PROLOGUE
DMITRI VOLKOV
The cemetery in Lake Como was a somber expanse of ancient stone and whispering cypress trees. Mist drifted low across the ground, curling around marble angels eroded by centuries of sorrow.
Tens of men stood encircling the grave—elders of the four families, their sons, capos, and soldiers. All dressed in immaculate black, their faces carved in stoic reverence, the weight of old codes pressing on their shoulders.
They came not out of love, but allegiance. Out of duty. Out of fear.
Their presence blurred at the edges of my vision.
My world had narrowed to a patch of fresh soil and the coffin beneath it—the place where my heart now lay buried.
Penelope.
My Milaya.
The only woman I had ever loved, and the one I could never save.
She had died in my arms, her father’s bullet tearing through her chest before it could reach mine. I still felt the heat of her blood on my hands—still saw her lips trembling into that final, impossible smile. It was not forgiveness she’d given me in that look. It was goodbye.
I stood motionless, my black coat heavy with rain and grief, my eyes burning from the effort of not weeping before thesemen. The pain inside me was vast, bottomless—an ocean I could drown in but never escape.
Her absence was a physical wound.
Her voice—soft, defiant, endlessly alive—echoed in the hollow corridors of my mind.
PENELOPE VOLKOV.
The name was carved in white marble, cruelly binding her to the family that had destroyed us both. To me. To blood and betrayal.
My knees threatened to give way, but I refused them that weakness. My fists clenched, nails cutting into my palms until blood welled and dripped to the earth.
I wanted to claw through the dirt, rip the coffin open, pull her back to me. Just once more. To feel her warmth, her fire, her stubborn heart still beating beside mine.
But the ground remained mercilessly still.
The woman who’d been my light at fifteen, my obsession at twenty-five, my salvation and my torment. I’d failed her—failed to protect her, failed to save her from her father’s betrayal, from the bullet meant for me.
“Dmitri.”
The voice came from beside me—low, steady, iron in its restraint.
Ruslan Baranov stood at my shoulder, a towering figure of grief and composure.
His hair, streaked with silver, caught the gray light like steel. At his side, his young son clung to his leg—a pale, silent boy of four whose eyes said what neither of us could:the world takes, and takes, and never gives back.
Ruslan’s wife had been buried just a week before, oceans away in Athens. Yet he had come here—come for me, for her. For Penelope. His presence was a quiet vow between us.
Two men bound not by business, but by loss.
He looked down at the grave, his jaw hard. “She didn’t deserve this.”
“No one ever does,” I said, though my voice was a hollow thing. “But she chose me. And for that, she paid.”
Ruslan’s eyes flicked to mine. “Then make them pay for her.”
The words landed like a spark in dry grass. The first whisper of rage beneath the grief.
