Kindle Notes & Highlights
“Trust me, whale, Dmitri is drowning in it. Why else would he bleed half his empire and scorch a dozen alliances just to tear up the contract that bound you to me? The entire underworld still talks about it—Volkov sacrificing power for a woman he swears he despises. That, Penelope, is desperation.”
Why would the man who mocked me, broke me, bleed for me in ways my own blood never had?
“Because whether I’m in this room or across the ocean, I’m in you. You don’t get rid of me, Penelope. Ever.”
“I married you because you made me a promise when you were fifteen. And because I will never forgive what your parents stole from me. You belong to me, Penelope—for blood, for debt, for punishment.”
“I abandoned you for four months, yes. It’s my way of breaking you with solitude and loneliness—molding you until you’re utterly mine. But there’s no world where I’d know you’re carrying my child and not claim you immediately. I am heartless, Penelope, but not when it comes to what’s mine. You’d be under my watch, every breath, every heartbeat monitored. I’d never let you slip away like that.”
“Don’t forget what you are, Penelope,” he murmured against my skin. “Mine. Divorce. Freedom. Rights...” His mouth curled into a dark smirk. “Pretty illusions. They don’t apply to you.” “You belong here. With me. Always.”
I want this baby. I need this baby. My eyes fell to the small curve of my belly, still barely a swell, but to me it was everything. My hand drifted over it, trembling, and tears stung my eyes. “You’re mine,” I whispered, as if the baby could hear me. “You’re all mine.”
They knew she was my Achilles’ heel,
He’d failed to protect the one person who mattered most—my Penelope.
“My Penelope,”
“would never betray me.”
“She doesn’t lie to me. She doesn’t cheat. She doesn’t need to. ...
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But Penelope? The thought of her caught in the crossfire ignited a feral protectiveness in me.
I would burn the whole territory down to keep her safe—my life for hers, without hesitation.
she’d always be mine, body and soul, no matter the cost.
Did she remember how she’d gutted me all those years ago—how she’d ground my trust under her heel and left me bleeding, how she’d destroyed the fragile boy I’d been before hardening into this?
Interesting
I wanted her here, eternally bound to me, a captive to both my rage and my all-consuming obsession. She might not remember, but I did. I remembered everything.
I’d never apologize for it; She was mine to unmake, mine to rebuild. Mine.
I’d never touch her against her will, not then, not now, not ever.
Her eyes snapped open. The look she gave me wasn’t fear of the unknown—it was recognition. Horror, naked and unfiltered, like a knife sliding between ribs. “You...” she whispered. The word was a blade.
I stood there, frozen, her accusation ricocheting through me. Me. In her nightmares. Twisted into the same shape as the monsters I’d already destroyed for her. I’d never touched her like that. Not then. Not now.
She was my axis, the point on which everything spun.
If she saw me as a monster, even in sleep, then something—someone—had put that vision in her head. And I would find out who. I would tear apart her past, her memories, her ghosts, until I dragged the truth out by its throat. She was mine—to protect, to possess, to rebuild from ash. No nightmare, no ghost, no accusation would take her from me.
“You really believe all he feels for you is hate?”
“Believe? I’ve lived it. You don’t need eyes to feel hate burn through a room.”
He’d left me after that, vanishing for months, leaving me to drown in loneliness and doubt. He was my husband, yes, but I wouldn’t be his toy, used and discarded again.
“Maybe I wouldn’t have to act out if I didn’t feel caged.”
“You think I want you caged?”
“You’re not built for silence, Penelope. Every time you say you’re fine, you sound like you’re breaking.”
“Don’t,”
“Why?”
“You don’t want me to touch you, but you don’t move away either.” I swallowed hard. “You don’t want to touch me. You...
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“You still think everything I do is a...
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“Sometimes I touch you because it’s the only thing that reminds me you’re still here.”
“You used to reach for me,” he said, voice low. “Now you flinch.”
“Because you hurt me,” I whispered. “You made me afraid to want you.”
I hadn’t realized how much I’d wanted him to stay—not to touch me, not even to speak—just to be there. His presence had quieted the noise in my head, if only for a moment.
Beneath the stars, I made myself a promise: if it came down to him or this child, I would choose the child. Always.
“You suffer from dissociative amnesia,”
“Parts of your past are gone. You don’t even know they’re missing.”
“That’s why you’ve punished me? Controlled me? You
bitterly, the sound raw in the hollow cathedral. “No? You’ve destroyed me, Dmitri. You’ve treated me like a weapon that turned on
you, like something you couldn’t stand to touch. Don’t stand there and tell me you never hated me.”
“I never hated you.”
“Why keep me close just to break me?”
“Because even if you were there that night, you didn’t choose it. You were used. Like her.” His gaze lifted to the statue, to the scarred stone face of the woman who had birthed him. “You and she—both victims of someone else’s cruelty.”
“If my presence disgusts you that much,” I said, forcing the words past the ache in my throat, “and you’ll never stop hating me—or even tell me why—then I can’t do this anymore.”
“No,” he whispered, and the sound was worse than a shout. “You’re mine, Milaya. I’d burn Lake Como, the courts, the world itself—until there’s nothing left but you and me. No one takes you from me. Not even God.”
His voice shook—not with anger, but something far more dangerous: fear.
“You can’t keep me here if all you do...
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