Chapter 5
DMITRI VOLKOV
Isat in the dark like a man chained inside his own mausoleum.
The surveillance room was silent except for the low hum of machines—twenty-seven monitors arranged in a crescent, glowing an eerie blue across my face. Each screen was a window into a life I had lost and a life I was now stealing piece by piece.
The largest monitor was fixed on her.
Pen.
Penelope.
Whoever the hell she truly was.
She slept curled on her side, one arm draped over the small, warm body tucked against her. Vanya was pressed into her chest, his tiny hand still fisted in the fabric of her shirt, as if even in sleep he feared she might disappear.
Moonlight spilled through the panoramic windows, draping her in silver, tracing the lean lines of her body like a sculptor’s careful hand. Even in rest, she seemed poised between vigilance and surrender, caught in the fragile balance of a night that offered no real safety.
She was thinner than before.
Not the softness I used to worship—round hips, warm curves, thighs I used to grip until she’d gasp my name—but a new, honed edge. The angles of her cheekbones were sharper. Her body carried tension like a wire pulled too tight.
She looked like Penelope forged in fire.
And fire had changed her into something lethal.
I had been watching her for three hours straight.
I watched her in the shower—camera angled respectfully away from the glass because even I wasn’t depraved enough to cross that line. But I saw the steam rising, her silhouette pressed against the far wall, her shoulders shaking while she tried to cry quietly enough not to wake the boy.
I watched her step out with trembling hands, pull on the robe, and stare at her own reflection for a full minute like she was memorizing a stranger’s face.
I watched her crawl into bed with wet hair and eyes full of ghosts.
Every second was a slow crucifixion.
Five years ago, I had held my wife while she bled out in my arms, her white dress soaking red as she smiled weakly and whispered “Mitya” the way she did when she was fifteen and stupid and thought love made us immortal.
Five years ago, I had felt her last heartbeat stutter and die against my palm.
Five years ago, her father stole her body—stole my unborn son—and vanished into the night.
I buried an empty coffin.
I stood in the rain while dirt thudded against a casket that held nothing but a dress and a ring.
I spent years tearing the world apart looking for her father.
Not searching. Hunting.
New York learned my name in screams.
Every shadow in Little Italy whispered Volkov with terror.
Anyone carrying the Romano name learned to sleep with one eye open.
Those who refused to talk vanished into the Atlantic.
Those who lied watched their empires burn to ash.
I followed her ghost across continents—from the docks of Naples to the back alleys of Marrakesh, from abandoned monasteries in Prague to safe houses buried in the Swiss Alps.
Every rumor of her—every whisper of a woman with her eyes—I chased until my knuckles bled and my patience frayed into madness.
They said I was grieving.
They said I was obsessed.
They said I had lost my mind.
Maybe I had.
Because I wasn’t just looking for Penelope’s body.
I was looking for my son—the child stolen from me as surely as she was.
The last piece of her that still breathed.
And I swore to the night itself: I would raze the earth until I had them back.
Dead or alive—they were mine.
I hunted Marco Romano like the devil hunts souls.
Still—nothing.
He was smoke. He was absence. He was the ghost I could never catch.
And now fate—cruel, mocking, merciless—had placed in my house a woman who wore my dead wife’s face and a boy who looked exactly like me at age five.
Same eyes.
Same jaw.
Same stubborn, infuriating defiance.
My vision blurred around the edges. Because I wasn’t just losing control. I wasn’t just imagining possibilities. I was losing my mind.
My fingers hovered above the keyboard, trembling with a rage and longing I didn’t have the discipline to disguise.
One tap and I could zoom in—trace the new scar on her collarbone, follow the freckles that used to map the constellations of my nights, count the faint birthmarks I once memorized with my mouth.
I wanted to climb into the screen and fall at her feet.
I wanted to bolt every door in this house and never let her slip through my fingers.
Giovanni’s preliminary report sat open on the second monitor.
Pen — no legal record in Greece.
Vanya — no birth certificate that wasn’t forged.
Travel documents — burner.
Bank records — nonexistent.
Digital footprint — erased.
A trail of lies that led straight into Ruslan Baranov’s void.
Ruslan.
The only man on earth who still holds my respect—and the only one I could never read.
Nothing moves through Greece without his knowledge.
Not a fly. Not a rumor. Not a ghost.
The shape of this mystery—this woman called Pen—had Baranov’s fingerprints all over it.
Which meant one thing: If Ruslan knew about Pen... then he...
I was one phone call away from starting a war that would scorch the continent.
And then a small voice sliced through the dark.
“You kidnapped us and now you’re spying on us like we’re pets? We’re not your pets!”
My chair spun so fast the leather groaned.
The boy stood in the doorway—barefoot, hair rumpled from sleep, wearing Iron Man pajamas that swallowed his wrists. He looked like a child... and yet he stood like a commander.
The motion sensors hadn’t even flickered.
The kid moved like a ghost.
My pulse kicked.
I slammed my thumb onto the panel, instantly shutting off every camera in their suite. It felt like baring my throat to a wolf.
“How did you find this room?” I asked, voice rough from hours of cigarettes, fury, and hope poisoning my blood.
Vanya gave me the kind of look only children and saints were brave enough to give monsters.
“You have a biometric lock,” he said, strolling in like the house belonged to him. “It beeps three times when it opens. I followed the beeps.”
Then—without invitation—he pulled himself into the massive leather chair opposite me, swung his legs, and examined me like a problem he fully intended to solve.
“We need privacy,” he announced. “It’s the least we deserve after you stole us.”
Something warm and unbearably painful cracked in my chest.
No one—no guard, no boss, no council member—had spoken to me like that in fifteen years.
“I have questions for you, Mr Dmitri,” he continued, folding his small hands on the table like he’d seen this done in movies.
Mr Dmitri.
He could’ve stabbed me with a knife and it would’ve hurt less.
I dragged a breath in. “How old are you, Vanya?”
He lifted one shoulder. “You answer my questions, I answer yours. Respect goes both ways.”
God.
He was five.
A short, rough laugh escaped me before I could stop it.
He was me.
He was exactly me.
“Fine,” I said, leaning forward, elbows braced on my knees. “Ask.”
He studied me with those storm-grey eyes, as if scanning for weaknesses.
“What do you do for work?”
Straight into the artery.
The kid was surgical.
I took him in fully then: the dark curls, the stubborn mouth, the sharp gaze that missed nothing.
A five-year-old with the moral compass of a judge and the instincts of a predator.
He deserved honesty.
But he also deserved to sleep at night.
“I keep people safe,” I answered slowly. “Sometimes that means doing things most grown-ups couldn’t handle.”
He absorbed the words, expression unreadable.
Then he leaned forward, whispering like we were planning a heist.
“Like poisoning the pretty lady at the wedding?”
My spine snapped straight.
I scrubbed a hand over my face. “Where did you hear that?”
He rolled his eyes like the universe constantly disappointed him. “I’m five, not deaf.”
I stared at him.
This child saw everything.
He peered at me, curious, fearless.
“Well?” he pressed. “Did you do it?”
“I did what was necessary.”
Vanya leaned back in the chair, small fists resting on the arms as though bracing himself against the storm in front of him.
He was five, but the fire in his eyes made him seem older.
“You hurt people,” he said, voice low but steady. “And you think that’s okay because you call it protecting people. But it’s not protecting. It’s... it’s scary. It’s mean.”
I froze, every nerve in my body humming with an unfamiliar electricity. .
“I watched you,” Vanya continued, hands gripping the armrests until his knuckles turned white. “I saw how you looked at Mom last night. Like she’s something you can own. Like she’s a toy or a trophy. You’re not her husband. You’re not even... you’re just... scary.”
My jaw flexed—one small, controlled tick—before smoothing out completely.
“Do you know what happens when people are scared of you?” Vanya asked, tilting his head, gaze sharp as a knife.
“They stop trusting you. They hide. They cry. And Mom—Mom... she’s supposed to be happy, and you.
.. you make her not happy. You’re supposed to keep her safe, but all you do is make her want to run. ”
The chair creaked as he leaned forward again, eyes boring into mine.
“I don’t care about your empire. I don’t care about your rules.
I don’t care if everyone in the world calls you a king.
If you can’t be kind to Mom, then you’re not a king.
You’re a monster. And I... I won’t call you Dad. Not until you stop being a monster.”
Silence slammed into the room like a thunderclap.
I wanted to argue, to roar, to remind him who I was. I wanted to remind him that the Volkov name demanded obedience, not lectures from five-year-olds.
But I couldn’t.
Every word he spoke was a mirror held up to my worst self. A boy, too young to carry the weight of life, was calling out the truth I had buried beneath grief and rage.
“I...” I started, voice tight, failing me. “I have regrets, Vanya.”