Page 82 of Twisted Addiction
His voice was a blade—cold, clean, and merciless as it cut through the air. “Your family took everything from me. Everything.”
He paused, the silence stretching between us like a noose.
“I later found out,” he said quietly, his voice trembling under the weight of rage, “it wasn’t my foster parents who killed my mother—it was the Romanos. Your family.” His eyes burned into mine. “And you, Penelope... you were there.”
My stomach dropped. “I don’t remember any of this!” I burst out, my voice breaking with frustration. “I swear to God, Dmitri, I don’t!”
His eyes narrowed, freezing me in place. “Don’t lie to me. I don’t care what you ‘remember’ or don’t. Your fingerprints were on her body. That’s proof. Proof you weren’t just a scared kid—proof you were part of the men who beat her, tortured her, left her to die.”
He stepped closer, the air around him charged, suffocating. “Do you understand what that means, Penelope? My mother, the woman I had just found, hours after finally seeing her—gone. Murdered. Because of you. Because of your family. And the blood on your hands... I will never forget it.”
“My foster family—the Volkovs—they killed the father I never even met,” he said, his voice low, reverent, as if speaking the names of the dead aloud might summon them. “And your family... the Romanos... they slaughtered the mother I’d just found. Hours after I finally held her, Penelope.”
He ran a hand over his face, eyes burning with a storm of grief. “They tried to bribe two of Lake Como’s ruling families to look the other way. Both refused. I have proof—documents, recordings, financial trails. I’ve held onto every shred for years.” His lips curled, half-smile, half-snarl, haunted. “The Romanos owe me their lives, Penelope. Every single one. Every breath they take is borrowed.”
My chest constricted, breath faltering as the past surged up like a tide—his voice echoing in the marble hall on the day I was meant to marry Antonio, my father’s jaw turning to stone when Dmitri burst in, speaking of “debts” and “reparations.” I’d thought it was bluster then, the usual power play between mafia families. But now—
Now it all fit. Every word, every glare, every secret meeting.
The Romanos—my family—had murdered his.
“Dmitri...” My voice wavered, cracking under the weight of everything. I clutched the counter so hard my knuckles went white. “I don’t... I don’t remember ever being with anyone else. I swear to God, I wasn’t. I loved you—only you. Someone... someone must have set me up, made it look like something it wasn’t. They wanted to keep us apart... wanted you to hate me.”
He didn’t move. Just stared at me with that hollow expression—the look of a man who’d buried too many truths to care about new ones.
“I never got your letter,” I said softly, desperate now. “The one you said you left in my room. I never saw it, Dmitri. I would have written back. I would have found you.”
He exhaled sharply, jaw tight, eyes dark with a storm of anger and hurt. “I know. Your father found it first. That letter—you never saw it because he took it. The day I brought you to meet him, when he came all the way from New York to Lake Como, he smuggled a letter into your hand before he left. You hid it under your pillow, planning to read it later. I saw it before you woke... and I couldn’t let you read it.”
Something flickered in his eyes—pain, disbelief, maybe even longing—but it was gone before I could be sure.
His voice dropped, quiet but heavy, each word cutting. “It was too late anyway. The pain it would have caused... the guilt, the memories... that was one of the reasons I stayed away for four months. Not because I didn’t want you, but because I couldn’t survive watching you...”
“You and your family destroyed me,” he hissed, his blue eyes icy, sharp as knives. “And you—” He stepped forward, the counter trapping me. “—have no idea what followed. My mother... gone. And me left to rot in the dark.”
I whimpered, trying to speak. “Dmitri...
“Silence.” His voice snapped, a whip across the room. “I lived through hell while you slept, innocent. I carried the rot, the grief, the nights that never ended.”
He leaned closer, so near I could see the faint scar along his jawline, the one I’d once kissed in secret under moonlight. “You can’t imagine the darkness I sank into. You don’t want to imagine it.”
My breath hitched, my body trembling as his words cut deeper than any blade could.
“Set up or not,” he said, his voice low, every syllable a quiet death sentence, “the image of you in his arms—my mother’s blood on your hands —your lies—it’s burned into me. Into my soul. I can’t unsee it, Penelope. I can’t forgive it. And I sure as hell can’t forget it.”
He took another step, and it felt like the air itself recoiled.
His presence filled the kitchen—suffocating, electric with rage barely restrained.
“And now,” he growled, each word dragging through the air like iron, “you raise a gun at me? You fire at me? You mistake my control for cowardice, my patience for forgiveness? You have no idea what you’ve awoken.”
Before I could breathe, his hand shot forward, seizing my jaw.
His grip was iron, fingers biting into my skin until pain flared sharp and hot. My head tilted back under the force, my pulse thundering against his palm.
“Dmitri—” I choked out, but the sound barely escaped.
He lifted me with ease, shoving me back onto the kitchen island.
