Chapter 4
PENELOPE
Penelope
I folded my arms, lifting my chin so he couldn’t see the small tremor running down my spine.
“I’m already married, Mr. Volkov. And weren’t you—oh, forgive me if my memory’s faulty—about three seconds away from sliding a ring onto another woman’s finger? I don’t do warm-up bride duty. I don’t stand in for the original just because she’s currently unconscious in your private clinic.”
His gaze didn’t flicker.
Not even once.
He sat back and sank into the leather couch as if it were a throne made for him alone—long legs stretched out, shoulders relaxed, ownership radiating from every inch of him. Like the room belonged to him.
Like I did.
He plucked a fresh cigarette from the pack with steady fingers, touched flame to it, and dragged in a breath so deep it hollowed out his ribs. Smoke curled from his mouth in a slow, defeated exhale, drifting through the room like a ghost.
The cigarette burned between his fingers now, its red tip a tiny, furious star in the dim light—steady, unwavering, a heartbeat outside his chest—as he stared at nothing.
Dmitri never smoked.
Not when I was fifteen and he was nineteen.
Not when he forced a ring onto my finger six years ago.
Not once, in all the years I was legally his wife, did I ever see him lift a cigarette to his lips.
But now?
Now he smoked like the nicotine was the only thing keeping him from unraveling—like if he didn’t inhale, he’d shatter. Like his lungs needed the burn to drown out whatever was clawing inside him.
And something about that terrified me more than every threat he’d ever made.
“She was never the one I loved,” he said calmly. Too calmly. “And her collapse? That was my doing.”
Something inside me dropped.
A silent plunge straight through my bones.
He watched my reaction the way a surgeon examines a pulse—detached, curious, faintly amused.
“I needed the Orlovs to believe the wedding was legitimate. I also needed it delayed. A precise dose of a neuromuscular paralytic in her morning espresso accomplished both tasks. She’ll wake in a few weeks with mild confusion and a very unfortunate ‘mystery illness.’ By then, the council’s deadline expires, and the marriage clause becomes irrelevant. ”
My mouth fell open.
“You poisoned an innocent woman just to avoid marrying her?”
“Innocent?” His smirk was a blade. “Seraphina knew exactly what she wanted. She wanted the crown. She wanted the Volkov empire. I simply reminded her that thrones built on corpses weigh more than people admit.”
He crushed the cigarette into the ashtray with slow, surgical pressure.
“Besides, marrying her would’ve been the real betrayal.”
“Betrayal of whom?” The words escaped before I could swallow them. “Your late wife who isn’t here to care anymore?”
His eyes snapped to mine—dark, molten, dangerous enough to scorch.
Something feral flashed there. Something that remembered me too well.
“Enough,” he said.
He rose in one fluid, terrifying movement—like violence carved into a man’s shape—and stepped toward me.
“Sit.”
The command sliced straight through five years of distance.
My body obeyed before my mind even understood what was happening.
I sank into the leather armchair opposite him, hating the way my muscles responded to him—remembering him. Hating that he could still pull obedience from me like a thread.
Dmitri didn’t sit.
He remained standing over me, broad shoulders blocking the light, suit strained across the kind of strength that didn’t need to be proven.
A storm wearing a man’s shape.
A man who had loved me once.
A man who now wanted something far more dangerous.
“Five and a half years ago,” he said, voice clipped and surgical, “the Council of Families issued me an ultimatum. Marry within two months... or relinquish the Volkov seat to my foster brothers.”
He didn’t pace. Dmitri Volkov never needed to pace.
He simply stood there — a monolith in an Italian villa lit by dying sunlight — and the room bent around him like gravity.
“I challenged the ruling. Took it to the High Tribunal. Negotiated. Threatened. Paid. Won another five-year extension.”
He paused.
“Those five years end in exactly nine days.”
He lit another cigarette. The lighter’s flame sliced across the sharp lines of his face, illuminating cheekbones forged from some ancient Slavic war god.
Smoke curled around him like mist around a blade.
“I need a wife on paper. Immediately.”
I folded my arms, pretending I wasn’t squeezing my ribs to keep myself from shaking.
“Then marry Seraphina when she wakes up. Let your council choke on their own rules. Problem solved. Empire saved.”
“Seraphina,” he said, exhaling smoke toward the chandelier, “will be... conveniently incapable of walking, talking, or standing at an altar for several months. I ensured that.”
His tone didn’t change.
But the room seemed to flinch.
“I need someone now.”
I laughed.
Sharp. Ugly. Disbelieving.
“Right. And you thought—what—the random tourist who happens to look like your dead wife would do? Just slap a ring on me and call it strategy?”
He didn’t blink.
“I thought,” he said softly — dangerously softly — “that the woman who sent a carbon copy of my own childhood face to sabotage my wedding might have an agenda worth hearing.”
My stomach dropped so fast I nearly swayed.
He took a step closer, heat radiating from him in waves.
Then another step.
Until I could see the flecks of silver in his irises, the ones that only appeared when he was restraining violence.
“Get your luggage,” he said. “You and the boy will move into the villa tonight.”
“No.” It tore out of me before I even stood. A clean, violent word.
I pushed up from the chair so fast it scraped against the tile, instinct yanking me backward, away from him, away from that command.
My heart hammered against my ribs like it was trying to break out.
“We are strangers. I don’t follow your orders. If that’s how things work in your little kingdom, wonderful for you — but I’m not one of your subjects.”
The muscle in his jaw twitched. His fist balled until the veins stood out like ropes.
He closed the distance in two strides, towering over me like a shadow with teeth.
“Then explain something to me,” he growled, voice vibrating the air itself.
“Explain why you sent your son to grab my hand at the altar in front of five hundred witnesses.”
Another step.
“Explain why you walk into my territory wearing Penelope’s face. The face I see every time I close my eyes.”
Another step.
“Explain,” he hissed, “why that boy has my eyes. My mouth. And why he’s holding my phone—the same phone he ‘accidentally’ picked up. He didn’t steal it, did he? You sent him.”
The final words were so quiet they were more of a promise than a threat.
“I will tear the truth out of you one way or another.”
My breath stuttered. But I forced myself to stand.
And when I stepped forward, he was the one who shifted back.
“I’m going home tomorrow,” I said. “Back to Greece. Back to my life. My son acted impulsively. End of story.”
The smile that slid across his mouth was slow... cold... and predatory enough to chill bone.
“You’re not leaving this territory, Pen.”
His voice lowered, turning into something ancient and merciless.
“Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not until I say so.”
I turned from him, shoulders tight, throat closing.
I walked to the door because I had to — because standing still would have undone me.
“You want a disposable wife to save your empire?” I said over my shoulder. “Pick one of the hundreds of women who’d murder their own sisters for the privilege. Not me.”
My fingers curled around the doorknob, knuckles white. It rattled—betraying me, betraying the fear I refused to show him.
I forced myself to turn it, to step out, to keep my spine straight until the door clicked shut behind me.
The moment I crossed the threshold, my legs buckled.
I slumped against the hallway wall, one hand splayed over my pounding heart, the other gripping the cold plaster as if it could anchor me.
My lungs seized, tight and greedy for clean air.
The smoke he’d been exhaling—careless, relentless—still clung to me, burning my throat, brushing the edges of my asthma like a match flirting with gasoline.
But it wasn’t just the smoke.
It was him.
His voice, his nearness, the way he still filled a room and swallowed all the oxygen with him.
Five minutes with Dmitri Volkov, and my entire body was vibrating like it had touched a live wire.
Five years.
Five years, and still my pulse obeyed him like some trained, broken thing—snapping toward him the way a compass needle claws north, helpless and feral.
I despised it.
I despised him.
Most of all, I despised the shameful, pathetic part of me that had wanted to say yes. That had leaned toward him instead of away.
My breath hitched, and I spun on my heel, practically fleeing down the hall. Each hurried step echoed off the marble corridor, a frantic staccato betraying everything I was trying to hide. By the time I reached our room, my hands were trembling so badly I could barely get the door open.
When the door finally gave, swinging open under my shaking hand, my eyes landed on Vanya—exactly where I’d left him.
Sprawled face-down across the bed, kicking his legs in sharp, frustrated little jerks, fists clenching and unclenching against the sheets like he was trying to strangle the mattress.
The moment I stepped fully inside—two steps, no more—he snapped upright so violently the mattress jolted.
His eyes were wild, bright with fury and something that looked too much like fear.
“Did he bully you?” he demanded, the words cutting like a blade.
I couldn’t stop the soft smile from tugging at my lips, even as my heart splintered.
My fierce little protector. My boy.
“No, baby,” I said gently, crossing the room in quick strides.