He shrugged lightly, like Seraphina’s life didn’t weigh anything at all.
“I need a wife to quiet the politicians and the vultures,” he said. “You resemble my Penelope just enough that I can bear it. Good enough for my purposes.”
Good enough for his purposes?
The words sliced through me—sharp, merciless.
I lifted my chin.
“You do realize,” I said, voice steady but edged with steel, “that I have a son... and could possibly have a husband?”
Something changed in his eyes. A flicker—quick, pained, hunted.
But then it vanished beneath steel.
Chapter 4
PENELOPE
Penelope
I folded my arms, lifting my chin so he couldn’t see the small tremor running down my spine.
“I’m already married, Mr. Volkov. And weren’t you—oh, forgive me if my memory’s faulty—about three seconds away from sliding a ring onto another woman’s finger? I don’t do warm-up bride duty. I don’t stand in for the original just because she’s currently unconscious in your private clinic.”
His gaze didn’t flicker.
Not even once.
He sat back and sank into the leather couch as if it were a throne made for him alone—long legs stretched out, shoulders relaxed, ownership radiating from every inch of him. Like the room belonged to him.
Like I did.
He plucked a fresh cigarette from the pack with steady fingers, touched flame to it, and dragged in a breath so deep it hollowed out his ribs. Smoke curled from his mouth in a slow, defeated exhale, drifting through the room like a ghost.
The cigarette burned between his fingers now, its red tip a tiny, furious star in the dim light—steady, unwavering, a heartbeat outside his chest—as he stared at nothing.
Dmitri never smoked.
Not when I was fifteen and he was nineteen.
Not when he forced a ring onto my finger six years ago.
Not once, in all the years I was legally his wife, did I ever see him lift a cigarette to his lips.
But now?
Now he smoked like the nicotine was the only thing keeping him from unraveling—like if he didn’t inhale, he’d shatter. Like his lungs needed the burn to drown out whatever was clawing inside him.
And something about that terrified me more than every threat he’d ever made.
“She was never the one I loved,” he said calmly. Too calmly. “And her collapse? That was my doing.”
Something inside me dropped.
A silent plunge straight through my bones.
He watched my reaction the way a surgeon examines a pulse—detached, curious, faintly amused.
