Page 88 of Darkest Oblivion
My vision blurred, the room spinning as I fumbled for the cell phone Giovanni had given me a month ago, when he’d pitied my isolation. “Call if you need anything,” he’d said, but every call I’d made since had gone unanswered. Hundreds. Days andnights filled with nothing. I thought, foolishly, that we could be... something.
That night, giving myself to him, body and soul—had I been a fool?
My hand shook as I typed, trembling over the screen. “Dmitri, I’m carrying your child.” My chest thumped violently as I hit send, terror and hope warping together.
He already hated me—would he hate his own child too?
Minutes stretched into hours.
I stared at the screen, heart hammering, fingers curling around the phone.
Desperation clawed at me.
My thumb hovered again, typing, “Dmitri, I am four months along. I need to see a doctor, or our child could have complications.”
I was about to send it when a new message appeared.
“Erase it. Erase me.”
The words slammed into me like a steel blade.
My chest dropped a thousand miles, my hand shook so violently the phone nearly slipped to the floor. Pain, raw and suffocating, tore through me as tears cascaded down my face. The world fractured around me.
I blinked through the blur, reading the text again.Erase it. Erase me?
And then another beep. Another message. My tears smudged the screen, but I wiped them frantically.
“Let’s be clear, Penelope,” the message read, each word like a scalpel slicing through my chest. “Yes, I need an heir to secure my throne, but you—carrying my child—was never something I wanted. Do you even deserve it? You, who ruined me, whose family destroyed everything I held, who took from me what no one else could touch—do you think I’d allow you to bring my heir into this world? The night we shared... it wasn’t love, itwasn’t mercy. It was to claim you, nothing more. Four months of silence? That was just the beginning. I haven’t even started to make your life a proper misery. You’ll scream, you’ll beg, and death... death won’t come, milaya. Not for you.”
I collapsed against the floor, chest trembling under the weight of his words.
He had planned this—used me, my body, my heart, and abandoned me to ruin me further. And now, carrying the child he’d always wanted, hoping it might soften something in him... he hated me even more.
He didn’t care about his own child because it was mine, because I was mine.
Is this how I die? In silence?
Another message arrived instantly.
“You got too comfortable with my kindness, Penelope,” his words coiled through me like venom, merciless. “Did you really think I was capable of tenderness? No. You forgot who I am. I’m not here to love you, not here to save you. I’m here to break you—slowly, painfully—until suffering is all you know. That’s the only gift you’ll ever get from me.”
I slammed the phone onto the bed, my tears drowning it, but I couldn’t stop. I called him again, and again, my heart breaking each time there was no answer. My body shook, sobs wracking me, fury and grief tangling into a mess of raw despair.
I thought of Antonio, of the escape I’d rejected, of freedom I’d walked past for him, the devil I’d loved.
“I hate you!” I screamed, hurling the pillow across the study. My voice cracked, raw and ragged. “I fucking hate you, Dmitri Volkov!”
I refused to eat for the rest of that day, the food turning to ash in my mouth, my stomach churning with betrayal.
The boy I’d loved at fifteen—the one who’d kissed my cheek and promised stars—had done it again, abandoning me whenI needed him most. But this time, it cut deeper, a wound that festered in the loneliness he’d crafted.
When the pain tore through me again, sharper, deeper, I staggered to the phone. My hands trembled so badly I nearly dropped it, but I managed to dial his number. Dmitri’s number.
Why? Why was I still doing this to myself? He’d made his stance clear, carved it into my soul with every cruel word—yet I couldn’t stop. A small, pathetic part of me clung to the hope that it hadn’t been him, that the message was written in a drunken haze, that maybe—just maybe—my Dmitri still existed beneath the monster.
The line rang once. Twice. My breath caught, every second stretching like a noose tightening around my throat.
No answer.
