Chapter 16
PENELOPE
The car ride back to the mansion was suffocating in its silence.
Giovanni’s plan—to fake the abortion—hung over me like a blade: a lifeline for my child, yet a threat to both our lives if Dmitri ever uncovered the truth.
As the wrought-iron gates of the mansion loomed ahead, moonlight glinting off their intricate curls, I gripped the gun tighter, the cold metal a talisman against the storm I knew awaited me.
I had drawn Dmitri’s blood in the sacred halls of the Basilica di Sant’Abbondio—crossed a line that could cost me everything—but I wasn’t going down quietly.
The gravel crunched sharply beneath my boots as I strode toward the grand entrance.
The night air was crisp, scented faintly with lake water and pine, but it did nothing to slow the frantic rhythm of my pulse.
I pushed through the heavy oak doors.
The foyer greeted me with its cold marble floors, fractured by the light of the chandelier overhead.
Shadows stretched long and dark across the space, mirroring the chaos in my mind.
I headed straight for the kitchen, my steps echoing in the cavernous hall, searching for anything to anchor me, anything to still the storm that raged within.
In the kitchen, the stainless-steel counters gleamed under the soft recessed lighting, a cold, clinical reflection of the chaos in my chest.
I grabbed a crystal glass from the cabinet, hands trembling as I filled it with water, the liquid sloshing and catching the light.
I drank deeply, but the cool slide down my throat did nothing to ease the tight knot of panic and dread.
My eyes fixed on the dark window above the sink, the reflection of my pale face staring back at me like a ghost.
Every thought of Dmitri—the rage in his eyes, the memory of the gunshot—crept through my mind like a shadow clawing closer, relentless.
A sudden clatter shattered the fragile stillness.
The gun slipped from my left hand, skittering across the tile with a metallic thud. I lunged, but it was too late.
Dmitri stood there, polished shoe pinning the weapon to the floor, his presence filling the kitchen like a storm cloud pressing down.
My spine hit the cold counter, and I froze, defenseless, chest hammering.
“You... how?” I whispered, disbelief and terror warring in my chest.
He had left the cathedral barely an hour ago, his arm bleeding, treated by the doctor. And yet here he stood, like a shadow made flesh.
His suit jacket was gone, the stark white bandage on his arm smeared with crimson, a brutal contrast against the bloodied fabric.
His eyes—piercing, ice-blue daggers—locked onto mine, unblinking, unyielding, unreadable, and in that instant, the air in the kitchen thickened with a weight I couldn’t breathe through.
He didn’t speak at first, just leaned slightly, the shadow of a smirk brushing his face, eyes dark with obsession and something colder—danger.
My pulse jumped.
“You—you left me no choice!” I blurted, my voice trembling.
The words sounded small, fragile, but my eyes burned with accusation.
I couldn’t back down, but every instinct screamed to run.
“I was tortured my whole life by the people who called themselves my parents,” he said, his voice rough, edged with something fragile beneath the steel.
“Not just beaten or controlled—they starved me of every ounce of affection until I stopped expecting it. My foster brothers made it their sport to humiliate me, to remind me I didn’t belong, and their parents—those hypocrites—they watched.
They smiled as if cruelty were a lesson, as if my suffering was entertainment. ”
He took a step closer, his shoe still pressed to the fallen gun, his shadow swallowing mine.
“When I finished school, no university in Italy would touch me. I got an offer from New York University. My foster family... they didn’t want to let me go.
Couldn’t bear the thought of losing something they thought they owned.
Every day with them was a test—how much they could break me before I cracked.
They only relented because they thought distance would keep me under their control.
But distance never changed anything. I carried it with me—every insult, every blow, every glance that told me I was nothing. ”
He drew a breath, his expression tightening as if the words themselves hurt.
“They wouldn’t let me stay in the dorms,” he continued, stepping closer, his shadow swallowing mine. “I was forced to live with my aunt... in Brooklyn. Right next door to your family.”
My throat went dry.
“I ended up living right next to you. Right next to the one place I couldn’t avoid. I saw you, Penelope. I wanted... no, I needed... a reason to fight against all of them. Against everything that told me I didn’t matter. And I found it in you.”
He continued, his tone softer now, but no less sharp. “You were light in a life that had known only darkness. And it killed me, how bright you were. How easy you made everything look.”
His eyes burned brighter, feverish now.
“We were ghosts back then. Sneaking through nights that weren’t meant for us — your parents asleep, my aunt watching every move I made.
The pier by the East River, the rusted fire escape behind the bookstore, that filthy bar on 39th where the floor stuck to our shoes and no one gave a damn who we were.
You’d laugh, and I’d forget what it meant to hurt.
You’d touch me, and I’d think maybe I wasn’t made of ruin after all. ”
His jaw tightened, and the next words came out like a confession he’d been holding too long.
“I loved you. Not the way stories teach men to love — but the only way I knew how. Hungry. Desperate. Possessive. I was nineteen, and you were the only thing in the world that didn’t feel like a punishment.
And maybe that’s why I broke everything that mattered trying to keep you. ”
My breath caught, memories of those clandestine meetings flooding back—his shy smile under the pier’s dim lamplight, the way he’d hold my hand as we whispered dreams on that creaking fire escape, the love letters we’d hide under a loose brick in the alley.
My heart ached, the sweetness of those moments clashing violently with the man before me now.
“So no, I didn’t forget how I felt,” he continued, his voice tightening, bitterness bleeding into every word.
“I don’t have your memory gaps, Penelope.
But you...” His jaw flexed, his fists curling at his sides.
“One night, I climbed through your window like I always did—quiet, careful, just to see you—and there you were. Half-naked. With another guy’s hands on you. ”
The accusation hit like a sledgehammer, the air leaving my lungs in a ragged gasp.
“I didn’t think my heart could break any further, but it did. Every piece of me shattered.”
“You cheated on me, Penelope.”
The words trembled out of him—not shouted, not cold, but cracked and bleeding.
“I learned later about your dissociative amnesia,” he went on, his jaw tightening as if the words themselves hurt, “that maybe you didn’t even remember what you did.
But memory loss doesn’t erase the sight of it.
I saw you, wrapped around him. In your bra and panties. ”
His voice fractured, splintered between fury and heartbreak.
“All the years of torment under those people who raised me, all the fists and filth and silence—I survived them. But you—” He pressed a hand against his chest, eyes wild with something too human to be hate.
“You were supposed to be my peace. My reason to believe in something good. And you destroyed it. You destroyed me.”
I staggered back, my palms finding the cold marble counter, the room spinning in and out of focus.
“I—” My throat locked around the words. “I don’t remember that night,” I whispered, shaking my head as tears blurred my vision.
“Dmitri, please... I swear, I would never. Not consciously. I loved you. I still—”
“Don’t,” he cut in sharply, his tone trembling between rage and grief. “Don’t say that word. You don’t get to weaponize it anymore.”
“You did worse things to me, Penelope,” he said quietly. The kind of calm that comes after something breaks.
“Things I can’t even name without feeling sick.” His mouth twisted, a shadow of a bitter smile ghosting his lips. “But you forget what you did. Maybe that’s easier for you. Pretend it never happened.”
He shook his head once, slow, as if even looking at me hurt.
The light caught his eyes—blue, cold, and shimmering with something dangerously human. “It’s hard to believe you don’t remember,” he said. “Or maybe you’re just pretending. You’ve always been good at that.”
He took a step closer.
The kitchen light turned his bandage ghost-white against the blood still drying beneath it. “And your parents,” he added, his tone dropping to a whisper that felt more like a threat than a confidence. “Do you even know what they did to me?”
My pulse jumped, but I couldn’t speak.
The question hung there, poisonous, a promise of something I wasn’t ready to hear.
He leaned in, his voice soft and trembling with barely-contained fury. “No, you don’t. Because your family made sure you never would. But I’ll tell you, Penelope. You’re going to hear everything they did—and everything you let happen.”
The silence that followed was unbearable.
The hum of the refrigerator, the ticking of the wall clock—it all felt too loud, too real. The sterile light seemed to expose every wound, every lie, every secret I didn’t even know I’d buried.