My stomach dropped into my boots.
I lunged forward, fingers clawing for the steering wheel. “Stop the car! Right now!”
“Mom!” Vanya’s small voice screamed, yanking me back just as the car fishtailed violently.
The world tilted, trees and hedges streaking into green-and-brown smears. For a horrifying instant, I thought we would roll. My pulse spiked, every nerve ending on fire.
I released the wheel instantly, heart hammering in my throat.
Vanya trembled against me, eyes wide, lips pressed together in rigid fear. I pressed my forehead to the crown of his head, willing him to feel safe even as the world collapsed around us.
“Thank God you listened to your son,” the driver sneered, righting the car with disturbing ease. “Otherwise, we all die, eh?”
I wanted to rip that smirk off his face with my bare hands, and I mean rip. But instead, I sank back, lungs heaving, and held Vanya tighter.
He buried his face in my neck, shivering, small fists digging into my ribs as if to anchor himself to life itself.
“Mom,” he whispered, trembling, “he’s not going to hurt us... right?”
Before I could answer, the driver’s smooth, unsettling voice cut in:
“Mr Dmitri would never hurt a child. You’re very safe, little Vanya.”
The way he said my son’s name—like he’d known it for years—made my skin crawl.
Every instinct screamed run, every molecule of my being screaming that we were deep in a cage with predators.
I swallowed every curse, every scream, every desperate wish to vanish into the morning mist. Vanya had never seen me lose control. I would not let these animals be the first.
“Kidnapping a child and his mother,” I said, voice low and venomous, each word like a shard of ice, “real brave.”
“Just following orders,” he repeated, singsong, almost enjoying himself.
Vanya lifted his head, eyes wide, trembling but defiant. “You said he won’t hurt me because I’m a child. What about my mom?”
The driver’s gaze flicked to the mirror, sharp, assessing. “If your mom behaves,” he said lightly, “she’ll be fine. Tell her to play nice.”
I committed his smug face to memory—every smirk, every cruel line, every gleam of arrogance. One day, he would choke on that grin.
The car slowed as we approached a pair of towering wrought-iron gates, swinging open automatically with a hiss of hydraulics.
Beyond them rose a palace of glass, steel, and stone, perched on the cliff’s edge like a predator surveying the lake.
It was nothing like the old villa I had lived in during the years Dmitri and I were estranged.
That one had been dark wood, velvet, old-world grandeur, history seeping from every wall and floorboard.
This was colder, sharper, a fortress of black marble and smoked glass, brutalist lines cut into the mountain itself.
Floor-to-ceiling windows reflected the dawn in molten gold, waterfalls of wisteria spilling over terraces that jutted impossibly over the void.
Infinity pools seemed to bleed into the horizon, where Lake Como glittered like shattered sapphires.
It was breathtaking. Heavenly. And utterly terrifying—a palace designed to remind you exactly who owned the sky.
The cab rolled to a stop on a courtyard of polished obsidian stone. The driver killed the engine, popped the trunk, and hauled our suitcases out like some rehearsed bellhop at a five-star resort, his movements precise and impersonal.
“Best of luck, miss Pen,” he said with a mocking bow, then slid back into the driver’s seat and sped away, leaving us stranded.
