Chapter 30
PENELOPE
Still lying on the hospital bed, I felt the burner phone buzz weakly in my palm.
The cracked screen lit up, casting a faint glow across my trembling fingers.
My father’s number.
A name I hadn’t meant to see again.
My stomach clenched.
I had called it by mistake—my mind fogged by painkillers, exhaustion, and blood loss.
For a heartbeat, I just stared, torn between dread and desperate hope. Then, against my better judgment, I answered.
“Hello...” His voice filled the room—familiar, warm, threaded with that false paternal concern that once could’ve broken me.
“Penelope,” he said, my name rolling off his tongue like a benediction and a threat all at once. “Sweetheart... you left us. Where have you been?”
The false tenderness in his tone coiled around my chest, as if he were reaching through the phone to pull me back into his grasp.
My heart plummeted.
For a fleeting, shameful second, that voice almost soothed me.
Then the memory came back. The sedatives. The manipulation. The way my parents had turned me into a weapon, erased my memories, and sent me to destroy Dmitri Volkov’s family from within.
The burn in my chest spread until it reached my throat.
“The call was a mistake,” I said flatly, my tone scraping against the silence. “It won’t happen again. Goodbye.”
I ended the call and dropped the phone beside me, burying my face in my hands.
No tears came this time. I’d wasted too many of them.
A few minutes later, the steady hum of hospital life faltered—muffled footsteps paused in the hall, nurses whispering, and then, above it all, the low thunder of helicopter blades.
My heart seized.
The sound was unmistakable.
Volkov choppers.
Dmitri’s.
The room tilted for a moment, adrenaline cutting through the fog.
He was coming. Here.
But when the door opened, it wasn’t Dmitri.
It was my father.
Marco Romano filled the doorway like a storm—immaculate suit, polished shoes, and eyes that gleamed with pride and something far darker. His smile was a surgeon’s incision—practiced, lethal.
“New York isn’t far from here, my dear,” he said, stepping inside. “Did you truly think you could vanish from your own bloodline?”
I gripped the edge of the bed, my pulse stuttering as he came closer.
“You’ve finally given me a grandson,” he murmured, voice thick with something that almost sounded like affection. “A Romano heir... A son. The family will be... pleased.”
“I’m not giving you anything,” I spat, my voice steady. “The call was a mistake. You shouldn’t be here.”
He tilted his head, almost amused. “Still dramatic,” he murmured. “You don’t even have money for the hospital bill, do you? That’s why you called. And don’t bother reaching Dmitri—your calls won’t connect. I made sure of that.”
The words hit me like cold water.
“You... what?”
“I have friends,” he said casually, adjusting his cufflinks. “Telecommunications, logistics, law enforcement—New Jersey isn’t outside my reach.”
My breath caught.
He wasn’t bluffing. The same power that had turned me into his pawn was now circling again, this time aimed at my son.
“Are you trying to hurt me?” My voice shook, anger and fear colliding. “You’ve already done enough, Father.”
He smirked, the mask finally slipping. “Hurt you? No, figlia mia. I’m here to collect what’s mine—my grandson.”
His words crawled over my skin.
My mind flickered to the memories I’d spent years burying—the ones that clawed their way back months ago like ghosts breaking through the walls.
Faces blurred, laughter that wasn’t kind, hands that weren’t safe.
Two of them, I’d come to recognize—my uncles. The third... I had prayed was only a nightmare. But the way his voice echoed, the faint scent of his cologne, the commanding tone—it had been my father.
The thought turned my stomach.
Could he have done it? Could he have stolen my childhood, then wiped it from my memory like a stain he refused to see?
The realization cracked through me, suffocating. Some truths were too monstrous to name, but denial was no longer a refuge.
The air left my lungs.
“You sent those messages,” I whispered, the realization slicing through me like glass. “After the miscarriage I thought I had at Lake Como... it was you. You texted me—pretending to be Dmitri. Why?”
Marco’s smile spread slowly, cruel and unrepentant.
“I’m not here to answer your little questions, figlia mia,” he said, his tone dripping with mock affection. “But it might interest you to know—I practically lived with you at Lake Como.”
My pulse stumbled. “What do you mean?”
He stepped closer, his cologne sharp and suffocating. “My spy was right under your nose,” he murmured. “Watched you sleep, watched you grieve, watched you beg Dmitri to love you.”
My throat tightened, the room spinning. “Who?” I choked out. “Who was your spy?”
Marco’s smirk deepened, his eyes gleaming with something dark and satisfied.
“You’ll figure it out soon enough,” he said softly. “You always were a clever girl—when you weren’t too busy falling in love with monsters.”
Giovanni’s face flashed in my mind—his calm eyes, the quiet strength in his voice, the way he’d steadied me when my world was collapsing.
No. It couldn’t be him. It can’t be Giovann
My throat tightened, but I refused to let my father see it.
“You’ll never lay a hand on my son,” I said, forcing the words out, each one a blade drawn from my ribs. “He’s not your heir. He’s mine.”
His eyes darkened, amusement flickering to disdain.
“You say that like you have a choice,” he replied, stepping closer. “You can’t even protect yourself, Penelope. What makes you think you can protect him?”
He moved to the door with the calm of a man closing a business deal.
“You were never cut out to rule, child—no matter how much we shaped you. You’ve given us a grandson instead, and we will do what we must to raise him right.
I am taking him to New York. There’s a house for you here; I’ll forward funds for your maintenance. ”
Rage ignited in my chest, burning through the pain in my abdomen.
I swung my legs over the bed, ignoring the tearing sensation as my fresh stitches pulled open.
The hospital gown clung to my sweat-drenched skin, my breath ragged.
“You’ll have to kill me first.”
He looked back once, a thin, almost fond smile on his face. “Then let us pray it doesn’t come to murder.”
He turned toward the door, hand brushing the knob.
Something in me snapped.
I lunged, stumbling forward, fingers outstretched, my voice breaking into a raw scream.
“Don’t you dare touch my child!”
He turned—slowly, deliberately—and for a fraction of a second, I saw nothing human in his eyes.
The slap came faster than thought. A sharp crack split the air, echoing off the sterile walls.
Pain exploded across my cheek, blinding white, stars bursting behind my eyes.
The room spun.
I hit the floor hard, breath torn from my lungs.
Warmth spread beneath me—sudden, terrifying.
My stitches had split.
A strangled sound escaped my throat.
Blood seeped through the thin cotton of my hospital gown, sticky against my thighs.
My father just stood there, towering above me, face carved from marble— detached, unbothered.
“I think you should rest,” he said coolly, adjusting his cufflinks as if nothing had happened. “I don’t want to hit you again, but behave, child.”
I pressed trembling fingers to my cheek.
It burned, a pulsing reminder of everything he’d taken from me—my body, my memories, my voice.
The sterile air suddenly felt suffocating.
My vision blurred as the past clawed its way in—
The father who’d once steadied the handlebars of my bicycle in Brooklyn, laughing as I wobbled down the driveway.
The man who’d carried me home at twelve after a fight at school, promising I’d always be safe.
The man who’d given me a sapphire necklace on my sixteenth birthday, his voice thick with pride.
That man was dead. In his place stood a stranger wearing his face—a monster dressed in Armani.
“You’re not my father,” I whispered, tears spilling freely.
His lips curved into something that almost looked like pity. “No, I’m your reality. The sooner you accept that, the easier it will be. Forget about your son, Penelope—he belongs to power now, not to love.”
He turned toward the door. But before he could reach it, the handle exploded inward.
The door slammed against the wall—
And Dmitri Volkov stormed in.
He filled the room like a thunderclap.
Black coat flaring, eyes burning, jaw set in that cold fury that made men tremble.
The air shifted—the kind of stillness before a storm tears the sky apart.
When he saw me—on the floor, blood pooling beneath me, my cheek swollen and crimson—something in him snapped.
“Milaya...” His voice broke, the Russian endearment trembling with disbelief.
He crossed the room in seconds, falling to his knees beside me.
His arms came around me, trembling but careful, pulling me against his chest as if I were made of glass.
His fingers brushed my abdomen, sticky with blood, then moved up to my face, tracing the outline of my father’s violence.
His eyes—dark, wild, human for once—locked on mine. “Who did this to you?”
I tried to speak, but my throat closed. The only sound that escaped was a ragged sob.
He didn’t need my answer.
The fury in his gaze turned to ice as he rose, every inch of him dangerously calm.
He pulled his gun from his holster with a smooth, practiced motion. The metallic click of the safety releasing was the loudest sound in the world.
“Dmitri—” I rasped, but he didn’t look back.
He aimed straight at Marco Romano.
My father, unflinching, reached into his jacket. In one heartbeat, his own pistol gleamed in the fluorescent light, aimed squarely at Dmitri’s chest.
Time fractured.
Two worlds—two monsters—stood across from each other, and I was the fragile thread between them.
“No!” The scream tore through me before I could think.
I lurched forward, my body a rebellion against every instinct for survival.
Two gunshots erupted at once—