“I’ve been pretending for everyone in Lake Como,” he murmured, lowering his voice until it threaded only between us. The jet engines hummed behind us, distant and meaningless. “Every smile. Every vacant stare. Every obedient nod.” His jaw tightened. “Because I’m planning revenge. Slow. Careful. Deadly.”
Cold slid down my spine.
“You had memory loss,” I said, searching his face for cracks, for madness, for deception. “How can you—”
“You’re not going to confuse me.” He stepped closer, backing me against the metal rail of the jet stairs. Not threatening. Possessive. Grounding. “I saw you in dreams long before youbled in my backseat. Long before you looked at me like you expected me to kill you.” His voice dipped. “You are Penelope. Vanya’s mother. My wife—once.”
The night seemed to still.
For a breathless second, he looked almost... afraid. Like a man clutching fragile shards, terrified that one wrong word from me would scatter them forever.
I felt it then—pity. Sharp and unwelcome. Not weakness, but recognition.
“Yes,” I said softly. “I’m Penelope.”
Relief cracked across his face like sunlight breaking through storm clouds.
He exhaled, the sound rough, almost broken, and scrubbed a hand over his jaw.
His jaw tightened, voice calm but hard, “For a second, I feared my own mind was lying to me.”
“Do you remember anything else?” I asked gently. “Anything real?”
He shook his head. “Not yet. Just fragments.” His mouth tightened into a hard line. “But I refused to trust that diary the Orlovs fed me to shape my thoughts from the start. It was too... convenient.”
He turned slightly, eyes scanning the airstrip as if ghosts still lingered.
“Recently, I had the diary tested,” he continued, voice steady, “and it confirmed my skepticism all along. It was forged—clumsy, sloppy. I also realized the Orlovs systematically took my men, dismantling my defenses piece by piece. They planted Seraphina here to watch me, to steer me. Replaced my security with theirs.” His gaze snapped back to mine. “I’m playing weak. Letting them think they’ve already won.”
He leaned in again, voice dropping to something intimate and lethal.
“We pretend. You help me recover what’s buried. We take it all back—together.”
My fingers curled instinctively around the rail.
“How do we pretend,” I asked, “if you just put a ring on my finger? Seraphina was supposed to be your wife.”
A smile touched his mouth then. Small. Dark. Real.
“This,” he said, lifting my hand slightly, the diamond catching the floodlights, “is between us. No witnesses. No ceremony. With this ring, you’re my wife again.” His eyes softened, just a fraction. “No one needs to know. Not Giovanni. Not Seraphina. Not Vanya—not yet.”
I stared down at the diamond, its fire stirring something long-buried.
A memory surfaced without permission.
Fifteen years old. Brooklyn. Late summer heat clinging to skin. The massive oak tree on my father’s estate, leaves whispering secrets above us. Dmitri—nineteen, cocky, beautiful—had dragged me behind the trunk, laughing softly as though the world couldn’t touch us there.
He’d woven daisies clumsily into a ring and slid it onto my finger, pride shining in his eyes.
“Marry me someday,” he’d whispered, kissing me until my knees went weak. “When we’re free of all this.”
I’d believed him. Completely.
I looked up now, meeting his gaze in the harsh glow of floodlights and death.
Moments later, we were in the SUV.
The engine rumbled to life as we pulled away from the airstrip, tires humming over empty roads.