Chapter 20
PENELOPE
The sudden absence of his touch was almost worse than the violence.
He turned, shoulders heaving, fury radiating off him in waves. In a single sweeping motion, he sent everything on the counter crashing to the floor.
Glass exploded, scattering across the tile like shards of frozen light.
He punched the wall—once. Twice. Three times. The plaster splintered under his fist, the sound echoing through the house like gunfire. Blood smeared the white paint.
He turned back to me, his face raw, unmasked, eyes fever-bright with a kind of love that wasn’t love at all—it was hunger, obsession, grief twisted beyond repair.
“Do you know what terrifies me most?” he said, his voice shaking despite the steel in it, “It’s the thought of you dying and leaving me behind.”
He took a step closer, chest rising and falling in uneven bursts.
His lips curled into something that might have been a smile if it weren’t so broken. “I can’t breathe in a world where you don’t exist. So I’ll keep you alive in the only way I know—by tearing you apart piece by piece, until every part of you remembers me.”
Something inside me broke—not from fear, but sorrow.
Because I saw it then. Beneath the monster he’d become was still the boy who used to whisper my name under summer rain.
The boy who’d been beaten, betrayed, and rebuilt into this creature of vengeance.
He didn’t hate me; he hated himself. And every wound he inflicted on me was another attempt to silence the screaming inside him.
My heart cracked.
And then his next words turned that sorrow into cold horror.
“And that child will never be born,” he murmured, deliberate and slow. “So you may live, Penelope... to grow old at my side, drowning in our shared ruin, our endless suffering.
My breath caught, the meaning sinking in, terror spiking through my veins. But I forced myself to meet his gaze.
To lie.
“I already ended it,” I said, clinging to Giovanni’s lie like a shield.
My voice came out steady, even as fear clawed its way up my throat. “Giovanni gave me misoprostol. I took it on the drive here. He knew I was terrified of injections.”
Dmitri’s eyes narrowed, a flicker of suspicion sharpening his blue gaze.
He studied me as if he could read the truth beneath my words, as if my body would betray me sooner or later.
Then, almost imperceptibly, relief crossed his face—brief, fleeting, but there.
His shoulders eased slightly, the tight line of his jaw softening ever so little, though the storm in his eyes didn’t fade entirely.
“Good,” he said finally, the word clipped, decisive.
He believed me.
He’d bought the lie.
But his relief chilled me more than his rage ever had.
I exhaled silently, forcing myself to keep my composure.
I needed to warn Giovanni, to make sure our stories aligned. My escape depended on this lie, on disappearing before my pregnancy became undeniable.
Dmitri bent down slowly, his movements precise, almost ritualistic, and picked the gun off the floor. He turned it in his hand once, checking the chamber, then leveled it at me.
The metallic click of the safety disengaging made my pulse spike.
My heart stuttered.
He had no reason to keep me alive now.
“Before you shoot me,” I said, forcing my voice to steady though it trembled around the edges, “tell me who Seraphina is.”
His eyes flicked up, sharp and dangerous.
“I know she’s not a lie,” I pressed on, my voice rising despite myself. “Antonio told me, Dmitri. She’s real.”
His jaw tightened, his finger twitching near the trigger.
For a long, unbearable second, he said nothing.
Only the sound of rain against the windows filled the silence, soft but relentless, like the ticking of a clock counting down to something inevitable.
Then, finally—
“Move,” he said.
His voice was flat, controlled, but I caught the slight tremor beneath it.
He gestured with the gun toward the hallway.
I slid off the island carefully, my legs unsteady, my body trembling from adrenaline and exhaustion.
The floor was cold beneath my bare feet, glass crunching under my heel as I obeyed.
As I passed him, I felt the heat of his nearness.
Why won’t he tell me?
My chest ached with frustration and fear. He had done this before—when we were newly married, the same questions, the same silence, like some cruel pattern meant to break me.
Was she real? Or had Giovanni been lying, keeping me blind?
My stomach twisted with the thought that maybe Seraphina was more than real—maybe she was here, in his life, in ways I wasn’t meant to know. Maybe he kept her close, maybe as a mistress, maybe something far worse.
In the dim corridor, shadows stretched long and uneven.
I could feel his gaze on my back, burning, dissecting.
As we moved through the mansion, silence thick between us, I could feel the weight of everything pressing in—the ghosts of our past, the storm outside, the gun still in his hand.
My mind raced, mapping every exit, every possible chance to escape.
“Keep moving,” Dmitri ordered, his voice a cold blade slicing through the tense corridor.
Each word vibrated with fury, edged with grief, leaving no room for hesitation.
My legs shook as I stepped forward.
The weight of his revelations pressed down on me—the knowledge of his mother’s death, my family’s betrayal, the blood that seemed to stain us both.
I stopped, planting my feet like a defiant sentinel, even as the tremor of panic coursed through me.
“My secretary’s sister is Seraphina,” I said, my voice sharper than I expected, trembling under the strain. “She came to the office for Elena—slim, elegant, graceful. Is that her? The flawless phantom you’ve been comparing me to? The woman you think I should’ve been?”
Dmitri’s eyes narrowed.
He didn’t answer. Instead, his fingers moved with precise, deliberate motion over his phone. Seconds stretched like hours.
“Keep moving, Penelope,” he repeated, voice harder this time.
“No!” I snapped, my voice cracking under the weight of everything I’d held back—rage, fear, heartbreak.
“Answer me, damn it! Tell me why you always shut down when I ask about her! Why you never say her name, never tell me who she is. I’ve asked you over and over, Dmitri, and you just—pretend she doesn’t exist! ”
My breath hitched, tears burning my throat. “You’ve already broken me... so what truth could possibly destroy me now?”
The hallway seemed to shrink, shadows crawling along the marble walls as his silence pressed against me.
My pulse thundered in my ears.
Movement flickered at the edge of my vision.
Giovanni emerged from the shadows, the limp in his stride barely noticeable, his scarred face a mask I couldn’t read.
“Lock her up,” Dmitri said flatly, almost casually, yet the cold precision in his tone made it final.
“No!” I staggered back, breath hitching.
My hands scrambled for anything—vase, lamp, candlestick—anything that could give me leverage.
Panic coiled in my throat.
The gun in Dmitri’s hand gleamed like a promise of pain, and Giovanni was closing the distance, inexorable.
“Don’t make me force you, Penelope,” Giovanni said, voice low, almost pleading, but with an edge that told me he would do it if I resisted. “Come with me.”
The walls of the mansion seemed to pulse around me.
My back hit the cold marble, the chandelier light catching on Dmitri’s gun, his eyes burning into mine.
Every part of me screamed defiance. Every nerve in my body screamed terror.
“You can’t lock me up for asking about Seraphina!” I screamed, my voice breaking. “Why can’t you just say it? Tell me who she is! Locking me up won’t erase her!”
The thought of being locked away ate at me. How long would he keep me—one night, a week... forever? No. I refused to be his captive.
Dmitri’s face hardened, eyes like steel, the barrel of the gun unwavering. “You shot me,” he growled, the words like acid. “Consider this the beginning of your punishment.”
He paused—just a second—but it was enough. “Had nothing to do with...” His throat worked, his jaw tightened, and he looked away.
He couldn’t even say her name.
Giovanni’s hand reached for me, and my fight-or-flight flared.
I couldn’t stay, couldn’t submit.
Yet the gun, Dmitri’s presence, the sheer inevitability of it all pressed in like a vice.
My world had narrowed to a single corridor, a single choice—and I felt the walls closing in, the shadows thickening, my heart hammering as I realized the nightmare was only beginning.
There was no escaping the devils circling me.
They’d lock me up no matter what I said. Fine. But I wouldn’t go quietly.
“You’ve been sleeping with her,” I spat, my voice shaking, caught between heartbreak and fury. “You used her like a weapon to hurt me. Fine — lock me up, humiliate me, tell yourself it’s justice. But don’t pretend you’re brave. You’re just a man who hides behind cruelty.”
For a flicker, something almost human crossed his face—but it vanished just as quickly, smothered beneath ice.
“Giovanni,” he said, lethal. A command, not a word.
He didn’t even look at me. Didn’t dare to.
Giovanni stepped forward, his expression unreadable, his movements slow and deliberate.
His hand reached for my arm, firm but hesitant, as if he hated what he was ordered to do.
I thrashed, twisting out of his grasp, nails clawing at air.
“You said you hate me?” I screamed, the words shredding my throat. “Then hate me—but know I fucking hate you too, Dmitri! You hear me? I hate you—for every lie, every bruise, every night I still loved you!”
The sound of my voice cracked through the hall like thunder—raw, ugly, alive.
Every word was a knife, and I didn’t care if it cut me too.
The pain of his betrayal—of knowing Seraphina was real—devoured me from the inside out.
Not a phantom. Not a lie.
A woman. A comparison.
A ghost I could never kill.