Page 62 of Twisted Addiction

He produced another cigarette and lit it with deliberate slowness, the flame painting his cheekbones gold for a second. He leaned back against the wall, all ease and danger. “Is that the story he fed you

Heat flared along my spine. “You’re awfully relaxed for a man standing outside a cathedral while Dmitri and his goons are inside,” I said, jaw tight. “Aren’t you nervous?”

He blew the smoke out like a sneer. “I’m not a man who freezes at threats. I’m here on business—legal this time. Dmitri knows my name. He knows what I can cost him. He won’t touch me.” He let the words hang, smug.

“Seraphina isn’t a ghost. She’s very real—useful, alive, and very much inconvenient for some people.”

I felt the floor drop out from under me. “She’s not,” I snapped, though the certainty in his tone shook me.

His amusement curdled into impatience. “Whale—will you actually listen?” He snapped the nickname with a sneer, and whatever patience I’d had evaporated.

I didn’t give him the chance. The barrel rose until it leveled with his forehead, steady now, fueled by fury.

“Call me that name again,” I said, voice ice, “and this bullet goes right through your skull.”

For a long breath he stared into the muzzle, then up at my eyes. The cigarette trembled between his fingers. Far from intimidated, he looked delighted, as if the dangerous edge in me finally made the night worth his trouble.

“Bold,” he murmured, voice low. “Terrifyingly bold. Don’t let the bravado fool you, though—people like us don’t forgive. We collect debts.”

He laughed, low and harsh, like gravel sliding over stone. “Three years, Penelope. We dated for three years. You flinch at a cockroach, and you think I’d actually believe you’d pull the trigger?

Images slammed into me: the day of the ‘miscarriage’ — him appearing out of nowhere, chasing me until an asthma attack doubled me over; him straddling me, my belly still aching, slapping me until my cheek burned; then—when I was alreadybroken—bringing the barrel of a gun down on the back of my head. And he still thinks I couldn’t shoot him?

My grip didn’t waver. The gun felt absurd and holy in my hand. “Dmitri’s men are patching him up as we speak,” I said, voice low and flat. “And he hasn’t done what you did—at least, not yet.”

“Don’t think I’ve forgotten your words at the altar on what was supposed to be our wedding day: you told me you’d been sleeping with my cousin, Sofia, that your love was a lie, that you’d only warmed your way into my family to drag me off to Rome and make my life yours.”

“Then you reappeared in Lake Como after Dmitri dragged me here, stalked me until you kidnapped me. You deserve two bullets, Antonio—one to the left rib to punish the way you carved promises into my chest and stole whatever was left of my faith in anyone; and one to the right thigh to take the swagger out of you, to make sure you can never stand over someone and laugh at their ruin again.”

For a breathless second his smirk stalled, the predator’s ease cracking. Disbelief and something like calculation flickered across his face.

Before he could respond, a voice sliced through the tension:

“Penelope.”

I spun.

Giovanni emerged from the cathedral, his face tightening as he took in Antonio leaning casually against the wall, cigarette still in hand.

Then, staggered into view—Dmitri. His arm was heavily bandaged, his suit marred with blood, his expression a raw storm of pain, fury, and something far darker, something that made my skin crawl and pulse at the same time.

“Leave,” Dmitri commanded, his voice deliberate, vibrating through the yard like an unbreakable chain.

Antonio’s lips thinned, his predatory gaze meeting Dmitri’s for a fraction of a second before he dropped the cigarette, crushing it under his boot.

Without another word, he retreated, every step calculated, silent, defiance draining from him like water from a sponge. No one crossed Dmitri here and lived unscathed.

Dmitri’s eyes locked on mine, a storm of emotions—anger, pain, obsession, and possessive hunger—swirling in their depths.

My pulse spiked.

He leaned toward Giovanni, murmuring something I couldn’t hear, then pivoted and slid into the waiting SUV with the doctor.

The engine roared, and they sped off, leaving me trembling, the echo of the gunshot and the smell of iron still clinging to the cold night air.

I stared after them, chest heaving, heart hammering.

I had shot him. Survived him. Challenged him. And now, more than ever, I wondered if I wanted to run... or confront the storm I’d create