Chapter 24
PENELOPE
The air in the bedroom felt charged—thick with ghosts, with everything we’d said and everything we hadn’t.
Dmitri moved closer, the mattress dipping under his weight as he sat beside me—too close.
Our arms nearly touched, his presence a heat I couldn’t escape.
He leaned back against the headboard, legs stretched out beside mine. I didn’t flinch, didn’t speak, just sat there—rigid, silent, pretending I couldn’t feel the gravity of him.
No pillow softened the space between us, only the cold stretch of silk sheets and the hard truth of his presence.
I finally shifted, folding my legs beneath me, spine rigid.
He mirrored me, his movements measured, wary, like he was afraid one wrong motion might shatter what fragile civility held us together.
Silence settled like a storm cloud.
Alexei’s words echoed in my mind—Seraphina. His ex-fiancée. The reason for my sudden freedom.
The bile of betrayal rose in my throat, but I swallowed it down. If I provoked him now, if I gave him reason to revoke that plane ticket, I’d lose the one escape I’d fought for.
Then, quietly—like it hurt him to speak—he said, “I missed you.”
The sound of it startled me.
My pulse stuttered.
“Not the woman sitting beside me,” he continued, his voice rough, scraping the edges of confession, “but the girl you used to be.”
His words cut deeper than I wanted to admit.
My hands curled into fists.
“That innocent little girl I thought you were,” he went on, eyes distant, voice softer now, almost trembling.
“The one who looked at me like I wasn’t a monster.
You made me forget what my world was—a nightmare.
You stopped me from putting a blade to my wrists when my aunt’s hands.
..” His voice faltered, cracked like glass.
He looked away, jaw tight, as if speaking her name might summon her ghost.
My breath caught.
“We’d talk all night under that oak tree behind your father’s estate,” he said finally, eyes flicking back to me. “You’d laugh, and for a few hours, the noise in my head would stop. You were my quiet, Penelope. My only quiet.”
The admission landed like a blade between us—trembling, irrevocable.
He exhaled slowly, eyes dark with memory. “Do you remember your fifteenth birthday? That silver locket?”
I said nothing, but my throat tightened.
“I stole it from that antique shop in Brooklyn,” he said, a mirthless laugh breaking from his chest. “Waited in the alley until the shopkeeper left. Broke the glass, sliced my hand open. There was blood everywhere, but I didn’t care.
I just wanted to see you smile. I still remember the look on your face when you did.
” His gaze softened, almost unbearably. “My aunt beat me half to death when she found out. Left marks I couldn’t hide for weeks. ”
The silence that followed wasn’t empty—it was a living thing, pulsing between us.
I swallowed hard, the memory flashing vivid—the shy grin on his face as he clasped the stolen locket around my neck, the way it caught the moonlight and scattered it like silver dust.
I’d worn it for weeks, hiding it beneath my school uniform, terrified my father would see.
That night had felt like forever—the first time I’d believed love could be a rebellion.
“And that night you got sick,” Dmitri said softly, his eyes distant.
“You remember? Feverish, shaking on that old pier we used to meet at. I carried you two miles through the rain—your father’s guards searching the streets.
My shoes were soaked through. My hands were frozen, but I didn’t stop.
I paid the clinic with the last money I had, the cash I’d saved for food.
I starved for a week, but you were breathing. That was enough.”
The images came back like ghosts—the damp wool of his coat against my cheek, the sound of his heartbeat echoing in my fever haze.
My throat tightened painfully.
“My aunt used to catch me sneaking out to see you,” he continued, his tone darkening, each word a descent. “She’d lock me in the basement for days. No light. No food. Sometimes she chained my wrists to the pipes. The metal cut through my skin. I’d count the hours by the dripping water.”
His eyes were flat, almost dead, as he spoke.
“When I finally escaped, she’d keep my allowance.
I’d walk five miles to university, starving so bad my stomach cramped.
But every time I thought about giving up, I’d think of you.
That little girl with sunlight in her eyes, waiting under the oak tree.
You were my reason to stay alive, Penelope. ”
The sound of my name in his mouth nearly undid me.
He turned to me then—slowly, deliberately—and when our eyes met, the tenderness that had been there bled away, replaced by something feral.
“I tried to believe you didn’t betray me,” he said.
“That someone used you. Manipulated you.” His voice cracked, then steadied, colder.
“But then you shot me. You didn’t even hesitate.
Tell me, how does an innocent woman know how to chamber a round, aim for the heart, and pull the trigger without flinching? ”
My breath hitched.
I wanted to tell him I hadn’t been thinking—that chambering the round had been instinct, not intention.
I only wanted to protect my unborn child, to stop him from doing what I knew he was capable of. Any mother would’ve done the same. But the words refused to leave my throat.
He leaned forward, his bandaged arm resting on his knee, eyes burning like a storm contained by sheer will.
“I came back to New York to marry you,” he said quietly.
“To love you again. I wanted to believe the girl under that oak tree still existed. But every time I close my eyes, I see my mother’s body instead.
The way she screamed. The way they left her.
” His jaw clenched. “You—your father’s men—did that to her.
Tell me, Penelope, how does a man forgive that? How does he forget?”
His voice cracked on my name, and he turned his face away, shoulders trembling with the weight of restrained rage—or grief; I couldn’t tell which.
I wanted to scream, to tell him I was still that girl—the one who’d risked everything to meet him, who’d waited in the rain, who’d never stopped loving him even when he disappeared without a word.
I wanted to tell him that Antonio, the man I’d dated years later, had been nothing but an attempt to erase him, to forget the ghost that haunted me. But nothing I said would matter now.
He was too far gone—his love had curdled into something darker, obsessive, unforgiving. And still, some traitorous part of me ached for him, for the boy who once carried me through the rain and starved to keep me alive.
“You ruined me first,” he said, voice low and rough, the growl of a wounded animal trying to mask its pain. “You broke me first. You betrayed me—”
“First,” I cut in, my voice sharp, slicing through the air. “And now you’re doing the same.”
His eyes flicked toward me, dark and unreadable. “No,” he said finally, coldly. “This isn’t betrayal.”
I let out a bitter laugh, turning away before he could see the tremor in my lip.
Not a betrayal?
He’d accused me of cheating at fifteen—fifteen—an event I couldn’t even remember, a ghost of a sin I never committed. And now he was the one tangled in Seraphina’s arms, the ghost his enforcer once swore didn’t exist.
The hypocrisy burned so hot I could taste it, metallic on my tongue. But I said nothing. I wouldn’t risk my freedom—not when morning promised escape.
The silence grew suffocating, thick enough to drown in.
His breathing was steady, mine erratic.
My hands trembled as I shifted, rising to my knees on the bed. Then, before I could talk myself out of it, I grabbed the hem of my top and pulled it over my head.
The cool air kissed my skin, and his gaze—sharp, startled—followed the movement.
“You’ve forgotten how to want me,” I said, my voice steadier than I felt, “You don’t even think about fucking me, do you?”
The question hit like a slap, hanging between us.
His eyes darkened, that familiar storm gathering behind them.
When he spoke, his voice was raw, stripped of its usual control. “Think about it?” he rasped. “I dream about it. Every night. Every damn second. But this marriage—your silence, your rejection—made it impossible. And of all the things I am, forcing myself on you isn’t one.”
I held his gaze, refusing to look away. “I want my last night with you to mean something,” I said.
The words came out like a dare.
He studied me, expression unreadable, a smirk ghosting his lips that didn’t reach his eyes. “This won’t be your last night with me.”
Something in his tone froze me.
The smirk vanished, replaced by that old, familiar stillness.
My heart kicked against my ribs. “Have you changed your mind about letting me go?” I whispered, afraid of the answer.
“You’re leaving tomorrow,” he said simply. “Nothing’s changed.” He paused, then added, quieter, almost to himself, “But you’ll return.”
A chill rippled through me.
I let out a short, bitter laugh, though my voice cracked at the end. “Or you’ll come for me,” I said, my tone trembling between fear and defiance. “Like you did on my twenty-fifth birthday—when you showed up in New York and called it fate.”
He didn’t look away, didn’t deny it. Just sat there, watching me—like a man memorizing a ghost he knows he’ll have to haunt.
“Milaya...” His tone was low, a growl barely restrained. “No matter what’s happened, no matter what you’ve done... you are still the only woman who holds me, who owns me. And you are beautiful. Always.”
A hollow scoff slipped past my lips.
Beautiful.
The word felt like mockery. Maybe it was.
Seraphina’s name echoed in my mind—a melody of perfection, grace, and everything I wasn’t.
I could almost hear him whispering those words in another woman’s ear, the thought slicing through me like glass.
“Take me,” I said, the words spilling out before I could stop them. “I’m yours tonight.”