Page 122 of Twisted Addiction
“How could we?” she said, sharp and defensive. “Do you think we would have let that happen? If we’d known, we’d have had them killed ourselves. Power be damned.”
Her eyes flashed, not with apology but with the bright white heat of someone describing logistics. “They were your father’s brothers — dangerous men, but not untouchable.”
The admission landed like a blow.
I stifled a sob and ground my teeth until my jaw hurt.
“Dmitri found out,” Isabella went on, and her voice softened just enough to be venomous. “He hunted them for four months. Followed leads, burned connections, risked everything to make them pay. He wasn’t protecting you for pity, Penelope. He was making their blood answer for what they took.”
I pictured Dmitri’s face — the flat, unreadable mask that melted into a storm behind his eyes.
He tore the world apart for me—and then locked me in darkness. He hunted down the man who stole my innocence, yet still planned to send me away so he could marry someone else.
The contradictions shredded something in me. “All he feels is hate,” I said, trying to believe it myself. “He killed to feed his ego, not to save me.”
Isabella’s head tilted with a patience that made my skin crawl. “Whatever you want to name it — obsession, vengeance — it changed him. He paid a price to bring you back to New York. He told us he’d let you come home for a spell. That’s how we knew your flight details.”
“‘A spell’?” I laughed, a short, bitter sound. “I’m never going back. If he tries to force me, he’ll have to kill me first.”
She watched me with that dangerous stillness, then dropped the bomb as if it were the least of her concerns. “You’re carrying his child, Penelope. That binds you to him in a way divorce papers never could.”
I flinched back, as if she’d struck me. “Don’t say that,” I hissed. “He’s sending divorce papers. He’s marrying someone else.”
Isabella’s surprise was genuine for a beat.
Then her composure reclosed like a vault. “Impossible,” she whispered, disbelief and calculation warring in her face. “Dmitri... he’s obsessive to a fault. But politics... politics can bend even the strongest hearts. If he believes this marriage no longer serves his empire, that Lake Como doesn’t hinge on it... then I suppose he could set aside his obsessions. Pathetic. Truly pathetic, to see a man of his power surrender so easily to pragmatism.”
The words landed like ice in my veins.
“Pragmatism?” I spat, each word trembling with rage. “You mean he’s willing to erase everything—me, our child, everythingwe lived through—because it doesn’t suit him politically? Because some power game says so?”
Isabella didn’t flinch. “Let’s not romanticize what never existed,” she said coolly. “There was no love in that marriage, only control. And he doesn’t even know about the child—his child—you’re carrying. Perhaps that ignorance shaped his choice.”
My blood turned to ice.
A tremor ran through my hands as I clenched them against the table until my knuckles blanched white.
“Mom, enough,” I said, voice cracking under the weight of everything unsaid. “Enough about Dmitri. Start telling me what I don’t remember—all of it. Or tell me how to bring it back.”
I swallowed hard, my throat burning. “You took pieces of me I can’t get back. And I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive you for that.”
She dabbed at her lips with a napkin, the motion almost ritualistic. “I can’t help you there,” she said softly. “Neither can your father.”
Rage flooded my veins, scorching and metallic. “Why?” I snapped, voice trembling with fury. “Why won’t you help me?”
“Because you’re better off not remembering,” she said simply, each word dropping like a stone.
The meaning hit me like a punch. “If you relive certain things, Penelope... you won’t be whole enough to run this family. You won’t be the Romano heir we’ve shaped you to be.”
I stared at her, disbelief curdling into fury. “And you decided this for me? That I don’t get my own past?”
Her calm was surgical. “We didn’t decide. We acted. Anything too traumatic, we erase. The narrative is ours to control—for your survival... and ours.”
Heat coursed through me, a wild, animal anger I couldn’t tame. “Who are you, Mom?” I whispered, voice barely contained. “Because the woman in front of me... I don’t even know her.”
Her eyes flickered, just for a heartbeat.
She leaned forward, the duality of mother and queen stark in the tilt of her chin. “You’re twenty-five, Penelope,” she said, voice precise. “There is no benefit to hiding the truth any longer. And to answer the question you’re too afraid to ask — yes. We had Dmitri’s parents killed.”
