Chapter 21 #2
Three guards stepped aside without a word, their eyes cold, calculating—like they had been expecting me, like they already knew I didn’t belong anywhere but here.
The warm air bit at my exposed skin, but the thought of my father inside, waiting, and the shadow of the man who had claimed me, pushing me forward, drove each step.
Inside, the grand hall reeked of cigar smoke and power.
My father stood at the center, his tailored gray suit a sharp contrast against the long Italian coats and wide-brimmed hats of his associates.
I recognized some from the mafia ball weeks ago—their faces hard, their hands dusted with white powder, sniffed between low murmurs of arrangements and betrayal.
Giovanni lingered nearby, his eyes sliding over me with practiced detachment.
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” my father said, voice steady but tense.
He wove through the room, closing the space between us, guiding me down a dim hallway lined with faded tapestries.
Finally, we reached a balcony overlooking Lake Como’s black waters, silvered by the knife-sharp moonlight.
“Sweetheart,” he breathed, pulling me close.
His arms shook, and the warmth of his body did little to calm the chill in my chest. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t protect you. Your mother, your grandmother—they’ve been frantic. We didn’t know where you were. How... how is it with him?” His voice cracked, searching mine for reassurance.
I stepped back, cold and measured. “Dad,” I said sharply, cutting through the warmth, “what did you do to Dmitri? You and Mom—what debt did you owe him that you’d let this happen to me?”
He exhaled slowly, leaning on the iron railing, his silence stretching into a weight that pressed against my chest.
“Sweetheart,” he said finally, voice trembling, “we hurt him... yes. But you... you played a part too.”
My stomach clenched. “I—what part?” I demanded.
Seeing his hesitation to proceed, something inside me snapped.
“I don’t remember hurting him! Not once!” I shouted, my voice cracking with rage.
My hands balled into fists, nails digging into my palms. “And you—stop hiding things from me! This... monster forced me into this marriage, wants me to carry his child, and won’t let me leave.
He’s keeping me like a prisoner! For what, Dad?
For something I didn’t even know existed?
What role did I play in all this? You better start telling me everything, right now! ”
My father’s face paled.
“There was a business transaction between Dmitri’s real parents and us... eleven years ago,” my father began, his voice hesitant. “At that time, he was our neighbor, and you... you two were close, thinking we didn’t know.”
“Wait,” I interrupted. “Did you just say Dmitri’s real parents?”
“Yes,” he said, his eyes dark.
He ran a hand through his hair, as if the weight of the truth physically pressed down on him. “The rumors that Dmitri killed his own parents... all lies. Those were his foster parents—the monsters who tormented him, twisted his childhood into a nightmare.”
He paused, letting the words sink in.
“His real parents lived here in New York. They weren’t part of the mafia, but when they learned he had come to New York for school, they moved to claim him. To do so, they needed men, muscle, influence... power.”
He stepped closer, voice dropping to a near whisper. “And at that time... we controlled New York. The streets, the docks, the networks—everything. Only our family could ensure he was taken from his foster parents, both legally and... by other means, if necessary.”
My chest tightened. “Go on,” I urged, my voice trembling with curiosity.
My father’s voice was heavy with guilt. “We promised his real parents men, resources, everything needed to free him from his foster parents, who were part of one of the four most powerful mafia families in Lake Como. Penelope, what he endured under them was pure hell.”
“Whenever he returned to his foster parents’ house in Italy for the holidays, his life became a waking nightmare.
It wasn’t just beatings or whippings. He was locked in cages so small he could barely move, forced to hang upside down for hours until blood ran freely from his nose, beaten with iron rods until his skin split open. ”
“They made him kneel on jagged stones for endless hours until his knees bled, chained him in freezing water through the nights until his body went numb, and burned his hands with hot coals until he screamed for mercy. For years, he endured this hell without anyone to save him.”
“And...” he paused. “He endured countless sexual violations and abuses.”
“They hated him because he was the one destined to inherit their empire once either of his foster parents reached sixty—that was the law of Lake Como. Leadership automatically passed to the firstborn son at sixty, unless he was under fifteen.”
“His foster parents intended for one of his three foster brothers—Nikolai, Alexis, or Viktor, their own blood—to inherit their empire. They had poured years of work and expectation into them. So they made Dmitri’s life a living hell, punishing him relentlessly to break him, to ensure he would never claim what was rightfully his. ”
My chest caved, horror and pity tangling in my stomach.
Tears pricked my eyes.
The boy I had loved—the shy, gentle boy—had endured horrors I couldn’t even imagine.
It hit me then: every time he returned from holiday to live next door, he wasn’t coming home to safety—he had just escaped another round of torment from his foster parents.
And every time he went back to Italy after a semester, he was marching straight into hell.
Why hadn’t he ever told me this? Not during our secret meetings, not when he smiled, joked, or carved stars into my memory. Why keep such pain locked away while letting me believe... what? That he had nothing to fear?
And he was sexually assaulted too? A part of me ached for him, for the innocence stolen, for the trust shattered before he even knew how to protect it.
But my defiance burned stronger. “Then why... why does he despise us? How did we wrong him? If he killed his foster parents for the torment they inflicted, that’s one thing... but what did we do to earn his grudge?”
My hands clenched at my sides, nails digging into my palms as my voice shook with both anger and desperation.
My father’s hands trembled as he reached into his breast pocket, pulling out a neatly folded paper.
He handed it to me, but before he could continue explaining, the night shattered.
A helicopter roared overhead, its blades slicing through the air.
My heart leapt.
A deafening roar split the night as something slammed into the helicopter, sending it spiraling into flames across the courtyard.
Explosions shattered the air, the shockwave hurling me against the balcony wall.
Pain lanced through my ribs as shards of debris rained down, the world dissolving into fire and chaos around me.
My father’s hand gripped my arm, holding me close, his eyes wide with shock, the paper still clutched in my shaking hands.