PENELOPE
I LEANED BACK AGAINSTthe balcony railing, the iron cold beneath the silk of my pajamas.
The coolness seeped into my palms, anchoring me.
My pulse throbbed, loud enough that I felt it in my skull. “Dmitri is not going to send me back to the Albanians... is he?” I whispered, though the wind carried my voice into nothing.
The air held no answer, only the distant lap of water against the stone docks below, the faint hum of evening insects beginning to stir.
I couldn’t stay still any longer.
My legs moved on instinct, carrying me down the sweeping marble staircase, the polished steps echoing beneath my bare feet.
Each footfall reverberated in the vast foyer, magnifying the emptiness, the alien perfection of this house.
Every corner seemed both familiar and foreign, overlaid with Seraphina’s cold, precise aesthetic.
The orchids in their crystal vases seemed too perfect, the air too scented, the photographs on the walls—black-and-white views of Lake Como in heavy silver frames—sterile rather than nostalgic.
My fingers brushed along the wall as I passed, trailing over the smooth paint, lingering on texture.
The sound of the front doors opening stopped me mid-step, heart hammering violently in my chest.
A low, resonant click echoed through the marble hall. I spun toward it, muscles tight, eyes wide.
Dmitri Volkov stepped inside.
He looked... impossibly real.
Tall, broad-shouldered, every inch the man I remembered, yet altered somehow by absence, grief, and the weight of a year he hadn’t truly lived.
The charcoal suit fit him like armor, top button of his shirt undone, sleeves rolled once to reveal forearms thick with subtle muscle.
Dark hair slicked back from the lake mist, catching the last rays of light in faint streaks.
And those eyes. Piercing blue, ice beneath the surface, deeper than I remembered. Shadowed. Distant. The kind of gaze a man carries after staring too long into voids he can’t escape.
Eyes that had mourned me, that had carried a year of regret, guilt, and longing—though he didn’t know why.
He paused, taking a breath, as if sensing the shift in the room, the subtle tremor of my presence.
His gaze swept me once, slow, calculating.
Recognition flickered—perhaps in muscle memory, in subconscious lines of familiarity—but his face remained unreadable, emotion masked beneath years of discipline and pain.
His entire body locked, as if some invisible line had been crossed and his instincts had slammed the brakes before his mind could catch up.
I stood there barefoot on the marble floor, black silk pajamas clinging softly to skin still mottled with bruises, hair loose and tangled down my back.
For one suspended moment, neither of us moved.
“Hey...” I said finally.
The word came out smaller than I meant it to—fragile, unguarded, like it had slipped past defenses I’d spent years perfecting.
His gaze dragged over me with brutal precision.
Not leering. Assessing. Cataloging. The way a man looks at something that shouldn’t exist but very clearly does.