Twisted Addiction: Chapter 15

Fear wrapped around my ribs and shoved me forward.

I ripped at the basilica’s massive oak doors; the ancient hinges protested with a keening groan as I forced my way out.

The gun felt absurdly heavy in my hand, its weight a cold, humming reminder of what I’d done inside the Basilica—shooting Dmitri, drawing his blood in the sacred hall of the Basilica di Sant’Abbondio.

The consequences would be catastrophic, I knew it, and the fear drove me to seek escape, any path that could shield me from his wrath.

I stumbled out into the night, lungs burning, the air thick with the lake’s damp breath and the city’s sleeping stone.

The street was empty except for warped pools of lamplight and the distant hush of water against pier.

I forced myself to move faster, but my legs felt wooden—each step a small betrayal. The basilica’s marble receded behind me like a guilty memory.

Blood—his blood—dried dark on the cuff of my sleeve and smudged across my palm where the papers had slipped. Every smear was a brand, a proof that nothing could be undone.

I scanned the empty street like a hunted thing, searching for any shape that could be a savior: a cab idling with its driver asleep, an elder with the kind of influence that still meant something in Lake Como, a uniformed patrol that might break the cathedral’s silence.

Nothing.

Only pools of streetlight, the lake’s distant hush, and the soft clack of my heels on wet stone as I tried to run without making noise.

If Dmitri lived, he would not forgive. If he died, his reckoning would be worse. Either future squeezed the air from me.

Hands trembling, I wiped at the blood on my sleeve with the heel of my palm—not to clean it, but to erase the proof.

The fabric came away darker; the stain only spread.

My fingers left red crescents on the oak as I leaned against a lamp post to steady myself. My pulse hammered at my throat so hard I could taste it.

“Whale!” a voice called from the shadows, sharp and slick with amusement.

I spun.

He was there—Antonio—hood up, cigarette glowing, leaning casual as rot against a crumbling wall. Time had not softened him. Three years of knowing his face meant I could read the smug cruelty in his posture even before his mouth formed the words.

“You actually had the nerve to show your face in Lake Como?” I asked, my voice cutting through the quiet.

He didn’t even flinch—just took another drag, exhaling smoke like a man savoring the calm after someone else’s funeral.

My hand tightened around the gun. I kept the barrel low—pointed more at the pavement than at him—because the last thing I needed was to give him cause to act. “What do you want, Antonio?” I asked.

My voice was less steady than I intended.

He laughed, a short, sharp sound. “What do I want? I want to know what kind of story ends with you shooting the great Dmitri Volkov.”

He pushed off the wall and walked toward me, slow and certain. “You always did have…a flair for drama.”

His eyes slid past me, toward the basilica’s dark silhouette, and something like curiosity—and hunger—flickered there. “News travels fast in this town.”

“Keep walking,” I said. The words came out brittle. My pulse hammered in my throat. “You don’t want to be here.”

Antonio’s grin widened. “And miss the show? Not a chance.” He flicked ash from his cigarette, casual as a man discussing the weather.

“Dmitri’s delaying fulfilling the agreement we made—the one that forced me to send you back to Lake Como after… well, after the kidnapping,” he said, slow, viscous, almost savoring the words.

His dark eyes glinted in the dim light, amusement curling across his lips.

I froze, my stomach twisting.

My hands still trembled, the memory of blood, of Dmitri jerking from the shot, still raw in my chest.

“What… agreement?” I asked, voice barely above a whisper. “I thought he paid some enormous ransom to get me out!”

Antonio chuckled, low and dangerous. “You think we are poor? No amount of money could ever get you back. It was a… heavy sacrifice from him. One he made willingly.”

He leaned back against the wall, exhaling smoke, letting the weight of the words settle between us. “Not my place to tell you the details.”

Shock slammed into me like a freight train. My mind raced. He sacrificed what? For me?

My fingers tightened around the bag strap, the echoes of the gunshot still ringing in my ears. “Is that… is that why you’re here?” I asked, my voice trembling but sharp with rising anger. “To push him into fulfilling this… agreement?”

Antonio’s smirk widened, eyes flicking to mine, hungry and dangerous. “Partly,” he said.

I narrowed my eyes. “If Dmitri doesn’t fulfill his part of the agreement… what? Kidnap me again?”

He chuckled. “He’ll fulfill it. Don’t worry.” His certainty was unnerving, the kind that made my skin crawl. Then he leaned forward, voice dropping sharply. “Have you figured out who Seraphina is yet?”

The name detonated in my chest.

My mind flashed to Elena’s sister, the mysterious Seraphina she’d mentioned earlier, a shadow in a game I didn’t understand.

“Seraphina?” I repeated, the word heavy on my tongue, tasting like ash.

“Remember the note I slipped you at Lupo Nero a few months back?” he asked, casual, almost teasing, but every syllable dripped with intent.

I did—crumpled and worn, folded so many times it had nearly disappeared. I had opened it once, saw the single word written in stark capitals: SERAPHINA.

The memory pressed down on me, sudden and suffocating, leaving a bitter twist of dread curling in my stomach.

“Seraphina was a lie,” I said, clinging to Giovanni’s story. “A story Dmitri spun to make me paranoid.”

Antonio laughed, a short, ugly bark.

He produced another cigarette and lit it with deliberate slowness, the flame painting his cheekbones gold for a second. He leaned back against the wall, all ease and danger. “Is that the story he fed you

Heat flared along my spine. “You’re awfully relaxed for a man standing outside a cathedral while Dmitri and his goons are inside,” I said, jaw tight. “Aren’t you nervous?”

He blew the smoke out like a sneer. “I’m not a man who freezes at threats. I’m here on business—legal this time. Dmitri knows my name. He knows what I can cost him. He won’t touch me.” He let the words hang, smug.

“Seraphina isn’t a ghost. She’s very real—useful, alive, and very much inconvenient for some people.”

I felt the floor drop out from under me. “She’s not,” I snapped, though the certainty in his tone shook me.

His amusement curdled into impatience. “Whale—will you actually listen?” He snapped the nickname with a sneer, and whatever patience I’d had evaporated.

I didn’t give him the chance. The barrel rose until it leveled with his forehead, steady now, fueled by fury.

“Call me that name again,” I said, voice ice, “and this bullet goes right through your skull.”

For a long breath he stared into the muzzle, then up at my eyes. The cigarette trembled between his fingers. Far from intimidated, he looked delighted, as if the dangerous edge in me finally made the night worth his trouble.

“Bold,” he murmured, voice low. “Terrifyingly bold. Don’t let the bravado fool you, though—people like us don’t forgive. We collect debts.”

He laughed, low and harsh, like gravel sliding over stone. “Three years, Penelope. We dated for three years. You flinch at a cockroach, and you think I’d actually believe you’d pull the trigger?

Images slammed into me: the day of the ‘miscarriage’ — him appearing out of nowhere, chasing me until an asthma attack doubled me over; him straddling me, my belly still aching, slapping me until my cheek burned; then—when I was already broken—bringing the barrel of a gun down on the back of my head. And he still thinks I couldn’t shoot him?

My grip didn’t waver. The gun felt absurd and holy in my hand. “Dmitri’s men are patching him up as we speak,” I said, voice low and flat. “And he hasn’t done what you did—at least, not yet.”

“Don’t think I’ve forgotten your words at the altar on what was supposed to be our wedding day: you told me you’d been sleeping with my cousin, Sofia, that your love was a lie, that you’d only warmed your way into my family to drag me off to Rome and make my life yours.”

“Then you reappeared in Lake Como after Dmitri dragged me here, stalked me until you kidnapped me. You deserve two bullets, Antonio—one to the left rib to punish the way you carved promises into my chest and stole whatever was left of my faith in anyone; and one to the right thigh to take the swagger out of you, to make sure you can never stand over someone and laugh at their ruin again.”

For a breathless second his smirk stalled, the predator’s ease cracking. Disbelief and something like calculation flickered across his face.

Before he could respond, a voice sliced through the tension:

“Penelope.”

I spun.

Giovanni emerged from the cathedral, his face tightening as he took in Antonio leaning casually against the wall, cigarette still in hand.

Then, staggered into view—Dmitri. His arm was heavily bandaged, his suit marred with blood, his expression a raw storm of pain, fury, and something far darker, something that made my skin crawl and pulse at the same time.

“Leave,” Dmitri commanded, his voice deliberate, vibrating through the yard like an unbreakable chain.

Antonio’s lips thinned, his predatory gaze meeting Dmitri’s for a fraction of a second before he dropped the cigarette, crushing it under his boot.

Without another word, he retreated, every step calculated, silent, defiance draining from him like water from a sponge. No one crossed Dmitri here and lived unscathed.

Dmitri’s eyes locked on mine, a storm of emotions—anger, pain, obsession, and possessive hunger—swirling in their depths.

My pulse spiked.

He leaned toward Giovanni, murmuring something I couldn’t hear, then pivoted and slid into the waiting SUV with the doctor.

The engine roared, and they sped off, leaving me trembling, the echo of the gunshot and the smell of iron still clinging to the cold night air.

I stared after them, chest heaving, heart hammering.

I had shot him. Survived him. Challenged him. And now, more than ever, I wondered if I wanted to run… or confront the storm I’d create

I was alone with Giovanni now, the cathedral’s shadow stretching over us like a warning.

I jabbed the gun into the palm of my shaking hand as if to steady it.

“So what’s he going to do to me this time?” My voice came out thinner than I wanted; the question trembled with every memory of the cathedral—the blood, the papers, the humiliations.

Giovanni didn’t meet my eyes.

He limped toward the car with the economy of a man who’d learned to move while keeping fear tucked away.

“We need to go. Now,” he said, clipped, like a man reciting orders he already wished he hadn’t given.

I planted my boots and didn’t move. “Answer me,” I said. “What does he plan to do?”

He stopped, the streetlight throwing a hard line across his face.

For a long beat he just breathed—deep, slow—as if buying time to choose the right honesty.

When he looked up, his face had gone flush with something that might have been regret. “You know him,” he said finally, every word careful. “He decides what’s ‘best’ for people he owns. You shot a mafia boss inside a consecrated place, Penelope. Do you understand what that means? The consequences won’t be small.” His jaw tightened. “This isn’t a scuffle in a back alley. This is a statement. You’ll answer for it.”

I swallowed, the cold sinking in. “And my pregnancy?”

He exhaled, the line between promise and threat thin as a razor. “There’s a way to blunt the knife—short term. It buys time, not safety. That’s all I can promise.” He paused, eyes searching mine. “If you want to try, tell me to start.”

The words landed like a stone. “Start what?” I asked.

“We stage the abortion,” he said, slow and careful. “Make Dmitri believe it’s done. Paperwork, a doctor’s signature, falsified tests — enough to quiet him while you slip away.”

He didn’t sound eager; he sounded exhausted. “It’s messy. It’s dangerous. But it’s a chance.”

I stared at him. “If I give him that, he’ll stop pressuring me?”

Giovanni’s mouth tightened. “He’ll back off—temporarily. It’s not the heir he’s terrified of losing so much as you. After his mother died, he learned what it is to lose something that mattered to him. He’s brutal, but he’s also cowardly about certain losses. Make him think the pregnancy is gone and he’ll retreat into control instead of pursuit. It gives you space to disappear.”

Space. The word felt thin and fragile.

“How long?” I whispered.

“Two weeks, maybe three if we’re careful,” Giovanni said. “Long enough to file papers, get travel arranged, and vanish. But you have to move fast — before your bump shows, before anyone gets suspicious.”

I swallowed, the plan forming in jagged pieces. “And the doctor?”

“He’s paid. He owes me. He’ll sign whatever we need. Labs, scans — the right reports, forged clean. It’s theater, Penelope, and a damned risky one, but the stage will hold for a little while.”

I let the thought settle, treacherous and bright as a shard of glass. “Get it done,” I said finally. “If this is my chance, I’m taking it.”

Giovanni nodded, the brief flicker of relief crossing his face swallowed by the weight of what we were about to do. “Good.”

I stared at him, my pulse loud in my ears. “How ironic,” I said bitterly. “You’re helping me now — after you lured me to that cathedral knowing Dmitri would try to tear this child out of me.”

He froze, the weight of my words hanging between us like smoke. “I… I had no idea,” he said finally, his voice steady but hollow, a hollow I could feel in the pause between syllables. “He’s been… consumed by his mother’s death, unable to let it go. Everything else—deals, decisions—he’s left them to rot because he can’t move past it. I thought your presence might ground him, help him breathe, help him think. I never imagined… never in a million years… that he’d go that far.”

“Right,” I muttered, the word sharp as glass. “Forgive me if I don’t believe you.”

His jaw tightened. “Believe what you want. But this—” he gestured vaguely to the night, to the car waiting behind us “—this will have consequences. Dmitri will find out eventually. When he does, my life ends before yours. So if you can’t trust me, at least respect the fact that I’m risking everything for you.”

Silence stretched between us, broken only by the wind whispering off the lake.

He took a step closer, his voice lower now, stripped of its usual restraint. “Get in the car, Penelope. We leave before the storm catches up to us.”

I slid into the passenger seat, leather cool beneath me, and my fingers brushed the torn remnants of the divorce papers.

My thumb lingered over the embossed seal, thoughts spinning. Alexei… I have to contact him. I’ll let him help me—divorce, escape, anything. I can’t stay here another second.

Giovanni’s hands were steady on the wheel as he started the engine. The SUV rolled forward, the hum of the tires against the pavement blending with the thrumming of my pulse.