“Yes.”
“Convince him that siding with me is the smarter move when war comes.”
The word landed like a blade between my ribs.
“War?” I repeated softly.
His jaw tightened, a muscle ticking beneath the stubble. “I will not marry Seraphina Orlov.” His voice dropped, stripped of all pretense. “The idea of her in a white dress, wearing my ring—it turns my stomach. It would be the ultimate betrayal.”
His eyes darkened.
“Of Penelope.”
The possessive slipped out without effort, raw and unguarded.
“So yes,” he said. “War. Once the three months are over—once you and Vanya are safely out of reach—I will burn the Orlovs to the ground. Every last one of them.”
The violence of it should have terrified me.
Instead, something else bloomed—an ache, sharp and unwelcome. For the man who would raze empires for a woman he believed dead. For the boy sleeping in the next room who deserved a father alive, not a legend carved into marble.
“And if you’re the one who burns?” I asked quietly.
He stilled.
“You speak of war like it’s a clean decision,” I went on, my voice steady but tight. “Not rivers of blood. Not widows and children left behind. What makes you think you’re untouchable, Dmitri? That death won’t come for you the way it comes for everyone else?”
For a moment, he simply studied me.
Then he smiled.
Slow. Dangerous. A curve of his mouth that didn’t reach his eyes.
“You still don’t understand loyalty,” he said. “When a man chooses war over surrender, it means he’s already made peace with dying.”
He leaned forward slightly, close enough that I could smell smoke and lakewater and something darkly familiar.
“I would rather greet death as an old friend than spend a single second bound to that woman.”
I searched his face in the lamplight—the hard planes, the iron will, the grief etched so deeply it had become bone.
“Your hatred for her is... absolute,” I said at last. “Admirable, in a twisted way. All for the memory of your late wife.”
He didn’t correct me.
Didn’t flinch at the word late.
He just watched me, silent, something unreadable flickering behind his eyes—like a man staring at a ghost who refused to stay buried.
“Will you do it?” he asked again, quieter now. “Speak to Antonio Ferraro?”
The question hung between us, heavy as a drawn blade.
“Why me?” I countered, still staring at the ceiling as if it held answers I didn’t want to give him. “Why not you? Or Giovanni?”
“Because we’ve already tried,” he said without hesitation. “The Ferraros have kept us at arm’s length for years. Polite. Civil. Unmoved.” His mouth curved faintly, humorless.
“But the Orlovs are already whispering,” he continued. “Offering partnerships. Planting incentives. They’ve even gone so far as to offer their third daughter—no doubt as a marriage, neatly bound to the Morozov’s heir, Ricci.”
