flushed my skin, humiliation a living thing clawing at my chest. My emerald gown now felt like a mockery—a casual girl playing bride before the mafia.
My lungs squeezed tight, each breath a struggle, the inhaler in my clutch suddenly heavier than gold.
Dmitri never glanced at the crowd.
His eyes stayed forward, his expression carved from ice.
His hand dragged me down the aisle toward the altar where a priest waited, robes quivering, rosary clutched so tight his knuckles whitened.
His gaze darted between us, like a man presiding over his own funeral.
And I knew, with bone-deep certainty, that this wasn’t a wedding. It was a coronation of my captivity.
The boy I’d once loved—the boy who promised forever—had vanished. What walked beside me now was the devil himself, a man who’d burn the world just to claim me.