A low growl of an approaching engine cut through the tension like a blade. Heads snapped toward the entrance asa sleek silver Bentley glided into view, its tinted windows reflecting the guards’ startled faces.
The lead guard’s smirk vanished. He barked, stepping closer, hand brushing the holster at his side. “Ma’am, remove your car from the premises immediately. And let me warn you—don’t come here again. It’s not safe for tourists like you.”
I planted my feet wider, chin high, veins burning. “I’m not leaving without Vanya.”
The Bentley stopped at the gates. The guards stiffened, the mockery gone, replaced by sharp-edged unease.
One guard lunged toward me, hand snapping for the keys in the ignition. “Give me those!”
I twisted instinctively, jerking back. “Don’t you dare touch me with your filthy hands!”
He grabbed my arm anyway, fingers biting into my flesh. Pain shot up my arm, and fury roared in my chest.
“Let go!” I screamed, wrenching myself free, hair whipping across my face.
A new voice cut through the chaos—smooth, sharp, lazy amusement woven into each word.
“What’s going on here?”
The guards froze, uncertainty rippling through their ranks.
My heart plummeted into my stomach.
Antonio.
My ex.
The man I had dated for three years—the man I had loved genuinely, foolishly believing he loved me the same. I hadn’t known that all along he’d harbored darker intentions: to take me to his father’s house in Rome, strip me of my freedom, and use me as a means to claim my father’s wealth and power.
He had hated me. Every smile, every promise, every touch had been a lie.
The betrayal had come on our wedding day, right there at the altar. Just moments before he was meant to slide a ring onto my finger and seal the marriage, he confessed everything—coldly, triumphantly—as if my devastation were a victory he’d been savoring for years.
Thank God Dmitri had come that day and stopped it. Without him, my life would have become something far worse than this.
Antonio watched me now with that same expression—a smirk permanently etched into his dark eyes.
He leaned against the Bentley’s door, cigarette lit, smoke curling like lazy threats around him. Calm. Collected. Deadly indifferent.
He flicked the ash from his cigarette and smiled, the kind of smile that made you want to shove a fist through his smug face. “Penelope... still dramatic as ever.”
Penelope?
Antonio still believes I’m Penelope?
Didn’t everyone in Lake Como think I was dead? Why did he seem so certain otherwise—so convinced—when the rest of the world had already buried me?
I gave him nothing. I smoothed my expression into something unreadable, locking everything behind my eyes so he couldn’t see through me.
The passenger door opened. My pulse froze.
Seraphina Orlov stepped out.
Heat surged through my veins.
She was even more devastating up close.
Seraphina Orlov looked like something sculpted rather than born—porcelain skin flawless beneath the sun, platinum hair spilling in perfect, deliberate waves down her back.
