Chapter 16 #2
“Me again,” Giovanni admitted, his tone flat, as if confessing the unthinkable required him to strip it of emotion.
“The study door left ajar? Planned. We have cameras everywhere. I signaled him the moment you left the cinema. He staged it all, made sure you’d overhear those words he never meant, whispered just loud enough for the knife to sink in.
He wanted you confused, gutted. It’s his way—punishing you without laying a finger. Cruelty dressed as betrayal.”
My chest constricted. “All of it... fake,” I whispered, the floor tilting beneath me.
Giovanni’s gaze softened almost imperceptibly, a shadow of pity flickering across the harsh lines of his scarred face. “Since he returned to Italy at nineteen, you’ve been the only thing in his head. His sketches? Filled with you. He even has a tattoo of your face on his—”
“On his what?” I cut in, sharper than I meant, desperate for something real to cling to.
Giovanni’s mouth curved, humorless. “When the clothes come off, ma’am... you’ll find out.”
Heat scorched my cheeks, and I looked away.
No Seraphina.
No mistress.
Just me. Always me.
His obsession was real—but the method? Monstrous.
My chest heaved, nails digging crescents into my palms. “If he makes it through this,” I whispered, the word trembling in my throat, “what punishment will he carve out for me next?”
Giovanni sighed, the sound weary, the kind that carried the weight of too many secrets kept too long.
“Dmitri wants you to suffer until your last breath. That won’t change.
With the cheating lie stripped bare, he’ll only.
.. adapt. Find a punishment sharper, closer to your heart. More personal. More calculated.”
The words chilled me.
“I put that device on his phone because I thought she was real—because he made me believe it. But answer me this, Giovanni—what sin did I commit against him? He’s the one who disappeared when we were just teenagers, not me. I never betrayed him.”
“As a matter of fact, the very night before he vanished, he spun me one of his dragon tales and kissed me right here”—I touched my cheek, the memory burning hot—“and he said my eyebrow was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
He promised he’d buy me stars to pin to my ceiling, because he knew how much I loved staring at the night sky.
That was the boy I loved. The boy who vanished. ”
The memories surged, spilling past the dam of my restraint.
My throat ached, but the words came anyway, each one laced with both fury and yearning.
“We were everything, Giovanni. I’d sneak into his house, and he’d sneak into mine—even when my parents were home.
We’d talk until dawn, share stories like the world belonged only to us.
He wasn’t a monster then. He was my everything. ”
My voice cracked, but I pressed on, defiant in my vulnerability.
“I was fifteen when I fell off my bike in the garden. Skinned my knee badly. I tried to hide the tears from my parents, but Dmitri found me. He lifted me like I weighed nothing, carried me to his porch. He cleaned the wound himself, humming some ridiculous tune to make me laugh, then tore his shirt to bandage me. ‘See ?’ he said, grinning. ‘Now you’re part dragon—tough scales and all.’ And then he kissed my forehead and swore he’d always be my shield. ”
The memory hit like a dagger—warm and agonizing all at once.
My chest heaved, and I pressed a hand to my mouth, trying to trap the sob that clawed free.
“That boy,” I whispered. “That boy swore he’d protect me. What happened to him, Giovanni? What turned my shield into my executioner?”
Giovanni’s expression softened slightly, but I pressed on, stubborn in my need to remember the boy before the monster.
“Another night, we snuck out to the old oak tree between our houses. It was storming, but we didn’t care.
He wrapped his jacket around me, and we sat there, rain pounding, talking about dreams. I wanted to be an artist; he wanted to rule the world.
‘Together ,’ he said, his hand in mine, ‘we’ll paint the stars red .
’ He pulled out a pocket knife and carved our initials into the bark— D.V.
+ P.R. —swearing it’d last forever. I believed him then. ”
Tears pricked my eyes, but I refused to let them fall, my defiance holding them back.
“And the last one... the day he gave me that dragon tale. We were on my porch, lemonade in hand, and he leaned in close, his voice soft like a secret. ‘One day, ’ he whispered, ‘I’ll slay every dragon for you, Penelope. Because you’re my treasure.
’ He kissed my cheek, lingering just a second too long, and I felt it—felt like the world was ours.
Then he was gone. Vanished. No goodbye, no explanation.
Just rumors of blood and power in Italy. ”
Giovanni listened, his face a mask, but his eyes held a glint of something heavier.
He exhaled, long and weary, before speaking.
“So much has happened, things you’ll never be told—changes, betrayals, deals gone right and wrong.
But one thing is certain... he will never let you go.
Not because you wronged him, but because you are the only thing that ever mattered.
That’s why he built Seraphina. That’s why he’ll keep finding new ways to make you bleed.
Because Dmitri Volkov would rather destroy his treasure than let it out of his grasp. ”
Something inside me snapped.
The words clawed through my chest, searing like acid until all I could feel was rage.
“Treasure?” My voice broke into a jagged laugh. “Is that what you call this?!” I shot to my feet, the bench scraping violently against the stone.
“He’s a monster, Giovanni! He lied, he broke me, he dragged me into his madness—and you want me to believe it’s because I’m his treasure?”
Giovanni stayed seated, shoulders squared, but his eyes darkened with warning. “Ma’am—”
“Don’t ‘ma’am’ me!” My palm lashed out before I could stop it, striking across his scarred cheek.
The crack of flesh against flesh echoed in the garden, louder than the fountain’s trickle, louder than my ragged breathing.
“You don’t get to sit there and romanticize his sickness. I didn’t abandon him—he abandoned me! And now you want me to wear his madness like it’s a crown?”
Tears blurred my vision, but fury drove me forward, my fists trembling at my sides. “Obsession isn’t love—it’s a noose! And if he thinks he can strangle me with it, he’ll find I’ve got sharper teeth than he ever imagined.”
My chest rose and fell in jagged bursts, my throat scorched, my whole body shaking from the force of what I’d unleashed.
Giovanni’s face bore the red mark of my hand, but he didn’t move to stop me, didn’t raise his voice. He only studied me in silence, as though my fury was the very proof he’d been waiting for.