Chapter 1 #3
He expected me to go back to the man who broke me so deeply the fractures still ached five years later.
The letter slipped from my grasp and fluttered to the floor like a fallen verdict.
I pressed a trembling hand to my chest.
“God,” I whispered, the word cracking. “He’s getting married... tomorrow.”
A dizziness swept through me, hot and cold at once.
Was this fate tugging me back? Or another trap disguised as destiny?
My heartbeat thundered—because I already knew the answer I didn’t want to admit.
I wasn’t trembling because Dmitri was marrying Seraphina.
I was trembling because a part of me—small, wounded, shamefully alive—still loved him.
Still foolishly loved a man who had exiled me from Lake Como five years ago, as if I were nothing more than a broken ornament, neatly discarded. No argument. No explanation. Just a private jet ticket and whispers of cold bureaucracy: that he would send the divorce papers for me to sign.
Dmitri was moving forward.
With her.
Seraphina—the “slim and graceful one,” the woman he’d once held up like a mirror of everything I wasn’t. He carved those words into me so often they felt tattooed under my skin.
For four agonizing months after he cast me out, I hovered in purgatory, checking my phone for messages that would never come, waking from dreams where he stood in the doorway asking me to come home. The absence of divorce papers felt like a tiny candle in a vast, wind-swept void.
Maybe he’d changed his mind.
Maybe he’d realized he loved me.
Maybe the marriage still meant something.
But love—real love—doesn’t vanish into silence.
Love doesn’t abandon.
Love doesn’t walk away and leave you without a word.
The only time he resurfaced was after my accidental call—my trembling voice begging the hospital receptionist for extensions on Vanya’s medical bill. I hadn’t meant to reach him. My phone simply connected to the last number dialed.
And he’d come running—not for me, but because of obligation, responsibility... guilt. If that call hadn’t slipped through the cracks of fate, Dmitri Volkov would have let me fade out of existence without a backward glance.
Five years in Greece had been a resurrection, a sharp, glittering contrast to the suffocating isolation of Lake Como. Dmitri had kept me hidden there—no friends, no outings, no social ties.
“Wives attract problems,” he’d say.
But really, he feared losing control.
Here in Ruslan’s enclave, life bloomed in colors I never knew existed.
The villas in this quiet district perched like jewels along the hillside, home to men and women whose shadows stretched across continents.
Mafia captains, political puppeteers, exiles who carried danger with the same ease as luxury.
And yet—they laughed with me. They invited me into their homes.
They toasted with me late into the night, glasses of ouzo catching the moonlight as we swapped stories of Athens’ hidden tavernas and the illicit fight clubs beneath the old city.
They kept my secrets.
Protected me, in their own cautious, lethal way.
They adored Vanya—Ruslan most of all.
I’d thought I’d buried Dmitri in those years.
I’d thought I’d rebuilt myself, forged a life where his memory was only a faint ache.
But the revelation in the letter hit like a bullet.
Dmitri and Ruslan... friends?
The Greek kingpin and the Italian don, bonded across seas and legends? I couldn’t fathom it. But the truth, written in Ruslan’s steady hand, was undeniable.
Tomorrow.
Dmitri was marrying Seraphina tomorrow.
My breath hitched.
I’d assumed he’d wed Seraphina years ago—why wait five years? Why mourn me so long if he despised me? Why search for a ghost he claimed not to love?
The thought of him standing at the altar—Seraphina’s hand in his, her perfect smile raised toward him—sent a sharp, nauseating twist through my stomach.
It shouldn’t hurt.
I’d built a life here.
I had friends, security, purpose—freedom.
I had Vanya. My miracle.
I should’ve been untouched by Dmitri’s choices.
But the pain remained, raw and undeniable. Proof that a tattered, foolish piece of me still loved him—despite everything. Despite the cruelty. Despite the darkness. Despite the scars he left behind.
“Mom?”
The soft voice pulled me back from the precipice. I blinked, breath shaky, turning toward the doorway.
Vanya stood there, framed by sunlight, his curls dark and unruly from chasing Ruslan’s silent son across the courtyard. Concern shadowed his features, deepening the furrow between his brows.
God.
He looked so much like Dmitri it hurt.
The sharp jawline he’d grow into one day.
The intense, calculating eyes that saw too much.
The quiet, deliberate way he held himself, as if he were always thinking three steps ahead.
My son was a living echo of the man I had loved and feared in equal measure.
A reminder. A lifeline.
And my undoing all at once.
He stepped closer.
“Mom... are you crying?”
“Come here, sweetheart,” I murmured, forcing a smile I didn’t feel.
Vanya crossed the sun-drenched room with that quiet confidence unique to him, moving like a little prince who had never known fear.
His navy sneakers whispered against the marble, the afternoon light catching on his curls like tiny halos.
He climbed into my lap without hesitation, his small arms wrapping around my waist, his warmth sinking into my bones.
The scent of his lavender soap—always lavender, always gentle—soothed the frayed edges of my heart.
“You look worried, Mom,” he said softly. His Greek accent curled around the words, warm and musical from years of growing up in Athens.
He spoke like a child of the city—shaped by communal feasts under string lights, dancing to bouzouki rhythms with neighbors who treated him as their own, listening wide-eyed to storytellers who breathed ancient gods back to life. “What’s troubling you?”
His eyes studied mine—searching, perceptive, too wise for his five years.
I smoothed my fingers through his curls, pulling him close so I could bury my face in his warm scalp. “Just thinking, my love,” I whispered, pressing a soft kiss to his forehead.
I fought to keep my voice steady, to shield him from the storm clawing at my insides.
Vanya had always been a storyteller. A prodigy, really.
He was the neighborhood’s beloved performer, gathering children in the courtyard like a tiny king addressing his court.
I’d watch from the stone archway as he climbed onto a bench, thrusting his small hands in grand gestures, weaving tales of pirates and dragons with a flair that mesmerized even the adults sipping their evening coffee.
But today...
His stories had been quiet.
His laughter softer.
His eyes distant—as if he’d sensed the letter burning a hole in my chest.
I hugged him closer, breathing him in, wishing I could draw strength from his tiny, unbreakable spirit. “Tell me a story, Vanya,” I said gently, desperate to drown in his voice rather than my memories.
He grinned—bright and sudden—before launching into an animated tale about a fearless sailor battling a monstrous sea serpent, his hands mimicking crashing waves and snapping jaws.
I laughed despite myself, feeling the weight in my chest lighten. His imagination always pulled me back from the cliff.
But beneath that joy lay the familiar ache—the quiet burden of raising him alone.
Every milestone, every scraped knee, every bedtime story—mine alone.
No husband.
No father.
No partner to shoulder the weight.
And Vanya, for all his confidence, for all his spark... felt the absence.
He noticed fathers cheering at soccer games.
He noticed men holding their sons on their shoulders at the pier.
He noticed the empty space beside me whenever we walked home at night.
Mid-story, he paused, tilting his head like he always did before asking something important.
“Mom,” he said slowly, “who is Dmitri Volkov?”
My heart stopped.
Just dropped, straight through me.
His small fingers tightened around the wooden boat in his hands—the little red-sailed one our neighbor had carved for him.
Where had he heard that name?
Who had spoken it?
Had Ruslan’s mute son somehow shared something in their quiet games? Had someone whispered in the hallways of the estate? Or... had the world outside my carefully constructed sanctuary finally reached him?
“Well,” Vanya went on, eyes fixed on the toy boat, voice small but steady, “I read in a book that sometimes... sometimes single mothers lie about the father being dead.”
He swallowed hard.
“So I started searching for my papa.”
My throat closed.
“But I only found one name.”
He looked up then—straight into my soul.
“Is Dmitri Volkov really my father, Mom?”
The room tilted. My vision blurred.
My heartbeat thudded painfully in my ears.
His eyes—his father’s eyes—were earnest, open, demanding truth with a determination that mirrored Dmitri so perfectly it was like being stabbed with memory.
“Mom,” he whispered, sitting up straighter in my lap, “you won’t lie to me... right?”
His small fingers traced the painted sails of his boat, but his gaze never wavered, sharp and steady, waiting for an answer that could unravel everything.
“We’re leaving Greece today.” I said, keeping my voice soft, though my heart hammered in my chest.
Vanya leaned against my thigh, his little fingers spinning the mast of his wooden boat. I let my hand fall from his curls, even as every part of me ached to hold him closer.
“There’s a wedding in Italy tomorrow—a family friend. We need to be there.”
“Italy?” His eyes widened, curiosity sparkling. “Will there be boats there, Mama? Big ones, with sails?”
I smiled despite the knot in my chest. “Maybe, my love. Maybe we’ll see some very big boats.”
He tilted his head, thoughtful. “Will there be cake too? And maybe a dragon?”
I laughed softly, brushing a strand of hair from his forehead. “I’m not sure about the dragon, Vanya, but I promise there will be cake.”