An ashtray in front of him overflowed with crushed filters. Another cigarette burned between his fingers like a fuse approaching its explosion.
He didn’t turn. “Step forward.”
The voice.
God.
Deeper. Rougher. Shredded by grief, liquor, and five years of talking to ghosts.
I walked forward until the lamplight brushed my face.
My spine was straight, my chin high—trying to look like a woman named Pen, not the corpse he buried under marble and roses.
He took a slow drag.
Exhaled. Then turned.
The cigarette stopped halfway to his mouth.
His grip on the cigarette tightened so hard the filter crumpled. His breath hitched—so soft no one else alive could have heard it.
“Your name,” he said, voice low as a firing squad.
“Pen.”
Something flickered. Something dangerous.
One corner of his scarred mouth lifted—not in humour, but in a smile that could carve a throat.
“First,” he murmured, “you send a child who looks exactly like me to ruin my wedding...”
He leaned forward, eyes stripping me to bone.
“Then you walk in wearing the face of my dead wife—answering to the name she used to beg me to call her in bed.” His gaze darkened, pupils swallowing the grey. “Tell me, little ghost. Are you trying to mock me?”
“Mr. Volkov, I—”
He cut the air with a flick of his fingers. “Who invited you to my wedding?”
His voice had dropped to something lethal. Something ancient.
“What the fuck are you doing in my city?”
“Lake Como is open to tourists,” I said, surprising myself with my steadiness. “Last I checked.”
A jagged, humourless laugh slashed out of him.
“A tourist crashes the wedding of the century, assaults my men, and steals my phone?” He flicked ash with a sharp snap. “Try again.”
So he did know. Of course he did.
No wonder they found me so fast.
Vanya—sweet, reckless Vanya—had shoved me straight into the lion’s jaws.
“I apologize for my son’s actions,” I said, forcing my voice to stay level even as my pulse rioted. “He acted on his own and... took your phone. I’ve already reprimanded him.”
I pulled the matte-black device from my pocket, the weight of it suddenly immense, and walked toward him with an unsteady breath trapped somewhere in my chest.
