Page 55 of Enzo (Legacy of Heathens #3)

PENELOPE

T hrough the fog of sleep, I heard my papà’s voice, and for the first time in my life, it filled me with dread.

“Where is my daughter?” he bellowed from somewhere deep in the house. “I’m taking her home.”

I jolted upright, clutching the blanket to my chest. My heart slammed against my ribs. For a second, I thought I was dreaming, that it was some nightmare dredged up from the chaos we’d just escaped.

But then I heard it again.

“I lost one daughter. I’m not losing another to your stupid fucking power grab, Enzo!”

I swallowed hard, my fingers tightening around the hem of the blanket.

“You and your family can go fuck yourselves,” Papà raged. “This marriage? It’s over. Annulled.”

I kicked the covers off and scrambled to find clothes, but we hadn’t finished unpacking. The closets were still bare. I spotted a pair of leggings and one of Enzo’s dress shirts draped over a chair and pulled them on in a rush.

Papà’s voice was still rising, but Enzo wasn’t yelling. He was quiet.

Too quiet.

I bolted down the hallway, feet pounding against the marble, then descended the sweeping staircase, heart hammering in my throat. I had no idea which direction to go. We hadn’t exactly explored every wing of this place yet.

Then I heard Papà’s voice again, sharp and vicious.

“You made yourself the head of that fucking organization. Are you trying to put your name on every hitman’s list, Enzo?”

“How did you find out?” Enzo questioned. “I knew it’d eventually come out, but this was… fast.”

“Nico Morrelli,” he shouted. “He always finds shit out, Enzo. You should know that.”

I found the office door cracked open at the far end of the hall.

Inside, Papà paced in his black suit, the outline of his gun visible beneath his jacket. My brothers stood stiffly on either side of him, also in suits—though they didn’t yet know how to wear them—and trying hard to look like men when they were still grieving teenagers.

Their backs were to me.

Only Enzo noticed when I entered.

“Where is Penelope?” Papà barked. “I’m taking her home. Right now.”

I stepped around them all and strode straight to Enzo’s side, slipping my hand into his.

“I’m here,” I said quietly. “And I’m not going anywhere.”

Papà’s face twisted in disbelief.

“You don’t understand what this means, Pen. What you’re involving yourself with,” he reasoned. “His executions will cost us. People don’t forget that kind of blood. They will come for him. For you.”

I closed my eyes.

I could already see it: shadows moving through alleys, weapons tucked into coats, a smile here, a knife there. The kind of threats that didn’t arrive with a warning.

“Please, princess,” Papà said, voice breaking. “I can’t lose another child.”

Beside me, Enzo remained quiet, but I could sense the coiled tension from him, feel the heat rolling off his body in steady waves. He didn’t tremble. Didn’t twitch. His calm was the kind that terrified anyone who understood it. A quiet born from having already stepped past the edge.

My heart ached, but my voice didn’t waver.

“I am staying with my husband,” I said.

“Pen, please…” Damiano’s voice broke, uncertain, still boyish. “Come home with us.”

I looked at him. My little brother. Papà never should’ve dragged him—either of my brothers—into this.

“I am home,” I said gently but firmly. “ He is my home.” Then I turned to Papà, voice sharper now. “And if you’re here to threaten my husband, you should leave. And don’t come back.”

“You’re picking him over us?” Armani asked, shock lacing his words. “But he could be a cold-blooded killer.”

Papà’s lip curled. “He is a cold-blooded killer,” then added wryly, “We all are.”

“Like you said, Papà, we all come from killers,” I shot back. “The only difference this time is that Enzo killed people who deserved it. He went to the black market. He tried to find Amara a match, and then he hunted the ones who let her die. He did what you wouldn’t.”

“Don’t use your little sister to justify this bloodbath,” Papà snarled. “Do you have any idea what kind of shitstorm you’re standing in the middle of?”

Enzo stepped forward at last.

“I knew exactly what would happen when I started eliminating them,” he said, his voice icy and lethal.

Papà’s eyes blazed. “Then you dragged my daughter into a blood war. And for what? You think that ends now? You don’t know what you’ve done.”

I stepped between them, pressing one hand to Papà’s chest while keeping the other wrapped around Enzo’s.

“I got justice for Amara,” Enzo said.

“Don’t you dare say her name,” Papà snapped, grief bleeding through his rage.

That was it.

“He did what you couldn’t,” I screamed, my voice cracking with fury. “Dr. Gvozden took Amara’s heart. Her heart ! He worked with Atticus Popov. He blocked her from getting a transplant. He could’ve saved her, but he didn’t. He let her rot. Months of watching Amara suffer… It was all Dr. Gvozden!”

My throat closed. I swallowed hard, trying not to fall apart. The grief still lived in every corner of my soul, and it was obvious that it did in my family’s too. It wasn’t fair that I was angry at him.

“Penelope, this will spread like wildfire,” Papà gritted, his voice trembling. “Terrible men—much worse than me, your husband, or Uncle Cassio—will come, and they’ll demand blood. Princess, please—” His voice cracked. “Come home with us.”

I forced the words out, my voice a rough whisper.

“Papà, we should stand together. These men… they all deserved to die. They let her die, and then they took her heart out. We all missed it. Enzo was dismantling the organization, only ready to use its resources to help Amara. How can you not see that he had no other choice?” I wanted to make sure he understood my husband and I were a unit. “How can you push us away?”

The silence that followed was thick with the kind of pain you never recovered from. My words didn’t just land. They lashed, slicing through my family like a whip across raw skin.

Papà’s pain rippled across his face while Damiano looked between us all, wide-eyed, lost. Armani just stared at the floor.

“Let’s go,” Papà barked at my brothers. “She made her choice.”

And they left, leaving us bleeding all over again. Not from gunfire or knives.

But from the truth.