Chapter 15
PENELOPE
“You think you can just... stop loving your late wife?” I asked quietly.
The question slipped out before I could stop it—too honest, too exposed. The skepticism in my voice surprised even me. I searched his face for anger, for offense. I found neither.
Moonlight washed over Dmitri’s features, softening nothing, revealing everything. He didn’t look away.
“I don’t think love works like a switch,” he said at last. His voice was calm, almost weary. “You don’t turn it off. You learn to live around it. Or it eats you alive.”
He paused, gaze drifting to the lake before returning to me. When his eyes found mine again, something raw surfaced there.
“But I have to move on,” he continued. “Eventually. The world doesn’t stop because I want it to.
Men who stand still die.” His attention lingered on my face—too long, too intent.
“And when I look at you... I see her. In the way you smile when you’re about to say something sharp.
In the way you tilt your head when you’re thinking.
” His jaw tightened. “The thought of letting you walk away in three months—of watching you disappear again—it’s torture. Pure torture.”
The words landed heavier than any threat he’d made that night.
I swallowed, forcing air into my lungs. “Yet it will happen,” I said softly, more to myself than to him. “It has to.”
He exhaled, a slow, burdened sound, as if years pressed down on his chest all at once. Then his gaze flicked past me, toward a discreet staff member lingering near the terrace doors.
“Bring a chessboard,” Dmitri said.
The man nodded immediately and vanished. Moments later, he returned with an elegant portable set—walnut board, ivory and ebony pieces polished to a gleam. He placed it between us and withdrew without comment, as if this too were part of the night’s expected rituals.
Dmitri sat, rolling his shoulders once before arranging the pieces with precise efficiency. There was no hesitation in his movements.
“To win a war,” he said, pushing his king’s pawn forward two squares, “you don’t rely on emotion. You rely on foresight.”
I mirrored him, advancing my own pawn. “Foresight matters,” I agreed. “But patience wins more battles than brute force.”
The game unfolded beneath the stars.
At first, we played in silence—the soft click of wood against wood, the faint echo of laughter drifting up from below. Dmitri opened aggressively, knights developing fast, bishops slicing diagonals, king castled early behind a wall of pawns. It was a confident opening. Ruthless.
I answered carefully. I controlled the center, fianchettoed my bishop, refused to be baited into early exchanges. When he sacrificed a pawn to open a file, I took it—then another—pressing forward, sensing blood.
His brow barely furrowed.
I infiltrated with my rook, forked his pieces with a knight, then—clean, elegant—captured his queen.
I looked up at him, unable to keep the edge from my voice. “Even men who think they’re ten steps ahead should be careful,” I said. “Arrogance loses wars.”
He only leaned back, studying the board like a man admiring a painting.
Then he moved.
One smooth slide of his remaining rook along an open file I hadn’t protected—revealing a discovered attack from his bishop. Check. My king trapped. My queen pinned. Every escape square controlled.
The realization hit like ice water.
No matter what I did, I would lose both.
My fingers hovered over the board, heart thudding. I searched for a miracle. There was none.
“Sometimes,” Dmitri said quietly, satisfaction threading through his voice, “you let your enemy believe they’re winning. You give them momentum. Confidence.” His eyes lifted to mine. “You draw them in deep—until they’re overextended. And then you strike. Where it hurts most.”
I tipped my king over, the sound small but final. “You win.”
“Because I was already thinking beyond this board,” he replied, resetting the pieces with idle grace. “Before you ever saw the trap.”
He stilled, then met my gaze again—no smile this time. Only resolve.
“If I win this war,” he said evenly, “if the Orlovs fall—I will come find you in Greece.”
My heart stuttered. I forced a laugh that didn’t feel like mine.
“That won’t be necessary,” I said lightly. “I’ll probably be married to someone else by then. Someone safe. Someone new.”
I swallowed.
“I’ll start over. Properly.”
The air changed.
The softness vanished from his expression, replaced by something dark and absolute.
“That,” Dmitri said, voice low and unyielding, “is not going to happen.”
He reached into his jacket, fingers already closing around a cigarette. The metallic click of his lighter echoed softly as the flame bloomed, briefly illuminating the sharp planes of his face—eyes hollowed by too many sleepless nights, jaw set in quiet self-punishment.
“Please,” I said, before the cigarette ever reached his lips. “Don’t smoke.”
“You don’t like the smell?”
I shook my head.
He paused mid-motion, the lighter hovering between us. “Penelope is asthmatic,” he said, his voice turning deliberately casual, “and she hates the smell of me smoking, too.”
The words were meaningless on their own—yet the way he said them, knowing and faintly mysterious, sent my heart pounding anyway.
The truth stayed locked behind my teeth.
The similarities between Penelope and me were becoming impossible to ignore.
Was he already wondering if I could be her—and too afraid to confront the truth?
As if it were easier for him to keep me dead in his mind, because believing I was alive would shatter everything he’d already accepted.
For a heartbeat, he studied me. Then, without comment, he snapped the lighter shut.
Relief loosened my shoulders—until he stood.
Dmitri walked several paces away, stopping at the edge of the terrace where the wrought iron met the open night. With his back to me, he flicked the lighter again. The cigarette flared. He inhaled deeply, shoulders lifting, then sagging, as smoke spiraled into the dark.
Even from a distance, I could read him. The rigid set of his spine. The faint, humorless curve of his mouth. This wasn’t indulgence—it was punishment. A man feeding a vice because pain demanded an outlet. Because guilt needed somewhere to go.
For failing to protect the woman he loved.
For losing a son he didn’t know was still breathing.
The guilt hit me like a blade under the ribs. I turned away, fixing my gaze on the lake below—black glass stretched beneath the stars, endless and indifferent.
Footsteps cut through the quiet.
I turned just as Ricci Ferraro emerged from the shadows, his stride brisk, expression stripped of its earlier polish. Whatever smug detachment he’d worn inside the ballroom was gone now, replaced by something leaner.
Dmitri crushed the cigarette beneath his heel and returned without a word, pulling out a stool and nudging it toward the table. Ricci took it, movements stiff.
Dmitri reclaimed his seat beside me, close enough that his knee brushed mine—a silent assertion.
“So,” Ricci began, folding his hands together, voice tight with restraint. “The happy couple wants me to throw my family into a war you’re clearly eager to ignite.”
His gaze flicked between us, skeptical, almost contemptuous. “So this... all of it... is because you won’t have Seraphina as your wife? Because of love?” A humorless laugh escaped him. “And where does that leave me, hm? What exactly do I gain by spilling Ferraro blood for Volkov romance?”
Dmitri leaned forward, forearms braced on the marble table. His voice was calm. “Your wife was taken by Albanian traffickers on your wedding night,” he said evenly. “I can help you find her.”
The effect was instantaneous.
Ricci shot to his feet as if struck. The color drained from his face, replaced by a raw, feral fury that shattered his composure. “Don’t talk about her,” he snarled.
He grabbed his stool and hurled it across the terrace. The metal slammed into stone with a violent clang that echoed into the night.
Dmitri stood as well, unflinching. In two strides, he closed the distance and planted a firm hand on Ricci’s shoulder—not restraining, but grounding. Anchoring.
“Do you want to find her,” Dmitri said quietly, “or not?”
Ricci wrenched free, stumbling back a step, chest heaving.
His eyes were wild now, unguarded. “She’s everything to me,” he rasped.
“I have men everywhere—inside Albanian ports, their clubs, their shipping lines. I pay in blood and money every day just to chase whispers. Of course I want to find her.” His voice cracked.
“I would trade my life for hers without hesitation.”
“Then let Dmitri Volkov help you,” I said.
Both men turned to me.
My heart hammered, but I held Ricci’s gaze, steady and unflinching. “He doesn’t make promises lightly. And when he hunts, he doesn’t stop.”
Ricci’s eyes narrowed, flicking to Dmitri with open scorn.
“Your husband’s own son was taken five years ago,” he shot back.
“By his father-in-law, no less. And he never found the boy.” His lip curled.
“Yet I’m supposed to believe he can find my wife?
This is an insult. A mockery. You want to drag me into your war and salt your failure into my wounds. ”
The silence that followed was heavy enough to crush bone.
Dmitri didn’t deny it.
He straightened slowly, gaze unwavering. “You’re right,” he said. “I failed once.”
Ricci blinked, clearly not expecting that.
“I trusted the wrong people,” Dmitri continued. “I played by rules that never existed. And I paid for it.” His voice dropped, rougher now. “I will never make that mistake again.”
He stepped closer, invading Ricci’s space. “The Albanians don’t hide well. They move product. They leave trails—money, ships, names. I already have eyes where you don’t.” His tone sharpened. “You want your wife back alive? Then you don’t stay neutral. You don’t wait for others to bleed.”