Chapter 22
PENELOPE
The world was an abyss—a suffocating void that pressed in on me like a living thing.
I had begged, screamed, my throat raw from pleading to be freed from that dark prison, but no one came.
At times, I thought I felt arms around me, a voice calling my name—but it was always swallowed by the dark, fading like a dream I wasn’t meant to wake from.
My body no longer belonged to me.
It was distant, dissolving, as though my limbs had turned to smoke.
I was trapped in the deep, drifting somewhere between life and death, my mind untethered, adrift in a sea of nothingness.
Time bled together—minutes, hours, days, maybe weeks.
My chest burned with the ghost of my asthma, the crushing weight of attacks that came and went like invisible hands squeezing my lungs.
I’d surface, gasp, then sink again. Over and over.
Then—pain.
A needle pricking my hand. A tether pulling me back into flesh I’d forgotten I had.
Tubes snaked across my skin, cold and foreign, their weight a cruel reminder that I was still here.
Oxygen hissed through a nasal cannula, each breath a borrowed one.
Electrodes clung to my chest, sticky against my clammy skin, their wires humming faintly with the rhythm of a machine that had replaced my strength.
An IV line dripped steadily into my veins, its chill crawling up my arm—life in its most clinical form.
Each sensation was faint, distant, but real.
The darkness still wanted me—but now, for the first time, something stronger tugged back.
Muffled voices drifted through the haze—soft at first, distant, like echoes bleeding through a wall. Then one cut through, low and commanding.
“Penelope.”
Dmitri.
The sound of his voice sliced through the fog like a blade.
Memories surged up—the gunshot that started it all, his hand gripping my jaw, the click of a lock, the suffocating dark.
My body flinched before my mind could catch up.
My eyes fluttered open and were met with blinding white—light so sharp it stabbed. I squeezed them shut again, breath hitching as the sterile scent of the hospital hit me: alcohol, latex, and the faint iron tang of blood—mine.
When I forced them open once more, the world dissolved into fragments: white walls, a window leaking pale daylight, the steady beep of a monitor marking the proof of my survival. And him.
Dmitri stood at the foot of my bed—tall, composed, but his eyes betrayed him.
Stormy blue, rimmed with exhaustion, they locked onto mine as if afraid I might vanish.
Those eyes had once burned with hate when he condemned me to that dark cell, vowing to crush me until nothing was left. Now they watched me with something that looked dangerously like tenderness.
My fingers twitched, curling into weak fists.
Rage, grief, and something darker warred in my chest.
“I’ll burn my way out of this cage one day,” I rasped, each syllable scraping against my throat like broken glass. “And when I do, you won’t even know where to start looking.”
His expression didn’t change—but a shadow flickered in his eyes, brief, like a crack in steel.
“You think you own me,” I went on, my breath trembling, “but one day you’ll wake up and find nothing left of me. Not my scent on your sheets. Not my voice in these halls. Just silence—and you’ll realize that’s the only thing I ever owed you.”
“I’ll never forgive you,” I whispered, tears sliding down my cheeks, “and I hope one day you understand what it’s like to beg for air in the dark, praying for someone who never comes.”
He stared at me, like my words slid right off him, unable to pierce whatever armor he wore now.
The room’s sterile hum filled the air between us, that damn monitor beeping steady and calm while everything inside me screamed.
I reached for the IV line, fingers trembling, desperate to tear it all away.
The tape ripped at my skin, the nasal cannula hissed loose, and the electrodes pulled sharply from my chest.
I wanted freedom—from this room, from the weight of his gaze, from him.
“Don’t,” Dmitri said, his voice a command wrapped in silk.
His hand closed around mine—warm, steady, possessive.
“Don’t touch me,” I snapped, yanking my arm back.
Pain flared through my veins, but I welcomed it. “Get away from me!”
His eyes softened by a fraction, but his voice stayed measured, cautious—as if speaking to a wild animal that might bite.
He leaned closer. “If you tear that line out, I swear to God, I’ll pin you down and put it back myself.”
My breath hitched.
“Don’t make me watch you die again,” he said finally, his control fraying, eyes burning with something rawer than anger. “Not like that. Not by your own damn hands.”
The steadiness in his tone only made it worse.
Tears burned at the corners of my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. I wouldn’t cry—not for him. Not now.
My breath came fast, uneven, my hands hovering midair above the machines tethering me to life.
“How long?” My voice came out small but sharp, every word tearing through my dry throat. “How long have I been like this?”
“Three days,” he said, the words clipped, but his eyes gave him away—bloodshot, sleepless. “Three days of watching you slip between life and death. Three days of praying you’d open your eyes and look at me.”
Two days in that pitch-black cell. Then three days with my body unmoving, lost to a coma.
The number sat heavy in the air. He said it as if he’d lived every second of it awake. Watching. Waiting.
He stood for a long moment, watching me breathe—as if afraid that if he blinked, I’d vanish again. Then he moved closer, silent, his shadow stretching across the bed.
His fingers brushed my temple before I could flinch.
“Does it still hurt?” he murmured.
His thumb traced the faint bruise on my forehead—the one I’d earned from slamming it into the floor, again and again, begging him to forgive me.
I stiffened, but he kept going, his touch firm, inspecting me like a man verifying something precious hadn’t been damaged beyond repair.
He tilted my chin, his gaze sweeping down my throat, pausing where the skin still carried faint discoloration from his grip.
His hand lowered, skimming my arm, my wrist—where a faint mark of restraint lingered.
“Dmitri,” I said sharply, pulling back, but he didn’t stop.
“Hold still,” he said quietly, the command soft but absolute.
His hand brushed the side of my waist, then stopped.
For a long moment, he said nothing—just watched my chest rise and fall, his breathing syncing with mine as if reassuring himself I was truly alive.
Finally, he exhaled, the sound heavy with something that wasn’t quite relief. “Good,” he said under his breath. “You’re healing.”
He sank into the chair beside the bed, his elbows resting on his knees, staring at the floor for a moment before lifting his gaze to me.
“While you were under,” he began, voice tightening with something darker, “I checked the landline in our room—the one you used to text me after I disappeared that night. After our first time.”
My head snapped toward him, confusion cutting through the fog. “And?”
“The replies you got,” he said, his jaw ticking once. “They weren’t mine. Someone else was pretending to be me.”
I frowned, searching his face. “That’s not possible. They sounded exactly like you.”
His gaze flicked to the floor, then back to me, colder now.
“There’s a leak here in Lake Como,” he murmured, pacing once. “A spy. Someone feeding him everything about us.” Dmitri said, his tone unsteady but lethal.
“But what makes my skin crawl is how close that person must be to you. How else could he know the rhythm of this marriage?”
He took a breath, gaze locked on mine.
“The texts sounded like me because he knows how I talk to you. How I make you bend without touching you.”
He looked away, then back, colder than before. “It’s your father, Penelope.”
The words hit me like a slap.
I froze, pulse spiking. “My father?” The words scraped out of me, disbelief splintering into dread. “You’re saying he—what—pretended to be you? That he had access to your private line?”
“No,” Dmitri said, too softly. “Your father didn’t need access to my phone. He hacked the entire Lake Como network.”
He exhaled slowly, his eyes glinting with fury he barely contained. “He’s been watching from the inside for weeks. I confirmed it yesterday.”
The room tilted.
I stared at him, voice breaking between disbelief and fury. “You’re telling me I almost died, and your first instinct was to investigate a hack?”
His gaze locked onto mine, unflinching. “No,” he said quietly. “My first instinct was to keep you alive. The second was to find who keeps trying to take you away from me.”
My breath caught, disbelief warring with dread.
My father—Papa, who’d cradled me after nightmares, who’d sworn he’d die before letting anyone hurt me—hacking Dmitri’s servers? Mimicking his voice with such precision that even I, the one who knew every shade of Dmitri’s cruelty, couldn’t tell the difference?
How could he know the venom, the twisted devotion, the secret rot inside our marriage?
Unless someone’s feeding him—someone who’s seen too much, someone who watches when I think I’m alone.
But who? I don’t keep company here. No friends, no staff I trust. So who’s close enough to betray me?
I’m surrounded by people, yet utterly isolated.
“Why would he do that?” I asked, my voice trembling, my chest tightening with that familiar, suffocating burn that always came before an asthma attack.
Dmitri’s gaze didn’t waver. “Ask him,” he said quietly, the words like a verdict. “You need a break. Go to your family, see your world again. Rest. Have fun. Breathe different air. Talk to people who don’t make you flinch. You need distance.”
He smiled faintly. “It’ll make you easier to keep.”
For a moment, I just stared—unsure if I’d heard him right.
Then I coughed, the motion tearing through my ribs, raw from too many nights gasping for air. “Is that guilt talking?” I sneered, each word laced with poison. “Or just another one of your strategies?”
“There’s something you don’t see yet,” he said, voice low. “Your parents aren’t who you think they are.”
His voice was calm, almost eerily so. “Go home, Penelope. Ask questions. Listen. You’ll understand soon.”
I laughed—a cracked, ugly sound that scraped my throat raw. “And what makes you so sure I’ll come back?”
“You will.” His tone didn’t rise, didn’t even shift, but something in it crawled under my skin.
That certainty. That quiet faith twisted into possession. His eyes locked on mine, and I could almost feel the promise there—if I didn’t return, he would come for me.
“I won’t,” I snapped, forcing strength into my voice. “Once I leave Lake Como, I’m done. I’m never coming back to this place—or to you.”
He leaned forward, slow, deliberate.
His presence filled the room like smoke—dense, invasive, choking. “Your flight leaves tomorrow,” he said, his voice a whisper of command. “Ten a.m.”
The way he said it made it clear: this wasn’t freedom. This was parole.
He straightened, eyes sweeping over me like a final inspection. “Rest. I’ll check on you in an hour.”
“You don’t have to.” The word tore from me before I could stop it.
My fists clenched around the sheets. “I don’t want you here. And I’m not staying in this sterile box like some invalid. I’m leaving.”
“Then walk out on your own two feet first. Until you can, you stay.” he said, already turning away.
The click of his boots against the tile was the only sound that followed, echoing down the sterile corridor until silence swallowed everything.
And I was alone again—surrounded by the machines that had kept me alive, and haunted by the man who refused to let me truly live.
I sighed, leaning back against the headboard, legs stretched out, the IV tugging faintly at my arm.
Why wasn’t I exhilarated? Leaving Lake Como, escaping Dmitri’s cage, should have felt like victory—freedom finally within reach.
This had been my obsession, the reason I’d whispered plots with Alexei, the reason I’d clung to Giovanni’s lies about the abortion.
And now, it was being handed to me.
Yet my chest tightened with a strange, reluctant dread.
Was it fear? Desire? Or some lingering tether to the boy he’d once been—the one beneath the oak tree, whispering of futures that would never exist?
The door creaked.
The doctor entered, clipboard in hand, a middle-aged man with kind, professional eyes.
He checked the monitor—heart rate elevated but steady, oxygen levels hissing softly with each breath. “Let’s see how you’re doing,” he said calmly, inspecting the IV, ensuring the saline was flowing correctly.
He adjusted the electrodes on my chest, notes scratching onto the clipboard. “Your vitals are stabilizing, but we’ll keep observing a bit longer.”
“I’m fine,” I said, my voice steadier than I felt. “I can continue treatment at home.”
The doctor glanced up from his clipboard, his tone calm but firm. “Ideally, we’d like to keep you under observation for another forty-eight hours—to monitor pulmonary recovery and ensure the inflammation in your bronchial tubes doesn’t worsen.”
He caught the stubborn set of my jaw and sighed softly. “But if you insist, I’ll authorize discharge with home-based care. You’ll need to continue your bronchodilator and corticosteroid therapy as prescribed, and avoid any exertion or emotional stress for at least a week.”
I nodded stiffly, though his words barely sank in.
Emotional stress? My entire life was emotional stress. The idea of “rest” felt like a luxury for people who weren’t constantly fighting to survive love, betrayal, and suffocation.
My chest still burned faintly with each breath, but I refused to let him—or anyone—see that weakness.
“I’ll manage,” I murmured.
He moved with precise efficiency, peeling back the tape on the IV.
The needle slid free with a faint sting.
The nasal cannula came next, plastic scraping raw against my skin, followed by the electrodes, each tug sending a subtle pulse of discomfort.
The monitor’s steady beeping slowed, then cut off completely, leaving behind a faint, sterile silence.
“You’ll need to continue your asthma medication,” he said, voice calm but firm. “No exertion, no emotional strain. Your lungs are still inflamed and your oxygen saturation hasn’t fully stabilized. Schedule a follow-up in seven days so we can reassess your pulmonary function.
I nodded, my hands trembling as I adjusted the hospital gown.
The freedom of movement was liberating—and terrifying.
The doctor had left, the sterile room pressing in with its quiet, clinical emptiness.
Tomorrow, I would be on a flight, leaving Dmitri, leaving Lake Como, leaving the suffocating prison of his control.
And yet... a gnawing unease twisted inside me. My father’s betrayal—hacking servers, manipulating messages—haunted every thought. Papa, who had always been my protector, my anchor, could he have orchestrated such a deception? The notion made my stomach twist, sour with disbelief and dread.