Chapter 18
The hotel room was a dim cocoon, the faded wallpaper and heavy curtains swallowing the weak glow of a single lamp.
My mother—my biological mother, a stranger just hours ago—slept fitfully on the narrow bed, one hand clutching the edge of the blanket, her breath shallow and uneven, her face carved with years of loss.
The silver threads in her hair caught the light, fragile and human, and for the first time I saw not the mystery of who she was, but the weight of what she had endured.
I sat motionless in the corner, knees drawn up, my back pressed against the wall as though I needed the cold to remind me I was still alive, listening to her shallow breaths mingle with the muffled hum of rain outside.
She’d said we would talk in Russia, that her heart couldn’t rest until we were safe on her soil.
But waiting felt like torture.
A thousand questions gnawed at me—about her, about my biological father, about the years that had been stolen. Yet, as I watched her, exhaustion dulled the storm inside me.
What I felt now wasn’t anger. It was something rawer. Protective.
“Mom,” I whispered, the word strange and fragile on my tongue. “I may not have power or money yet... but I swear, you’ll never know pain again. Not while I breathe.”
The vow hung in the dark between us—quiet, absolute.
Her face softened in sleep, the lines of grief easing as if she’d somehow heard me. And in that small, rented room, I felt something I hadn’t in years.
Belonging.
My foster parents had made my life a private hell—locking me in a damp for days without food or light, the air damp with rot and the sound of dripping water my only company.
They called it “correction.” The belts they used left welts that healed into scars.
Their sons—spoiled, sneering devils—would burn my arms with cigarettes, laughing while I bit my tongue to keep from crying.
I learned early that silence was safer than tears.
But silence had its price. It turned every scream inward. It made a cage of your own ribs.
Now I knew they had done worse than beat me.
They had killed my father. Maybe they had tried to kill her too. I saw it in the way she’d looked over her shoulder in the rain — the haunted flicker in her eyes every time the headlights from the street below passed across the curtains, the tremor in her hand when she reached for her tea.
She’d lived years in fear, searching for me in shadows, and still she came. Still she found me.
And I... I was a boy made of bruises and mistakes, sitting in a cheap motel room, unable to sleep beside the only blood family I had left.
She wasn’t safe here. None of us were.
I kept vigil that night, my body still, my mind wide awake.
My gaze drifted between her sleeping form and the cheap digital clock glowing on the nightstand. 3:07 a.m. In a few hours, dawn would bleed into the city, and we’d be gone—on a plane to Russia, leaving behind everything I’d ever known.
New York. The house of ghosts.
And Penelope.
Her name alone was enough to reopen the wound, sharp and merciless.
I could see her again—curled in another man’s arms, the rain beating against the window behind her.
She had promised me forever.
I could still hear her laugh under the oak tree, the way she’d traced my palm and said she wanted to grow old with me. And then I’d seen her — skin against skin with another boy, the light catching the curve of her smile. Not fear. Not regret. Only comfort.
The betrayal wasn’t sharp anymore. It was dull and endless, like a wound that refused to clot. I wanted to hate her, but my heart kept dragging me back to the memory of her voice, the way she’d whispered my name like it meant something.
I pressed my palms into my eyes until I saw stars. The pain did nothing. The ache was deeper.
Maybe it wasn’t her fault, a small voice said.
Maybe it was mine — for believing someone like her could love someone like me.
The thought tore something loose inside me.
I stood abruptly, the chair scraping against the floor. My mother stirred but didn’t wake. I went to the small desk near the window, its surface scarred with cigarette burns and coffee stains. The lamp flickered as I turned it on, throwing pale light across the paper pad and pen.
For a long moment, I just stared.
My reflection ghosted faintly in the window, eyes hollow, face pale and bruised. I didn’t recognize the boy looking back.
And then, with hands that wouldn’t stop shaking, I began to write.
PENELOPE,
You were the only good thing I ever believed in.
When I told you I loved you, it wasn’t teenage nonsense.
It was the only truth I had. You were the pulse that kept me from ending it all on the nights my foster family decided I wasn’t worth feeding.
You were my reason to crawl out of basements and blood.
You were my proof that something gentle could survive inside me.
And you destroyed it.
I’ve tried to tell myself it was a mistake, that maybe I didn’t see what I saw — but the mind is cruel, Penelope. It replays things in perfect detail when you most want to forget. The shape of your body under his arm.
I can’t unsee it. I can’t unhear it.
You taught me love could hurt more than fists.
You taught me that light can lie.
Still, even now, I wish I could hate you the way I should.
You used me, played me for a fool, your promises as empty as the wind.
Every letter we hid under that loose brick, every whispered vow, was a lie. You were my light, my only refuge, and you extinguished it without a care.
You promised me, at twenty-five, you’d be my bride, your words a melody that soothed my battered soul. I believed you, Penelope, with every fiber of my being.
But you were a mirage, a cruel illusion cloaked in love’s guise.
While I risked everything—sneaking past my aunt’s iron grip, enduring her vile punishments to steal moments with you—you gave your heart, your body, to another.
At fifteen, you lay with him, your skin pressed to his in a betrayal that sears my memory.
I wish your name didn’t taste like prayer when I whisper it. I wish your memory didn’t feel like home. But I’ll carry you with me, even when I try to bury what’s left of that boy you once loved.
You’ll remember me one day — not as the broken foster boy who worshiped you, but as the man your betrayal created.
I leave for Russia now, to reclaim a life stolen from me, but know this: I will return.
Someday, when the world has reshaped me, I will make you feel the weight of this betrayal.
You will pay, Penelope, for the heart you shattered, for the love you defiled.
Until then, I carry the wreckage of us, a wound that will never heal.
Dmitri.
The words didn’t come out neat. They came in bursts—jagged, uneven, like a confession carved from flesh.
Ink bled across the page, mixing with the rain that still clung to my sleeves, each line a wound I couldn’t close.
I didn’t write to be forgiven. I wrote because silence was killing me faster than any bullet could. Because she had to know what she’d done to me—how loving her had both saved and destroyed me.
By the time I stopped, the clock glowed 4:02 a.m. My hand throbbed, the paper marred with smears of blood and tears.
The hotel room felt too small, too quiet, the kind of silence that mocked grief.
My mother slept only a few feet away, her breathing steady, unaware that the son she’d just found was already slipping away again.
I folded the letter, my fingers trembling as if they knew this was a goodbye.
My chest burned, not with anger anymore, but with something colder—grief calcified into resolve.
The reunion with my mother had stirred something fragile, almost human, but Penelope’s betrayal still burned beneath it, a fire that refused to die.
I couldn’t leave without facing her.
Not after everything.
Not after the way she laid so comfortably with him, like I’d never existed.
I needed her to see what she’d done—to hold the letter and feel the weight of what she’d broken. Maybe I wanted her to hurt. Maybe I just wanted proof that I’d once mattered enough to hurt her back.
My mother murmured something in her sleep as I rose from the chair, but I didn’t stop.
I grabbed her car keys from the desk, my heartbeat pounding in my ears, and slipped out of the room, closing the door with a soft click.
The hallway smelled of stale cigarettes and bleach, the flickering lights throwing shadows that followed me like ghosts.
The elevator was too slow, so I took the stairs, my footsteps echoing in the narrow shaft.
Every step felt like a countdown.
Outside, the night greeted me with cold rain, heavier now, blurring the city into streaks of color and grief.
The drive to the Romano estate was a fever dream.
When I reached the estate, I killed the engine and sat in the silence, listening to the tick of cooling metal.
The Romano mansion loomed beyond the wrought-iron gates, beautiful and merciless. A fortress guarded by men who’d shoot first and question later.
Sneaking in was madness.
But love had always been my favorite form of insanity.
I slipped from the car, the rain plastering my hair to my forehead, and crept toward the gates.
My heart thundered as I traced the shadows along the outer wall, the air thick with the scent of wet earth and danger.
I knew the rhythm of their patrols by heart—the blind spots, the lazy turns, the seconds between flashlights. I’d mapped them long ago, back when every trespass had been for love, not vengeance.
Now, it was just for closure.
Or maybe punishment.
I wasn’t sure which anymore.
The perimeter wall loomed before me, slick with rain, its crown of razor wire catching the moonlight like silver fangs.
I scaled it, my fingers scraping the stone, my muscles screaming from my aunt’s earlier assault.
The sedatives still dulled my limbs, but pain was the only thing keeping me focused.