Ruthless Addiction: Chapter 5

Isat in the dark like a man chained inside his own mausoleum.

The surveillance room was silent except for the low hum of machines—twenty-seven monitors arranged in a crescent, glowing an eerie blue across my face. Each screen was a window into a life I had lost and a life I was now stealing piece by piece.

The largest monitor was fixed on her.

Pen.

Penelope.

Whoever the hell she truly was.

She slept curled on her side, one arm draped over the small, warm body tucked against her. Vanya was pressed into her chest, his tiny hand still fisted in the fabric of her shirt, as if even in sleep he feared she might disappear.

Moonlight spilled through the panoramic windows, draping her in silver, tracing the lean lines of her body like a sculptor’s careful hand. Even in rest, she seemed poised between vigilance and surrender, caught in the fragile balance of a night that offered no real safety.

She was thinner than before.

Not the softness I used to worship—round hips, warm curves, thighs I used to grip until she’d gasp my name—but a new, honed edge. The angles of her cheekbones were sharper. Her body carried tension like a wire pulled too tight.

She looked like Penelope forged in fire.

And fire had changed her into something lethal.

I had been watching her for three hours straight.

I watched her in the shower—camera angled respectfully away from the glass because even I wasn’t depraved enough to cross that line. But I saw the steam rising, her silhouette pressed against the far wall, her shoulders shaking while she tried to cry quietly enough not to wake the boy.

I watched her step out with trembling hands, pull on the robe, and stare at her own reflection for a full minute like she was memorizing a stranger’s face.

I watched her crawl into bed with wet hair and eyes full of ghosts.

Every second was a slow crucifixion.

Five years ago, I had held my wife while she bled out in my arms, her white dress soaking red as she smiled weakly and whispered “Mitya” the way she did when she was fifteen and stupid and thought love made us immortal.

Five years ago, I had felt her last heartbeat stutter and die against my palm.

Five years ago, her father stole her body—stole my unborn son—and vanished into the night.

I buried an empty coffin.

I stood in the rain while dirt thudded against a casket that held nothing but a dress and a ring.

I spent years tearing the world apart looking for her father.

Not searching. Hunting.

New York learned my name in screams.

Every shadow in Little Italy whispered Volkov with terror.

Anyone carrying the Romano name learned to sleep with one eye open.

Those who refused to talk vanished into the Atlantic.

Those who lied watched their empires burn to ash.

I followed her ghost across continents—from the docks of Naples to the back alleys of Marrakesh, from abandoned monasteries in Prague to safe houses buried in the Swiss Alps.

Every rumor of her—every whisper of a woman with her eyes—I chased until my knuckles bled and my patience frayed into madness.

They said I was grieving.

They said I was obsessed.

They said I had lost my mind.

Maybe I had.

Because I wasn’t just looking for Penelope’s body.

I was looking for my son—the child stolen from me as surely as she was.

The last piece of her that still breathed.

And I swore to the night itself: I would raze the earth until I had them back.

Dead or alive—they were mine.

I hunted Marco Romano like the devil hunts souls.

Still—nothing.

He was smoke. He was absence. He was the ghost I could never catch.

And now fate—cruel, mocking, merciless—had placed in my house a woman who wore my dead wife’s face and a boy who looked exactly like me at age five.

Same eyes.

Same jaw.

Same stubborn, infuriating defiance.

My vision blurred around the edges. Because I wasn’t just losing control. I wasn’t just imagining possibilities. I was losing my mind.

My fingers hovered above the keyboard, trembling with a rage and longing I didn’t have the discipline to disguise.

One tap and I could zoom in—trace the new scar on her collarbone, follow the freckles that used to map the constellations of my nights, count the faint birthmarks I once memorized with my mouth.

I wanted to climb into the screen and fall at her feet.

I wanted to bolt every door in this house and never let her slip through my fingers.

Giovanni’s preliminary report sat open on the second monitor.

Pen — no legal record in Greece.

Vanya — no birth certificate that wasn’t forged.

Travel documents — burner.

Bank records — nonexistent.

Digital footprint — erased.

A trail of lies that led straight into Ruslan Baranov’s void.

Ruslan.

The only man on earth who still holds my respect—and the only one I could never read.

Nothing moves through Greece without his knowledge.

Not a fly. Not a rumor. Not a ghost.

The shape of this mystery—this woman called Pen—had Baranov’s fingerprints all over it.

Which meant one thing: If Ruslan knew about Pen… then he…

I was one phone call away from starting a war that would scorch the continent.

And then a small voice sliced through the dark.

“You kidnapped us and now you’re spying on us like we’re pets? We’re not your pets!”

My chair spun so fast the leather groaned.

The boy stood in the doorway—barefoot, hair rumpled from sleep, wearing Iron Man pajamas that swallowed his wrists. He looked like a child… and yet he stood like a commander.

The motion sensors hadn’t even flickered.

The kid moved like a ghost.

My pulse kicked.

I slammed my thumb onto the panel, instantly shutting off every camera in their suite. It felt like baring my throat to a wolf.

“How did you find this room?” I asked, voice rough from hours of cigarettes, fury, and hope poisoning my blood.

Vanya gave me the kind of look only children and saints were brave enough to give monsters.

“You have a biometric lock,” he said, strolling in like the house belonged to him. “It beeps three times when it opens. I followed the beeps.”

Then—without invitation—he pulled himself into the massive leather chair opposite me, swung his legs, and examined me like a problem he fully intended to solve.

“We need privacy,” he announced. “It’s the least we deserve after you stole us.”

Something warm and unbearably painful cracked in my chest.

No one—no guard, no boss, no council member—had spoken to me like that in fifteen years.

“I have questions for you, Mr Dmitri,” he continued, folding his small hands on the table like he’d seen this done in movies.

Mr Dmitri.

He could’ve stabbed me with a knife and it would’ve hurt less.

I dragged a breath in. “How old are you, Vanya?”

He lifted one shoulder. “You answer my questions, I answer yours. Respect goes both ways.”

God.

He was five.

A short, rough laugh escaped me before I could stop it.

He was me.

He was exactly me.

“Fine,” I said, leaning forward, elbows braced on my knees. “Ask.”

He studied me with those storm-grey eyes, as if scanning for weaknesses.

“What do you do for work?”

Straight into the artery.

The kid was surgical.

I took him in fully then: the dark curls, the stubborn mouth, the sharp gaze that missed nothing.

A five-year-old with the moral compass of a judge and the instincts of a predator.

He deserved honesty.

But he also deserved to sleep at night.

“I keep people safe,” I answered slowly. “Sometimes that means doing things most grown-ups couldn’t handle.”

He absorbed the words, expression unreadable.

Then he leaned forward, whispering like we were planning a heist.

“Like poisoning the pretty lady at the wedding?”

My spine snapped straight.

I scrubbed a hand over my face. “Where did you hear that?”

He rolled his eyes like the universe constantly disappointed him. “I’m five, not deaf.”

I stared at him.

This child saw everything.

He peered at me, curious, fearless.

“Well?” he pressed. “Did you do it?”

“I did what was necessary.”

Vanya leaned back in the chair, small fists resting on the arms as though bracing himself against the storm in front of him.

He was five, but the fire in his eyes made him seem older.

“You hurt people,” he said, voice low but steady. “And you think that’s okay because you call it protecting people. But it’s not protecting. It’s… it’s scary. It’s mean.”

I froze, every nerve in my body humming with an unfamiliar electricity. .

“I watched you,” Vanya continued, hands gripping the armrests until his knuckles turned white. “I saw how you looked at Mom last night. Like she’s something you can own. Like she’s a toy or a trophy. You’re not her husband. You’re not even… you’re just… scary.”

My jaw flexed—one small, controlled tick—before smoothing out completely.

“Do you know what happens when people are scared of you?” Vanya asked, tilting his head, gaze sharp as a knife. “They stop trusting you. They hide. They cry. And Mom—Mom… she’s supposed to be happy, and you… you make her not happy. You’re supposed to keep her safe, but all you do is make her want to run.”

The chair creaked as he leaned forward again, eyes boring into mine. “I don’t care about your empire. I don’t care about your rules. I don’t care if everyone in the world calls you a king. If you can’t be kind to Mom, then you’re not a king. You’re a monster. And I… I won’t call you Dad. Not until you stop being a monster.”

Silence slammed into the room like a thunderclap.

I wanted to argue, to roar, to remind him who I was. I wanted to remind him that the Volkov name demanded obedience, not lectures from five-year-olds.

But I couldn’t.

Every word he spoke was a mirror held up to my worst self. A boy, too young to carry the weight of life, was calling out the truth I had buried beneath grief and rage.

“I…” I started, voice tight, failing me. “I have regrets, Vanya.”

Vanya’s mouth twisted in disdain. “Regret doesn’t fix it. You can say sorry a million times, but it’s what you do next that matters. If you really want me to call you Dad, you have to be better. Not just… scary and rich. Better.”

The honesty stung like fire on bare skin.

He had no filters, no fear, no hesitation. Just truth. And it cut through the armor I’d built over two decades.

I leaned back in my chair, the smoke of my own fury mingling with something I hadn’t felt in years: shame.

Vanya kept talking, oblivious to the violence simmering just beneath my skin.

Children had no idea what their words did to monsters.

“Why do you want to marry my mom?” He asked brightly.

The real answers rose like ghosts clawing out of a grave:

Because she looks like the woman I buried.

Because every time I look at her face, my mind lies—softly, sweetly—and whispers that Penelope is back.

Because I’ve spent five years rotting from the inside, and she is the first thing that’s made my lungs remember how to breathe.

Because I am selfish enough, broken enough, starved enough to keep the illusion near me… even if the real Penelope is nothing but bones and memory.

Because losing this version—this echo of her—would finally kill whatever is left of me.

But I swallowed all of it.

“Because she looks like someone I lost,” I said instead. “And because I think she needs protecting. Both of you.”

Vanya’s expression cooled, sharpening in a way that mirrored my own when I was about to slit a throat.

“My mom doesn’t need anyone,” he said, chin lifting. “She’s the strongest person in the world. She can beat up guards twice her size.”

A reluctant smile tugged at my mouth. “I believe it.”

He narrowed his eyes, assessing whether that was mockery. When he decided it wasn’t, he slid off the chair and padded closer. He stopped right in front of me, tiny and unflinching, the top of his head just above my ribs.

Then he raised his hand, palm up.

Not a handshake.

Not for him.

A vow.

“If you hurt her,” he said softly—quiet like a storm gathering strength—“I’ll make you sorry. I’m little now. But I’m going to be big one day. And I don’t forget anything.”

Something inside me cracked—not painfully, but with the aching tenderness of remembering what a heartbeat felt like.

I stared at that small, serious hand.

Slowly—carefully, reverently—I took it.

“Deal,” I said, voice rough.

He nodded once, satisfied, and turned.

At the doorway he paused, glancing back over his shoulder like a tiny, ancient king issuing orders.

“Oh, and Mr. Dmitri?”

“Yes?” I murmured.

“The fish in my room are cool,” he said matter-of-factly, “but Mom’s scared of the dark. She pretends she’s not, but she is. There’s a night-light shaped like a moon in the bottom drawer of the white dresser. Can you put it on her side of the curtain tonight? She’ll never ask for it.”

I blinked.

The boy had no idea what those words did to me—how they scraped open old wounds and memories I’d spent years burying.

I hesitated too long, and he seemed to sense it, because his small voice hardened in that blunt, fearless way only a child could manage.

“And you won’t be forcing her to be your wife.”

Something inside me snapped—not loudly, not violently.

Just… cleanly.

“But I’m not giving your mom a choice,” I said quietly.

“She either marries me and becomes my wife… or she receives the tag of mistress by default. She lives in my house. Sleeps under my roof. In this world, that alone brands her.”

I let the words settle like ash.

“It’s her choice. Wife—respected, protected, with rights society can’t ignore. Or mistress—powerless, insulted, whispered about. One path gives her a crown. The other chains her.”

Vanya padded back to where he’d been sitting, calm as a monk.

He climbed onto the long chair again and sat, small hands braced on either side of his thighs.

His legs began to swing—slow, steady, deliberate.

Not restless. Not nervous.

Measured.

As if he wasn’t finished with me.

As if this five-year-old had decided the conversation would not end until I agreed to terms he hadn’t even spoken yet.

He watched me like a tiny judge in a tiny court, waiting for my next move.

He tilted his head, curls falling over one eye. “Do you hurt everyone around you?”

The question hit harder than it should’ve. My lungs locked. My chest went tight.

Because yes—people near me got hurt.

“No. I protect the people I care about.” I said quietly. “And I help people too.”

It was true.

I donated to orphanages.

Built one hundred homes a year in the poorest corners of Italy.

Kept more families safe than the government ever had.

But the boy didn’t blink.

“How do you make your money?” he asked, voice smooth and unguarded, the kind of unfiltered innocence that sliced deeper than any adult threat.

My hand clenched the leather armrest.

The chair creaked.

For decades, no one asked that question and lived long enough to repeat it.

But this child—this small, midnight-eyed judge—stared at me like he had the right.

I leaned forward.

The room tightened.

My voice dropped into the register that made grown men beg for their lives.

“Vanya… I’m not indulging this conversation. Go back to your mom. Now.”

He didn’t flinch. Didn’t even blink.

“The butler said you don’t hurt kids,” he said, legs swinging like a pendulum. “So… you won’t hurt me, right?”

He tilted his head, eyes sharp. “Or… do you?”

I stood slowly, letting my shadow fall over him.

Letting him see the monster men whispered about, the one they prayed they’d never meet in a dark alley.

Vanya stared up, small and fearless, as if daring me to prove him wrong.

I swallowed the roar clawing up my throat.

“I’ll take you back to your mother. And next time—” my jaw tightened “—you do not enter my private rooms unannounced.”

I reached down to lift him.

He shot his hands out—tiny palms, firm as iron.

“Don’t you dare touch me.”

I froze.

The way men freeze when a grenade pin hits the floor.

Finally, I straightened.

Took three slow steps back.

Sat down, controlled, composed, dismantled.

I exhaled. “You’re… five years old, right?”

“Five years and four months.”

My heartbeat stuttered—an ugly, painful convulsion.

Five years and four months.

The exact age my son would be. The exact number I had calculated every night like a curse.

“Who is your father?” It came out hoarse.

He shrugged, calm as a whisper. “I don’t have one.”

“You don’t know who your father is?”

He shook his head—small, definitive—curls bouncing like punctuation marks on a sentence that gutted me.

So he had grown up fatherless. No wonder he carried himself with a maturity far beyond his five years. My chest tightened with a pang of something I didn’t want to name. I felt… sorry for him.

“Since we’re getting to know each other better, Vanya,” I said, letting my voice slide into that low, deliberate cadence, “I’ll answer your question. You wanted to know how I make my money, right?”

He nodded, eyes wide.

“Well,” I continued, letting the words drop like stones, “everything I own… was inherited.”

Inherited through blood, fire, assassinations, and a legacy soaked in red. But he didn’t need to hear that yet.

He accepted it with a small, dignified nod—far too old of a gesture for a boy still tiny enough for footie pajamas.

Then he leaned forward, elbows on his knees exactly the way I do when I’m preparing to end negotiations with a signature or a bullet.

“And about that promise I made earlier…” I swallowed, letting the words rasp out like steel on stone. “I can’t promise I won’t hurt your mom, Vanya. I’m… not a good man.”

I had to tell him.

He needed to know the truth, So he wouldn’t be disappointed when the darkness in me surfaced.

A breath.

A vow sharpened into bone.

“But I can promise you this: I will protect her with my life. And if anyone else tries to hurt her—anyone at all—I will burn the world down and salt the earth.”

His face shattered.

Not subtle.

It cracked open like glass under pressure, all the bravery and defiance crumbling into something pure and unbearably human: heartbreak.

His lower lip quivered. His shoulders trembled.

Then the tears came—slow at first, one quiet betrayal rolling down his cheek.

Then another.

Then the dam broke.

Small, stuttering sobs shook his whole body.

He tried to swallow them down.

Tried to be strong.

Tried to be older than five years and four months—

But he was only a child who had been running on fear and adrenaline and the desperate hope that someone would finally be honest with him.

I had made grown men sob blood and call it mercy.

But nothing—nothing—had ever gutted me like this.

Before I knew I was moving, I was kneeling in front of him, sinking down slowly, as if approaching a wounded animal too fragile to touch.

“Vanya,” I rasped, reaching out.

He didn’t flinch. Didn’t back away. Didn’t throw up those tiny stop-sign hands again.

I took his trembling hands gently, lifting each one into my palm, and used my silk pocket square to wipe the tears from his cheeks. The tears only came harder, hot streaks dripping onto his Iron Man pyjamas.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, failing at control for the first time in years. “I’m sorry, kotyonok. Please don’t cry.”

The old endearment slipped out before I could stop it.

The one I whispered to Penelope under that oak tree.

The instant it left my tongue, Vanya sobbed even harder—shoulders shaking, breath hitching, grief punching out of him in little gasps.

And then he moved.

Suddenly. Violently. Like a wave hitting the shore.

He launched himself at me.

His small body collided with my chest, arms wrapping around my neck with desperate, terrified strength. His face buried into my collar, hot tears soaking into my skin.

I froze—just for a second—because this… this felt like forgiveness I hadn’t earned.

Then I wrapped my arms around him.

Gently. Carefully. Reverently.

One hand cradled the back of his head. The other supported his tiny spine.

He weighed almost nothing. And somehow, he weighed everything I’d ever lost.

I stood, lifting him easily.

He clung harder—little fists fisting in my shirt like he was drowning and I was the last thing keeping him afloat.

“I’ve got you,” I murmured into his curls. “I’ve got you both. I swear it.”

He cried himself empty.

Eventually, his sobs softened into hiccups. His breaths evened. His fists loosened, one small thumb drifting unconsciously toward his mouth as exhaustion claimed him.

I started toward the hallway, cradling him gently.

His head nuzzled into my shoulder, still wet from crying, heavy with weariness, yet somehow trusting me enough to lean on me completely.

Every step felt sacred, every breath I took careful not to break the fragile peace between us.

His breath warmed the side of my neck.

His tiny heartbeat tapped against my skin like Morse code.

When I reached the door—

It burst open.

Light from the hallway sliced across my face.

And Pen stood there. Filling the doorway like a storm.

Wide awake. Barefoot. Eyes blazing.

Oversized T-shirt hanging off one shoulder.

Hair wild from sleep.

Eyes feral enough to make the devil rethink his life choices.

Breathing hard like she’d sprinted across the house barefoot in fear of losing her child.

Her gaze took in the scene:

Her son asleep on my shoulder. My arms around him. My shirt damp with his tears. Her son’s fingers curled in the fabric near my heart.

Her pupils blew wide.

Her lips parted.

And her voice—when it came—was a blade wrapped in velvet. “What did you do to him?” she snarled and lunged.

Before I could react, she ripped Vanya out of my arms with a speed and strength born only from motherhood and terror.

He clung to her instantly, like his bones recognized her before his mind did. His small fingers fisted in her shirt, face burrowing into her neck, new tears spilling hot and fast.

She curled around him, shielding him with her entire body.

“If you laid one finger on him,” she hissed, voice shaking with fury, “I will end you. I don’t care who you are.”

Then she was gone—vanishing down the hall with her child held tight—and the door slammed behind her like a gunshot that left smoke in the air.

I stood frozen in the wreckage of my surveillance room. Monitors flickering. My shirt soaked in a child’s grief. The ghost of his weight still pressed to my chest.

Minutes bled into hours, or maybe hours bled into minutes—I couldn’t tell. Time lost meaning when the house fell silent and I had nothing to look at but the frozen camera feeds showing rooms empty of the two people who mattered.

At some point—after the pounding in my chest stopped sounding like an execution—the door opened again.

No slam. No fury. Just a slow, quiet push.

Pen slipped inside alone.

Moonlight from the hallway carved her silhouette: silver on her cheekbones, shadow along her throat, the shape of her hips forming a perfect hourglass in her soft cotton shorts. She looked like a memory trying to kill me and a future I couldn’t touch.

She closed the door gently behind her.

We stared at each other.

She broke the silence first, voice low and lethal as a blade dragged across skin.

“You made my son cry.”

“I answered his question honestly,” I said.

She flinched. Barely—but I saw it.

“He asked if I could promise never to hurt you,” I went on. “I told him I couldn’t. But I swore I would protect you both with my life.”

Her eyes scanned every inch of my face, looking for the lie, the manipulation, the trap.

She didn’t find one.

Something inside her shifted. Not softened—but… cracked.

Grief. Fury. Exhaustion. A tenderness she refused to acknowledge. A history she couldn’t outrun.

She walked toward me.

One step.

Another.

Another.

Until she stood close enough that my breath stirred a strand of her hair, close enough that I could see the faint freckles across her nose.

Her scent—jasmine and warm skin—hit me like a fist.

“You want to marry me to save your empire,” she whispered. “Fine. But understand this, Dmitri Volkov.”

She rose onto her toes, leaning in until her lips brushed my ear.

Her breath was warm.

Her voice was a death sentence.

“I may resemble the woman you lost, but don’t mistake me for her—and don’t you dare mistake me for someone you can break. If you ever make my son cry again, I will cut your heart out with a spoon and make you choke on it while it’s still beating.”

She paused.

A slow, wicked smile curved her mouth.

“And I will smile while I do it.”

Then she turned away—shoulders straight, head high, hips swaying with lethal grace.

She stood in the doorway like a divine punishment—an avenging angel carved from moonlight and wrath.

How dare she walk into my room and threaten me?

What gave her the spine to stand there, barefoot and shaking, and still look me in the eye like she wasn’t terrified?

Did she really have no idea who I am?

And the irony—her son came looking for me.

Of course I’ve always known there was more to her.

A woman who bears my late fiancée’s short name—Pen instead of Penelope.

A woman who has a son the exact age my son would have been.

A woman who looks like the ghost I buried—but not quite.

If only she knew.

If only she understood that every unanswered question wrapped around her only makes me hate her harder.

Violently.

So violently the entire room feels like it’s tilting.

I hate the face—my Penelope’s face—worn by someone who isn’t her.

I hate the sharper lines on her cheeks, cut by survival instead of laughter.

I hate the bruised shadows under her eyes.

I hate the tremor she tries to hide in her hands.

I hate the way she looks at me like I’m the worst thing that ever crawled out of hell.

And most of all—

I hate the way my traitorous body reacts the moment she breathes in my direction.

Like a starving man smelling bread.

Like a drowning man glimpsing air.

Like a sinner kneeling at the altar he burned with his own hands.

“If you have nothing to say,” I said, forcing the ice back into my voice as I turned toward the monitors, “get out.”

I heard her inhale.

Shallow. Controlled.

The kind of breath someone takes right before they do something irrevocable.

She didn’t leave.

She walked toward me.

Three deliberate steps.

Her eyes—God help me—went molten.

She stepped into my space, so close I could see every fleck of gold in her irises, the rapid flutter of her pulse at the base of her throat.

“Don’t underestimate me, Mr. Dmitri,” she whispered.

Not a threat—a promise.Cold, quiet, absolute.

“Touch my son again,” she spat, voice shaking with fury, “and I swear to God I’ll end you myself. Hurt me if you want—just stay the fuck away from my child.”

Something inside me snapped so violently I saw white.

I was on my feet before the thought finished forming, fury roaring in my blood.

I towered over her—and still she did not back down.

Not an inch.

“You don’t get to threaten me in my own home,” I snarled. “And maybe teach your son to stay in his room. He came to me, Pen—asking questions you clearly planted in his mouth.”

I didn’t remember grabbing her.

I only knew my hands were already on her arms—hard, unrelenting—and then her back hit the CCTV desk with a thud that made the monitors rattle and papers explode in a snowstorm onto the floor.

She didn’t gasp. Didn’t flinch.

She stared up at me like I was nothing but an obstacle in her way.

I pressed forward, pinning her there—chest to chest, hip to hip, my body caging hers with terrifying ease.

Her scent hit me like a punch: jasmine, warm skin, and something wild and uniquely Penelope. Something that haunted me for five fucking years.

“I don’t know how they raised you in Greece,” I growled, my lips almost brushing her cheek, “but in my territory you show respect. With your words. With your actions. With your silence when I tell you to shut up.”

She spat in my face.

Warm. Sharp. Shocking.

I didn’t move.

Her nails dug into my forearms as she tried to shove me off, but I pressed harder, boxing her in completely until her breath came fast and furious against my throat.

“Get away from me!” she snarled.

“No.”

I leaned in until our noses almost touched, until I could feel her breath fan across my lips.

“You have forty-eight hours.”

Her pupils blew wide.

“Forty-eight hours to become my wife,” I said.

“Forty-eight hours to stand beside me in the town square, in front of every family, every soldier, every bastard who thinks they own a piece of this territory.”

I felt her heartbeat hammer through her skin.

“Or,” I continued softly, dangerously, “I marry Seraphina. And you become my mistress.”

Her face went white.

“I won’t let you go. Not again. Not ever.”

I lowered my voice to a growl that rumbled against her sternum.

“Wife, mistress, prisoner—”

I didn’t care what word she soaked in blood and hatred.

“—you stay here. With me. Forever.”

Her breath hitched.

Whether from fury or fear or something she didn’t want to acknowledge—

I didn’t know.

Didn’t care.

Because the wildfire in her eyes told me one thing:

This woman would rather burn my world to ash than bend.

And God help us both—that only made me want her more.

I released one of her arms—slowly, deliberately—as though granting a mercy she didn’t deserve.

My other hand stayed locked around her wrist, pinning her to the desk with one small point of contact that carried the threat of ten thousand more.

With my free hand, I reached into my suit pocket. The movement made her tense, eyes flicking downward, expecting a blade.

Instead, I drew out a silk handkerchief.

White. Clean. Monogrammed.

I wiped her spit from my cheek with excruciating slowness.

Not breaking eye contact.

Not blinking.

Not breathing normally.

“And don’t ever spit on me again,” I murmured, dropping the cloth beside her hip. “It stinks.”

Her lip curled. “Fuck you.”

The words were a slap. The tone was a dagger.

The hatred in her voice was almost a physical pressure in the room.

I snapped my hand to her chin, fingers clamping around the soft hinge of her jaw with bruising precision. Her breath hitched, her pulse fluttered against my palm, but she didn’t look away.

“Who is your son’s father?”

Her nostrils flared. “That’s none of your business.”

I leaned in until my forehead almost touched hers. My voice dropped into a register that had made generals fold and presidents sign treaties they swore they’d never sign.

“Maybe he’s related to me.”

Her eyes widened—just a fraction—and that fraction made something primal rip through me.

“He looks exactly like me,” I hissed. “Same eyes. Same mouth. Same blood. Did you send him to the altar that day? Is that why you came to my wedding? To parade my own bastard in front of me like some twisted joke?”

Her chest rose sharply. Anger, fear, guilt—I couldn’t tell which, and it maddened me.

“You heard him,” she said, voice trembling with fury. “He came to you himself. I owe you nothing. No explanation. No obedience. And I will never be your wife, your mistress, or your slave.” She leaned forward until our lips were almost touching, as if she wanted me to feel her defiance on my tongue. “Because I will escape this place. And when I do, you’ll never see us again.”

For a split second, everything in me went perfectly still.

Her lips—so close they brushed the air I exhaled.

So close they shook every shred of restraint I had left.

So close I wanted to devour them, bruise them, pray to them.

I wanted to kiss her until she forgot her own name.

I wanted to punish her for every breath she took that wasn’t mine.

I wanted to put her on her knees and worship her until she shattered.

I did none of it.

Instead, I released her chin—slowly, reluctantly—and stepped back half an inch. Just enough to let her lungs fill. Just enough to remind her I controlled the space between us.

“Seraphina is awake,” I said flatly, “from what should have been a months-long coma.”

That got her attention.

Her eyes widened.

“The paralytic I administered was meant to keep her sedated for months,” I continued, voice cold. “It barely lasted a week. And now her family is already threatening war if the wedding doesn’t proceed immediately.”

Pen stiffened.

“If I end up marrying her, remember this—it’s because of you,” I said, voice sharp as broken glass. “Seraphina will destroy your peace. She’ll have full legal access to my estate. And when she decides to hurt you or your boy, I may not be there to intervene.”

The words hit her like blows.

I saw it.

All of it.

The flicker of fear she tried to bury.

The way her breath stuttered.

The way her hand trembled before she forced it still.

And then—

A smaller shift.

A softening.

A brief, fragile flicker of something she would die before admitting.

Relief.

Relief that I hated Seraphina.

That I didn’t want the woman waiting at my altar.

That knowledge was a shot of pure electricity straight to my veins.

“Put the hatred aside,” I said softly, too softly. “Marry me. It’s the only way to keep you and your son safe. And the only way to keep me out of her hands.”

She crossed her arms—an attempt at a shield—but her voice was steady.

“I want safety for my son more than anything. And the safest place is far from you—back in Greece. You think I’d marry you? The man who abducted us? The man who’d cage us for life with no way out? I would sooner walk into the sea.”

“Fine,” I said immediately. “Three months.”

She blinked. Once. Twice.

“You wear my ring for three months,” I said. “After that, you can divorce me. Clean. Legal. You walk away with enough money to disappear forever if that’s what you want.”

She studied me—slow, calculating, deeply suspicious.

“I want it in writing,” she said.

“Done.”

“And no sex.”

A dark laugh slid out of me, quiet and molten.

“I can’t promise no sex,” I said truthfully. “But I can promise—on my blood—that there will be no sex without your explicit consent. Every single time. For all three months.”

Her eyes narrowed. Testing me. Weighing me.

“Any other conditions?” I asked. “Name them. They’ll be in the contract.”

She stared at me for such a long time I felt the world tighten around us.

“After three months… you’ll actually let me go?” she whispered, fear and hope warring in her tone.

The softness in her voice—the hope buried beneath the words—stabbed straight through my ribs.

She knew the truth.

She knew contracts meant nothing against a man like me.

She knew I could tear up the paper, burn it, chain her to this place with nothing but my will.

And she knew I wanted to.

I looked her dead in the eyes.

And with the smoothness of a lifetime of sin—

I lied with every shred of sincerity in my body. “Yes,” I said. “Three months. Then you’re free.”

A lie dressed as mercy.

She didn’t believe me—her eyes made that painfully clear. Distrust flickered in them like a warning light. But beneath it was something else, something harsher:

Resignation.

She was running out of exits, and she knew it.

“And after the three months?” she asked, voice low but steady. “They’ll force you to marry her again?”

I smiled.

Not a gentle smile—a slow, cold, surgical one, carved from bone-deep hatred.

“Seraphina will disappear long before the three months are up,” I said. “Permanently this time. Giovanni botched the last attempt. This time I do it myself. She’ll vanish from the face of the earth. I will never put that woman in my bed. Never give her my name. Never let her breathe the same air as your son.”

The last word—your son—landed between us like a dropped weapon.

I saw the moment her defiance faltered.

Saw the way her shoulders dipped a millimeter, the way her pulse jumped at her throat.

Not because she feared Seraphina’s fate—but because she understood mine.

This was not a man negotiating. This was a man fixated.

“Oh, so she’s unworthy of your bed,” she breathed, anger shaking through her, “but somehow I’m fit for it? Fit to be your wife?”

A knife of guilt slid between my ribs.

“Yes,” I said, and the truth shredded me on the way out. “Because you look like her. You talk like her. You move like her. You are Penelope reborn. And I am a selfish bastard who will take any piece of her I can get… even if it’s a lie.”

Her breath hitched.

Not fear exactly.

More like recognition.

She finally understood the depth of the madness she was bargaining with.

The silence that followed was thick enough to choke on.

I could hear her heartbeat—or maybe it was mine.

Then, so softly it was closer to an exhale than a word:

“…Yes.”

One syllable.

One surrender.

Everything inside me stopped.

Then roared back to life—wild, feral, unstoppable—like something long-buried had just clawed its way out of a coffin.

I didn’t move.

Didn’t trust myself not to drag her into my arms and ruin the fragile thing she had just offered.

She turned without waiting for my reaction, without giving me the chance to say anything else, and walked out.

The door clicked shut behind her with the gentlest sound—but it felt like a gunshot.

I stood alone in the dark room, surrounded by dead monitors, stale air, and the ghost of her perfume—something cheap, something ordinary, something absolutely devastating.

Only then did I let it hit me.

The thing I’d been choking down since the moment she walked into my house wearing my dead wife’s face.

Hope.

Violent, reckless, delusional hope.

Three months.

I had three months to make her stay.

To carve my place into her life.

Into her son’s life.

Into her future.

And if the world burned in the process?

So be it.

Because I didn’t just want her.

I wasn’t capable of wanting.

I hungered.

Starved.

Obsessed.

And I would tear kingdoms down, bury enemies alive, drown oceans, and shatter every promise I’d ever made before I let her walk away from me.

Not after what I’d seen in her eyes.

Not after that whispered “yes.”

Not after hope resurrected the dead thing in my chest and demanded more.

Three months.

Three months to turn a contract into a cage.

Three months to make her mine—permanently.