Chapter 11
DMITRI VOLKOV
“Then again, Antonio is back in Lake Como,” Giovanni said without preamble, his voice roughened by pain he refused to acknowledge or treat.
I didn’t look up at first. I was still standing behind the desk, hands braced against the wood as if the grain itself could anchor me. “Back,” I repeated slowly. “That didn’t last long.”
“Word is a marriage is being arranged between him and the second Orlov daughter.”
“Elena?” I leaned back into the chair, leather creaking beneath my weight as I settled.
Elena Orlov—quieter than Seraphina, sharper than she let on. The kind who smiled while counting knives. “Interesting choice.”
“Yes. Seraphina’s younger sister.”
I shrugged, deliberately casual. “Once they’re married, he’ll take her to Rome. That’s always been his base. His influence here has been limited because he never stayed long. Frankly, I’ve found his absence convenient.”
Giovanni didn’t mirror my ease. His eyes flicked to the iPad in his good hand, jaw tightening before he spoke again. “If that were the full story, I’d still be sedated and arguing with nurses.”
I straightened. “Meaning?”
“The agreement Antonio struck with the Orlovs is different this time,” Giovanni said. “After the wedding, he stays. Permanently. In Lake Como. He’s relocating three hundred of his father’s best men with him.”
The room went very still.
Antonio did nothing without calculation. Rome was his kingdom—the south bent to him because he understood power wrapped in civility, brutality delivered with a smile. For him to abandon that seat, even partially, meant something was shifting. Or being forced.
My fingers tightened against the armrests. “He’s not here for love.”
Giovanni’s mouth twitched. “Men like Antonio don’t move armies for honeymoons.”
“He has an agenda,” I said.
“Already digging,” Giovanni replied. “Quietly. But whatever he’s planning, it intersects with Orlov interests. And by extension—yours.”
I exhaled through my nose, irritation threading with something colder.
I rubbed my jaw, the rasp of stubble grounding me. “Keep eyes on Antonio. If he so much as breathes in my direction, I want to know.”
Giovanni inclined his head. “Already done.”
Silence stretched, heavy with unspoken calculations.
“And lastly,” he said finally. “Pen.”
Giovanni tapped the screen, bringing up a dossier. “She has no family anyone can trace. No public records that extend beyond the last five years. No grieving relatives. No loose ends.”
“That’s impossible,” I muttered.
“For an ordinary woman, yes,” he agreed. “For someone under Ruslan Baranov’s protection? No.”
My eyes flicked up sharply.
“She lived quietly under Ruslan’s protection. She wasn’t the only one. We all know Ruslan Baranov’s reputation—he finds people at the point of collapse and reforges them. New names. New lives. New spines.”
His gaze held mine. “The way he did for you.”
The words landed with surgical precision.
After my mother’s murder.
After the foster family I’d trusted sold me to my enemies. After I’d crawled out of that hillside half-dead, soaked in blood that wasn’t all mine.
Ruslan had found me then.
Had turned me into something that survived.
“What about contact?” I asked, my voice neutral by sheer force of will.
“I’ve tried contacting Ruslan,” Giovanni said. “Repeatedly. His assistant stonewalls everyone. Reaching Ruslan Baranov directly is nearly impossible unless he decides the conversation is worth having.”
I stared down at the dark wood of the desk, at the faint scar near the edge where Penelope had once slammed her hand in an argument and then laughed at herself for losing her temper. The memory cut deeper than any blade.
“Any rational man,” he said slowly, “would assume this woman is Penelope. That she survived. That Ruslan helped her disappear the way he helped you.” Giovanni didn’t hesitate. “But you don’t believe that.”m
“I watched her die,” I said, each word dragging itself up from somewhere deep and rotten.
“She took a bullet for me, just minutes after giving birth. They admitted her to the hospital, removed the bullets, and I stayed by her side every single day, every single moment—barely alive myself, praying constantly for Penelope to recover, promising I would make up for every wrong I’d done.”
“The doctors told me the chances were grim—the bullet had struck her femoral artery, a delicate spot. One night, while holding her hand in that hospital room, chaos erupted. Gunshots. Since New Jersey wasn’t my territory, her father’s men had the upper hand.
And I... I watched the machines flatline as she panicked at the sound of the shots.
I saw the blood. Saw her skin turn gray. ”
My throat tightened despite myself.
“And then her father’s men stormed in and took her body,” I continued, voice low and ragged. “I thought it was vengeance. A final cruelty. Denying me even the right to bury her.
Giovanni shifted his weight, a barely audible hiss escaping him as the movement tugged at the bandage wrapped tight around his shoulder.
He masked the pain quickly—he always did—but I’d known him too long not to notice.
“Are you certain those men were Marco’s?” he asked, voice measured, careful. “Think about it, boss. Marco Romano never gave a damn about Penelope herself. Not really. He cared about bloodlines. About the grandson she carried. That was always his obsession.”
I stayed silent, letting him continue.
Giovanni pressed. “And Marco took a bullet from you just days ago. You hit him clean. A man bleeding out doesn’t assemble a surgical extraction team in under a week.
And if the bullet struck Penelope’s femoral artery—the main artery along the thigh—have you even examined her body for the wound?
” Giovanni’s voice was cold, relentless.
“If there’s a mark along her femoral artery, then she is Penelope. It’s the easiest way to see if she’s been deceiving us.”
My jaw tightened.
“My money’s on Ruslan,” Giovanni finished. “He staged it. All of it. This woman is Penelope and Vanya is yours.”
I exhaled slowly, forcing the breath through lungs that felt too tight. “There are differences,” I said at last. “The way Pen moves. The cadence of her voice when she’s angry. Sometimes she looks at me like she’s seeing a stranger.”
Giovanni didn’t hesitate. “Five years will do that.”
He glanced at the desk, at the crystal ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts, one still burning down to the filter.
“You quit smoking for her once,” he added quietly.
“Cold turkey. Threw the packs into the fire yourself because her asthma made you nervous. Now?” His eyes lifted to mine.
“Now the ashtray is never empty. Try smoking near her—see if she can even stand it. That’s another way to tell if she’s really Penelope—or lying. ”
I couldn’t help but follow his gaze, terrified of facing the truths it revealed.
“Send me to Greece,” Giovanni said, seizing the opening. “Let me sit across from Ruslan face-to-face. One conversation. I’ll know within five minutes whether this woman is lying—or whether your Penelope somehow climbed out of her grave with your son in her arms.”
My son.
The word hit deeper than any bullet.
Vanya’s face flashed through my mind—those dark, observant eyes, the stubborn tilt of his chin, the way he assessed a room before trusting it. The resemblance had been a knife in my gut from the moment I saw him.
“No,” I said sharply.
Giovanni stilled.
“You stay here,” I continued. “I want security doubled—no, tripled—around Pen and Vanya. Not just the perimeter. Inside the house. Cameras in every hallway. Guards on every floor. No blind spots.”
I leaned forward, voice dropping into something lethal.
“I don’t trust Seraphina one inch. If her family was willing to kidnap a five-year-old to force their way into my home, then sabotage is nothing. Poison is nothing. Psychological warfare is nothing.”
I paused, letting the implication hang.
“And if anything happens to them,” I said softly, “Lake Como will drown in Orlov blood.”
Giovanni inclined his head. “Understood.”
But he didn’t leave.
He shifted the iPad to his uninjured hand, fingers tightening around it. I knew that look. He was weighing whether loyalty meant obedience—or honesty.
I arched a brow. “If there’s more, say it. Nothing you tell me will be worse than losing Penelope once already.”
He took a step closer, lowering his voice as if the walls themselves might listen.
“There’s a simpler way,” he said. “A DNA sample. From the boy. Quiet. A cheek swab while he sleeps. Forty-eight hours, max. We’d know for certain if he’s yours.”
The room seemed to contract.
“And if he is,” Giovanni added carefully, “then there’s only one explanation left for the woman.”
The words struck like a blow to the sternum.
For a moment, I couldn’t breathe.
Giovanni had laid out too many ways to confirm the truth: if Pen was my Penelope, if Vanya was my son, if the woman I had buried was not a memory—but flesh and blood, alive in my home.
Confirmation meant truth. Truth meant responsibility. It meant acknowledging that the child I had nearly erased was mine—and that the woman I’d brutalized, abandoned, and buried had survived me.
It meant the past wasn’t dead.
It was waiting.
“You will not touch that boy without his mother’s consent,” I said, my voice stripped of warmth, honed down to command and threat alike. “That’s an order, Giovanni. Non-negotiable.”
He held my gaze, searching my face the way only a man who had bled for me dared to. For a heartbeat, the room balanced on a knife’s edge.
Then he nodded once. “Understood.”
“I want it,” I continued, the steel giving way to something quieter—rawer. “More than you know. I want her to be Penelope. I want Vanya to be my son.” My jaw clenched. “God help me, I want it so badly it claws at me in the dark.”
I stood, pacing once, then stopped at the window where the lake lay black and endless below.
“But we do this clean,” I said. “No tricks. No shortcuts. No violations that could destroy what little trust she’s given me. I will not become the man who hurt her again.”
Giovanni’s expression softened—not pity, but respect.
“I’ll confront Ruslan myself,” I finished. “When the time is right.”
“As you say, boss.”
He turned and left, the door closing behind him with a muted click that echoed far too loudly in the quiet room.
Silence rushed in to take his place.
I returned to the desk, staring down at the chaos I hadn’t noticed before—half-read books, intelligence reports stacked and restacked without progress, a cup of coffee gone cold hours ago. The scent of smoke hung in the air, stale and accusing.
For a long moment, I did nothing.
Then I picked up my phone.
The number was still there. Of course it was. Some things you never delete—only pretend you’ve forgotten.
I pressed call.
One ring.
Two.
I exhaled slowly, already bracing for absence, for evasion—
The line clicked.
“Dmitri.”
Ruslan Baranov’s voice filled my ear like distant thunder—calm, deep, unmistakable. Amusement curled faintly beneath it, like a predator recognizing familiar footsteps.
“Ruslan,” I said, steadying my breath. “I have questions. And I need you to answer them honestly.”
A low chuckle rolled through the line. “Do not insult me, boy. Ruslan Baranov does not lie. If I cannot answer, I will tell you so plainly.”
I could picture him perfectly—leaning back in some leather chair halfway across the world, eyes sharp, mind ten moves ahead.
“Now speak,” he continued. “I have precisely two minutes before my next appointment.”
I leaned forward, forearms braced on the desk, the phone pressed hard against my ear as if proximity alone might force truth through the line.
“Five years ago,” I said, each word measured, controlled, “a woman died in my arms. Penelope Romano. You know the name.”
Silence.
Not a breath. Not a rustle.
That alone told me everything—and nothing.
“Tell me,” I said quietly, dangerously, “did she really die that night?”
I swallowed once.
“Or did you take her?”
The lake shimmered under the indifferent moon, uncaring of gods or monsters.
I waited for the man who had once saved me, the man who had even been at her burial, to tell me whether he had also stolen her from death—or from me.