Chapter 5 #3
One hand cradled the back of his head. The other supported his tiny spine.
He weighed almost nothing. And somehow, he weighed everything I’d ever lost.
I stood, lifting him easily.
He clung harder—little fists fisting in my shirt like he was drowning and I was the last thing keeping him afloat.
“I’ve got you,” I murmured into his curls. “I’ve got you both. I swear it.”
He cried himself empty.
Eventually, his sobs softened into hiccups. His breaths evened. His fists loosened, one small thumb drifting unconsciously toward his mouth as exhaustion claimed him.
I started toward the hallway, cradling him gently.
His head nuzzled into my shoulder, still wet from crying, heavy with weariness, yet somehow trusting me enough to lean on me completely.
Every step felt sacred, every breath I took careful not to break the fragile peace between us.
His breath warmed the side of my neck.
His tiny heartbeat tapped against my skin like Morse code.
When I reached the door—
It burst open.
Light from the hallway sliced across my face.
And Pen stood there. Filling the doorway like a storm.
Wide awake. Barefoot. Eyes blazing.
Oversized T-shirt hanging off one shoulder.
Hair wild from sleep.
Eyes feral enough to make the devil rethink his life choices.
Breathing hard like she’d sprinted across the house barefoot in fear of losing her child.
Her gaze took in the scene:
Her son asleep on my shoulder. My arms around him. My shirt damp with his tears. Her son’s fingers curled in the fabric near my heart.
Her pupils blew wide.
Her lips parted.
And her voice—when it came—was a blade wrapped in velvet. “What did you do to him?” she snarled and lunged.
Before I could react, she ripped Vanya out of my arms with a speed and strength born only from motherhood and terror.
He clung to her instantly, like his bones recognized her before his mind did. His small fingers fisted in her shirt, face burrowing into her neck, new tears spilling hot and fast.
She curled around him, shielding him with her entire body.
“If you laid one finger on him,” she hissed, voice shaking with fury, “I will end you. I don’t care who you are.”
Then she was gone—vanishing down the hall with her child held tight—and the door slammed behind her like a gunshot that left smoke in the air.
I stood frozen in the wreckage of my surveillance room. Monitors flickering. My shirt soaked in a child’s grief. The ghost of his weight still pressed to my chest.
Minutes bled into hours, or maybe hours bled into minutes—I couldn’t tell. Time lost meaning when the house fell silent and I had nothing to look at but the frozen camera feeds showing rooms empty of the two people who mattered.
At some point—after the pounding in my chest stopped sounding like an execution—the door opened again.
No slam. No fury. Just a slow, quiet push.
Pen slipped inside alone.
Moonlight from the hallway carved her silhouette: silver on her cheekbones, shadow along her throat, the shape of her hips forming a perfect hourglass in her soft cotton shorts. She looked like a memory trying to kill me and a future I couldn’t touch.
She closed the door gently behind her.
We stared at each other.
She broke the silence first, voice low and lethal as a blade dragged across skin.
“You made my son cry.”
“I answered his question honestly,” I said.
She flinched. Barely—but I saw it.
“He asked if I could promise never to hurt you,” I went on. “I told him I couldn’t. But I swore I would protect you both with my life.”
Her eyes scanned every inch of my face, looking for the lie, the manipulation, the trap.
She didn’t find one.
Something inside her shifted. Not softened—but... cracked.
Grief. Fury. Exhaustion. A tenderness she refused to acknowledge. A history she couldn’t outrun.
She walked toward me.
One step.
Another.
Another.
Until she stood close enough that my breath stirred a strand of her hair, close enough that I could see the faint freckles across her nose.
Her scent—jasmine and warm skin—hit me like a fist.
“You want to marry me to save your empire,” she whispered. “Fine. But understand this, Dmitri Volkov.”
She rose onto her toes, leaning in until her lips brushed my ear.
Her breath was warm.
Her voice was a death sentence.
“I may resemble the woman you lost, but don’t mistake me for her—and don’t you dare mistake me for someone you can break. If you ever make my son cry again, I will cut your heart out with a spoon and make you choke on it while it’s still beating.”
She paused.
A slow, wicked smile curved her mouth.
“And I will smile while I do it.”
Then she turned away—shoulders straight, head high, hips swaying with lethal grace.
She stood in the doorway like a divine punishment—an avenging angel carved from moonlight and wrath.
How dare she walk into my room and threaten me?
What gave her the spine to stand there, barefoot and shaking, and still look me in the eye like she wasn’t terrified?
Did she really have no idea who I am?
And the irony—her son came looking for me.
Of course I’ve always known there was more to her.
A woman who bears my late fiancée’s short name—Pen instead of Penelope.
A woman who has a son the exact age my son would have been.
A woman who looks like the ghost I buried—but not quite.
If only she knew.
If only she understood that every unanswered question wrapped around her only makes me hate her harder.
Violently.
So violently the entire room feels like it’s tilting.
I hate the face—my Penelope’s face—worn by someone who isn’t her.
I hate the sharper lines on her cheeks, cut by survival instead of laughter.
I hate the bruised shadows under her eyes.
I hate the tremor she tries to hide in her hands.
I hate the way she looks at me like I’m the worst thing that ever crawled out of hell.
And most of all—
I hate the way my traitorous body reacts the moment she breathes in my direction.
Like a starving man smelling bread.
Like a drowning man glimpsing air.
Like a sinner kneeling at the altar he burned with his own hands.
“If you have nothing to say,” I said, forcing the ice back into my voice as I turned toward the monitors, “get out.”
I heard her inhale.
Shallow. Controlled.
The kind of breath someone takes right before they do something irrevocable.
She didn’t leave.
She walked toward me.
Three deliberate steps.
Her eyes—God help me—went molten.
She stepped into my space, so close I could see every fleck of gold in her irises, the rapid flutter of her pulse at the base of her throat.
“Don’t underestimate me, Mr. Dmitri,” she whispered.
Not a threat—a promise.Cold, quiet, absolute.
“Touch my son again,” she spat, voice shaking with fury, “and I swear to God I’ll end you myself. Hurt me if you want—just stay the fuck away from my child.”
Something inside me snapped so violently I saw white.
I was on my feet before the thought finished forming, fury roaring in my blood.
I towered over her—and still she did not back down.
Not an inch.
“You don’t get to threaten me in my own home,” I snarled. “And maybe teach your son to stay in his room. He came to me, Pen—asking questions you clearly planted in his mouth.”
I didn’t remember grabbing her.
I only knew my hands were already on her arms—hard, unrelenting—and then her back hit the CCTV desk with a thud that made the monitors rattle and papers explode in a snowstorm onto the floor.
She didn’t gasp. Didn’t flinch.
She stared up at me like I was nothing but an obstacle in her way.
I pressed forward, pinning her there—chest to chest, hip to hip, my body caging hers with terrifying ease.
Her scent hit me like a punch: jasmine, warm skin, and something wild and uniquely Penelope. Something that haunted me for five fucking years.
“I don’t know how they raised you in Greece,” I growled, my lips almost brushing her cheek, “but in my territory you show respect. With your words. With your actions. With your silence when I tell you to shut up.”
She spat in my face.
Warm. Sharp. Shocking.
I didn’t move.
Her nails dug into my forearms as she tried to shove me off, but I pressed harder, boxing her in completely until her breath came fast and furious against my throat.
“Get away from me!” she snarled.
“No.”
I leaned in until our noses almost touched, until I could feel her breath fan across my lips.
“You have forty-eight hours.”
Her pupils blew wide.
“Forty-eight hours to become my wife,” I said.
“Forty-eight hours to stand beside me in the town square, in front of every family, every soldier, every bastard who thinks they own a piece of this territory.”
I felt her heartbeat hammer through her skin.
“Or,” I continued softly, dangerously, “I marry Seraphina. And you become my mistress.”
Her face went white.
“I won’t let you go. Not again. Not ever.”
I lowered my voice to a growl that rumbled against her sternum.
“Wife, mistress, prisoner—”
I didn’t care what word she soaked in blood and hatred.
“—you stay here. With me. Forever.”
Her breath hitched.
Whether from fury or fear or something she didn’t want to acknowledge—
I didn’t know.
Didn’t care.
Because the wildfire in her eyes told me one thing:
This woman would rather burn my world to ash than bend.
And God help us both—that only made me want her more.
I released one of her arms—slowly, deliberately—as though granting a mercy she didn’t deserve.
My other hand stayed locked around her wrist, pinning her to the desk with one small point of contact that carried the threat of ten thousand more.
With my free hand, I reached into my suit pocket. The movement made her tense, eyes flicking downward, expecting a blade.
Instead, I drew out a silk handkerchief.
White. Clean. Monogrammed.
I wiped her spit from my cheek with excruciating slowness.
Not breaking eye contact.
Not blinking.
Not breathing normally.
“And don’t ever spit on me again,” I murmured, dropping the cloth beside her hip. “It stinks.”
Her lip curled. “Fuck you.”
The words were a slap. The tone was a dagger.