He paused, gaze steady. “And now she’s gone, you wish you’d loved her better. Now you tell the world she was everything.”
A faint smirk tugged at his mouth—dangerous, knowing. “Regret looks good on you, Dmitri. Almost makes you human.”
The words hung in the air, stark and heavy, before he climbed aboard.
I stood rooted to the ground, watching that towering figure—the man who’d once torn a world apart just to build his own from the ruins. Ruslan Baranov: the ghost king of Europe.
In his rare moments, he could seem almost kind, even fatherly. But beneath that veneer lay a man forged in violence and sharpened by empire.
His reach bled through continents. Governments bent under his influence. Interpol called him a myth. But I had seen the man himself—and the nightmare he ruled.
As his chopper rose into the twilight, I watched the man vanish into the darkening sky—cold, unshaken, untouched by the grief that devoured me. I envied him. His ability to cut emotion cleanly from his soul was something I could never master.
But his words lingered long after the chopper disappeared into the dusk. He spoke as if he knew things he shouldn’t have, as if he’d been inside the walls of my home, listening to the cracks in my marriage, watching the way Penelope’s smile dimmed
He lived continents away, running his empire from Greece. Yet something in his tone—too knowing—made my gut twist. Ruslan never spoke without reason.
The cemetery fell silent again.
Then came the crunch of footsteps behind me—heavy, familiar.
Giovanni.
He stopped beside me, his broad shoulders hunched, his eyes red-rimmed and swollen, as if he’d fought his grief until it broke him anyway.
His voice came out rough, gravel rubbing against stone.
“What’s next, boss?”
“To find her father,” I said, the words pulling me upright as if I’d been yanked by a rope.
Authority flared through the despair—precise, unrelenting. “I want everything on the Romanos. Their allies, their safehouses—every name, every route, every habit. Even the damned things they do at breakfast. Marco Romano has my son. I want him bleeding information before I put him in the ground.”
Giovanni blinked once, then nodded. “Understood. We’ll move quiet and hard.”
He hesitated, then dropped news like a stone. “The Orlovs demand a meeting tonight. They say—now that your wife is dead, it’s time to seal the alliance. They want you to finally honor that age-old promise and marry Seraphina, their eldest daughter.”
Rage snapped like a wire.
I felt it explode through me—pure, scalding. “My wife’s still warm in the ground, and they’re already planning my next wedding?” I roared.
My fists clenched until my knuckles bled white. “Tell them I’m not interested in their rings or their contracts. Tell them to take their alliance and shove it.”
I stalked to the grave’s edge, gravel crunching under my boots.
The stone stared back: PENELOPE VOLKOV. The letters were a verdict and a vow. I crouched, the wind tugging at my coat, and placed both hands on the cold marble as if I could anchor myself to her name.
“I’ll find our son, Milaya,” I whispered. The promise cracked my throat. “I swear it.”
My Penelope. I would miss her until my last breath.
Giovanni fell into step beside me, the cemetery emptying into twilight’s embrace.
The hunt began now—for my son, for vengeance, for the fragments of a life Penelope had given everything to protect.
Chapter 1
PENELOPE
