Page 11 of Darkest Oblivion (Doomed Vows #1)

PENELOPE

I jolted awake, my heart hammering, the silk sheets twisted around my legs like a noose.

The room glowed with the soft amber of dawn.

Dmitri stood across the room.

Already dressed in a tailored black suit, every line was precise, his silver cufflinks catching the light, the wolf-etched ring gleaming on his finger, a crimson tie pin stabbing the dark fabric like blood on snow.

His dark hair slicked back with ruthless care.

He looked every bit the predator cloaked in elegance, and his icy blue eyes were fixed not on me but on the phone in his hand.

Why hadn’t he woken me?

My chest tightened, last night’s wounds reopening in my mind. His body-shaming words— heavy, unremarkable, a burden on the eye —echoed like poison.

My throat ached with the memory, humiliation gnawing beneath my ribs.

The second day of my twenty-fifth birthday, and I was nothing more than a pawn on his board

“I’ll be waiting outside.” Dmitri’s voice sliced through my thoughts. “You have thirty minutes to get dressed.”

His focus stayed on his phone, but his words were stone.

I sat up, the duvet slipping from my shoulders, and swallowed hard against the lump rising in my throat. My voice trembled when I spoke, but I forced the words out anyway.

“Grant me one call,” I said, my grip on the sheets tightening. “To my parents. They deserve to know I’m alive.”

For a heartbeat, the room held its breath.

He didn’t answer immediately—didn’t even move.

The silence pressed in on me like iron bars, every second stretching, twisting.

Finally, Dmitri looked up, his gaze assessing, as if he were measuring how much of myself I was willing to beg away.

His eyes flicked to me, cunhurried, raking from my toes to my face. Heat crawled up my neck, shame and fury tangling as I dragged the duvet tighter around me—a useless shield against the man who had already stripped me bare with words.

“You’ll speak to your parents when we return,” Dmitri said at last, his voice steel. “It depends on your behavior at the ball tonight. Convince my rivals you’re in love with me, and your request will be granted. If they doubt...” His lips curved in the ghost of a smirk. “...it’s denied.”

Disbelief crashed into me, suffocating, my heart pounding so hard I could barely breathe. “I’m supposed to pretend I love you?” The words came out raw.

Pretending to love a man who forced vows into my mouth, dragged me to Lake Como, and humiliated me with her name—Seraphina, the elegant phantom I could never compete with—was nothing short of madness.

My stomach twisted.

“Yes.” His answer was deliberate, his gaze lingering on me like a hand I couldn’t brush away.

He didn’t wait for my protest. Turning, his boots silent on the marble, he strode out, the door clicking shut with a finality that rang like a lock snapping closed.

My chest tightened—not from asthma but from the crushing weight of his control.

Well, I don’t see that happening. Hell, I don’t even know how to act—how to pretend to be someone I’m not.

I swung my legs off the bed, and stumbled into the bathroom.

As the water coursed over me, my thoughts spun in circles I couldn’t escape.

The ballroom loomed like a battlefield, an arena where I’d be forced to wear his mask—smile as if I adored him, bleed loyalty with my eyes. Only then would he allow me what I craved most: a chance to speak to my parents. The thought curdled in my stomach.

I didn’t linger. Time was already slipping away. I had woken just past seven, and by now it was nearing eight.

Stepping out of the bathroom, steam trailing me like a ghost, I moved swiftly toward the wardrobe. Its doors opened with a hush, revealing rows of meticulously arranged clothing.

I refused to play along. A gown would have suited the stage he planned, but I reached instead for my favorite jeans and a black shirt.

The denim was soft, the shirt loose but fitted, a small rebellion stitched into fabric. They were me—Penelope Romano. Not his bride. Not his pawn.

I dressed quickly, defiance stiffening my spine, and turned to the mirror.

For a moment, I didn’t see strength. I saw curves that felt too soft, thighs that pressed too close together, arms that carried the words he’d thrown like knives—heavy, a burden.

Would they all see it too? The women at the ball with their swan-like necks and waists I could circle with two hands—would they look at me and wonder why Dmitri had chosen this? Would they whisper behind their jeweled fingers, weighing me against Seraphina’s ghost?

My throat tightened, shame prickling hot under my skin.

And yet... my jaw set.

My eyes burned back at me from the glass. I wasn’t Seraphina. I wasn’t a swan. I was Penelope Romano. And even if Dmitri tried to erase me, I’d cling to myself, however imperfect, however unwanted.

A pawn, maybe. But one that refused to topple.

I turned from the mirror and walked into the living room.

Dmitri paced like a caged panther, his phone pressed to his ear, Italian rolling from his tongue.

His gaze flicked to me the second I entered, narrowing on the jeans, on my curves, on the choice I’d made. I braced myself for one of his barbs, ready to spit my reply—

But instead, his mouth quirked. “I’m not complaining,” he murmured into the phone, though his eyes never left me. Almost approving. Almost amused.

My cheeks burned, my stomach flipping with anger and something I hated to name.

Why did his approval sting as much as his insults?

He strode out, suit jacket flaring, and I followed, exhaling shaky bursts, my inhaler a reassuring weight in my pocket.

The estate’s grandeur pressed down on me as we descended into the garage.

A black Rolls-Royce gleamed under the fluorescent lights.

Giovanni stood waiting at the driver’s door, his weathered face smug, his suit sharp enough to cut.

He opened the back door with a crisp bow.

Dmitri gestured me inside, his palm grazing my back.

Revulsion shot through me—followed, shamefully, by a flicker of unwanted heat. I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted copper.

We slid into the leather seats, the air thick with the scent of polished wood, cologne, and new car.

Giovanni started the engine, and the tinted partition rose with a soft hum, sealing me in with Dmitri. The car purred to life, Lake Como’s waters flashing in shards of silver as we sped toward the ball.

Dmitri’s knee brushed mine.

His scent wrapped around me. He stared straight ahead, jaw carved from stone, hands resting on his thighs.

Then, flat and cold, he spoke. “I need a child.”

The words detonated inside me.

My breath caught, ears ringing.

Seraphina’s name echoed in memory and bile rose in my throat. Images of her perfection, the hickeys on his throat, his taunts, seared through me.

“Good for you,” I snapped, rage drowning fear. “Tell Seraphina—‘slim, graceful, everything I’ll never be’—to carry your child. Doesn’t sound that hard.”

His response was calm, colder than ice. “You’re right. It isn’t. There are hundreds of women who would carry my child. But tradition demands it be my wife.”

I scoffed, my pulse thundering. “Then maybe you should’ve married Seraphina. Spare us both the humiliation.”

His head snapped toward me, eyes flashing with fury.

In a blur, his hand closed around my jaw, his grip iron, fingers digging into my skin until pain shot through my cheekbones.

His breath hit my lips, hot and dangerous.

“Do not say her name again,” he growled, his voice guttural, vibrating through me like a threat made flesh.

My nails dug into my palms, but I forced the words out through clenched teeth. “You started it—when you compared me to her. I’m heavy, she’s slim, isn’t that what you said?”

The car fell silent, tension coiling like a snake, his grip unrelenting.

My body felt small, inadequate under his gaze, yet I refused to cower, my eyes locked on his, defiance burning.

He released me at last, shifting his thigh and staring straight ahead as though I no longer existed.

My jaw throbbed, but I pressed on, desperate for answers.

“Dmitri,” I said quietly, eyes fixed on him. “You owe me the truth. Ten years ago, you left without a word—no goodbye, no word. One day you were there, the next you were gone, and all I had were rumors—Rumors of blood and power and terrible things tied to your name in Italy.”

He stayed silent, his face a mask carved from stone.

“But I remember you before all this.” I swallowed hard, my voice breaking, “the boy who bought me gelato after my recital because I couldn’t stop crying.

The boy who spent an hour sewing a ribbon into my hair when I ruined it, just to make me laugh again.

The boy who swore the world could be ours when I was fifteen and you were nineteen. ”

I drew a shaky breath, my chest heavy. “Don’t tell me none of that lingers in you. Our love may have been na?ve, but it was real. I still feel it—God help me, I do. And all you’ve given me in return is hatred.”

My voice broke, softer now, but edged with steel. “So tell me, Dmitri... what changed? What changed you?”

No answer. No flicker in his posture. Just silence, thick as a wall.

“Dmitri,” I said, my chest aching with a pressure that felt like it might split me in two.

“What made you believe I ruined you? What did my family do to twist everything between us?” My voice wavered, but I forced it through the silence.

“We could talk—God, we could fight, scream, anything but this. This prison, this hate.”

His profile stayed rigid, carved in stone.

I leaned forward, desperate but unyielding.

“You once swore I’d be yours, and you’d be mine.

Do you even remember saying that? Because this—” my hand trembled as I gestured to the air between us, the suffocating space in the car “—this isn’t us.

It isn’t what we were. It isn’t what we were supposed to become. ”

Still, nothing.