I inhaled. “Penelope.”
The effect was immediate.
He went completely still.
Not tense—frozen.
His hands tightened on the arms of the chair until the leather creaked softly under the pressure. I watched goosebumps rise along his forearms, the reaction involuntary, betrayed by muscle memory he didn’t understand.
“Penelope?” he repeated.
The word sounded wrong in his mouth. Like a shard of glass he didn’t know how he’d cut himself on.
“Yes.” I lifted my chin. I’m done hiding it. No more pretending. No more lies.
Agnes returned quietly, carrying a silver tray. The crystal tumbler caught the firelight, the deep red of the Negroni glowing like spilled blood.
She set it down beside him, eyes carefully averted, and left without a sound.
Dmitri didn’t touch the drink.
His gaze never left my face.
“That’s my late wife’s name,” he said quietly.
The word late landed like a blade.
“I’m... sorry for your loss,” I said, and meant it in more ways than he could ever know.
He exhaled sharply, then looked away for the first time—his attention shifting to the fire, jaw tight, as if he were wrestling something just out of reach. When he looked back at me, whatever softness had surfaced was gone.
In its place: ice.
Calculation.
Control.
“You are Albanian property,” he said flatly. “Our agreement with them is ironclad. Keeping you here—even overnight—is illegal under the partnership accords. They can demand you back at any time.” His eyes hardened. “Legally.”
The word echoed in my chest.
My chest plummeted as though the floor had vanished beneath me.
“I was a slave there,” I said, the words scraping my throat raw. “Treated worse than animals. We slept chained. Ate scraps off the floor. I helped six other women escape through a tunnel we dug with our bare hands—months of digging, hiding the dirt in our clothes, praying every night we wouldn’t be discovered.” My breath stuttered despite my effort to keep it even. “If I go back...”
I couldn’t finish the sentence. I didn’t need to. We both knew what happened to women who tried to run.
I swallowed hard. “Please. I can’t go back to that place. I won’t survive it. I’ll do anything. Anything to stay out of their hands.”
Dmitri watched me without expression, blue eyes unreadable.
He didn’t interrupt. Didn’t soften. He let the silence stretch until my pulse roared in my ears.
“They’ll find out eventually,” he said at last.
The words hit like a verdict.
“Then let me be gone before they do,” I thought desperately—Greece, Ruslan, anywhere that wasn’t that gilded cage—but I didn’t dare say it aloud.