Extras Ch 8: Valentina - A Blade Forged in Silence
Valentina didn't expect Kazimir to keep her. She had assumed he would do the sensible thing—ignore the girl, isolate her, let her fade into the background like the piece of furniture she was. It was what Valentina would have done.
But Kazimir had always been too soft for his own good. He knew the girl was a weapon—Valentina knows he is capable of seeing that—but he still jumped into Dante’s trap willingly.
It was infuriating. It was dangerous. And because Valentina, despite everything, still cared about the stupid boy she had raised, she knew she had to warn him.
She found him in his study, a few weeks after the dinner. The girl was there, of course—sitting in a chair in the corner like a piece of decorative furniture, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes fixed on the floor.
Valentina ignored her. She had nothing to say to a corpse.
"Kaz." She placed the envelope on his desk—nothing important, just an excuse to be there. "A message from Dante. Too delicate for the usual channels."
Her gaze slid to the girl. Her brows twitched in disgust.
"And how are you finding your new accommodations, little bird?" She let the mockery drip into her voice. "Try not to distract him with your overwhelming presence."
The girl curled inward like a dying flower. It was almost impressive, how thoroughly she could make herself disappear.
Valentina snorted and turned her attention back to Kazimir.
He didn't look up from the envelope. "What does Dante want now?"
Valentina leaned against his desk. "He's concerned that you're becoming a babysitter." She paused, letting the words sink in. "And frankly, so am I. Why did you chain yourself to a burden? It makes you look weak. You know that."
It was true. Every word of it. The men were talking. She had heard them in the corridors, in the smoking room, in the bars they frequented in town. The Volkov heir, wasting his time on a mute girl who can't even feed herself. No wonder Dante is always so busy cleaning after him.
Kazimir set the letter down. He looked at her, and for a moment, she saw the boy she had raised—the one who had asked her about worms, who had held her hand in the dark, who had trusted her with his fears, his hopes, and his soft, stupid heart.
"My time is my own to waste." His voice was flat, but there was an edge beneath it. "And my burdens are my property to secure. I know what I am doing."
A rebuke. Mild, but unmistakable. He was defending the girl. Or defending his right to make his own mistakes.
Stupid, Valentina thought. So stupid.
But there was something in his voice—a plea, perhaps—that made her pause. He knew. He knew the girl was a trap. He knew Dante was using her. And he was choosing to walk into it anyway.
Why? she wanted to ask. What do you see in her that I don't?
But Valentina didn't ask. She had promised to withdraw her support, and she kept her promises.
She pushed off the desk and let her gaze sweep over the girl one last time. The grey wool dress. The trembling hands. The downcast eyes.
She thought about what she knew. About the duplicate key Dante had made—a perfect copy of the one that opened Kazimir's office. About the men Dante planned to send—Marco and Silvio, greedy and vicious and utterly without conscience. About the way those two had been looking at the girl since she arrived, their eyes tracking her like wolves sizing up a wounded rabbit.
They wanted to toy with her. Mind and body. Break her completely and leave the pieces for Kazimir to find.
Valentina knew all of this. She had pieced it together from overheard conversations and Dante's casual remarks. She should warn him. She should tell him exactly what was coming.
But she had made a deal. She had promised not to interfere. And the girl was already dead anyway—what difference would it make if her destruction came a little sooner?
"Remember, Kaz." She let her voice go light, almost teasing. "No lock holds forever against someone determined to break it."
A warning. The only one she was willing to give. If he was smart enough to understand it, he might be able to protect himself. If he wasn't, then he deserved whatever came next.
His expression flickered—confusion, maybe, or the beginning of comprehension. But he didn't ask her to explain. He kept his eyes on the documents, his jaw tight.
Your choice. Your funeral.
She left the study without looking back. The girl was still sitting in the corner. Valentina didn't acknowledge her.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
The pounding on her door came at dawn.
Valentina surfaced from sleep slowly, dragged upward through layers of silk and darkness. Someone was hammering on her door. Not knocking—hammering, with a force that rattled the hinges and sent vibrations through the ancient wood.
She sat up, her dark hair spilling around her shoulders, and stared at the door with a fury that was still half-asleep but rapidly sharpening.
No one woke her. Ever. That was an unspoken rule of the household—one that even Dante respected—partly because she was terrifying when deprived of it, and partly because she had cultivated the reputation so carefully that no one dared test it.
Until now.
The hammering continued. Valentina threw off her covers and crossed the room on her bare feet. She was already composing the blistering reprimand she would deliver.
She yanked open the door.
It was Kazimir.
He looked disheveled. His shirt untucked, sleeves rolled to the elbows, forearms streaked with grime and dried blood. His hair fell across his forehead in tangles.
But it was his eyes that stopped her sharp words. She had seen him angry, frustrated, exhausted, defeated—but never like this. His eyes were utterly empty of anything that resembles mercy. He looked like he was ready to commit murder.
"Did you know?" His voice was scraped and raw.
The question hung in the air between them, ambiguous and loaded. Valentina raised a brow. There were so many things she knew, so many secrets she had collected and cataloged over the years. She needed clarification.
"Know what?" she asked, her voice carefully neutral. "If you're asking about Dante's schemes, I don't have details for you."
Kazimir's jaw tightened. A muscle jumped in his cheek. "Someone hurt Elena. While I was away last night."
So that was it. The girl had finally been broken—not just humiliated or terrorized, but physically violated.
"Marco and Silvio," she said, without him asking. "But what's the point of asking me now? Didn't Leo tell you about them?"
Something flickered in Kazimir's eyes—a shadow of realization, followed by a flash of self-directed fury. He didn't wait for her response. He turned and strode down the hallway, his footsteps heavy and final.
Valentina watched him go—watched the set of his shoulders and the way his hands curled into fists at his sides. Kazimir had never willingly killed anyone in the household before, but somehow she knew he was going to kill them.
He had threatened, intimidated, manipulated—all the tools she had taught him. But he had never crossed that final line into lethal violence. Today, he would. Against his own men.
Valentina closed her door and leaned against it, staring at the ceiling—a complicated emotion stirred in her chest.
"If you had just stayed passive," she murmured to the empty room, "you wouldn't have to go through this."
But even as she said it, she knew it wasn't entirely true. She had spent years trying to teach him to be strong. But strength wasn't something you could teach. It was something you discovered when you had something to protect.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Valentina didn't see him again for over a week.
Kazimir had killed two men and then retreated to his bedroom, where the girl was still recovering. He had locked himself away with her, posted a guard at the door, and refused to see anyone—including his own advisors.
Including her.
At first, Valentina was pleased. The fire she had seen in his eyes that dawn had been real. He had finally done what needed to be done. He had taken action and sent a message to everyone who thought he was too soft to lead.
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But as the days stretched on, her pleasure curdled into frustration. Because Kazimir wasn't consolidating power. He wasn't capitalizing on the fear his violence had generated. He was hiding. Playing nurse to a traumatized girl while the family's business ground to a halt and the rumors spread.
And the stories were ugly.
Valentina heard them everywhere—in the corridors, in the smoking room, in the bars where the men gathered to drink and gossip. The talk had shifted. No one was calling Kazimir soft anymore. Now they were calling him unstable.
“Did you hear? Boss killed Marco and Silvio without a trial. No warning. Just dragged them out and gutted them.”
“Why?”
“Because his wife got caught seducing them. That's what I heard. She went to them, and when the boss found out, he killed the men to keep it quiet. Now he's locked himself in his room with her. Can't let her out of his sight.”
“Geez, what kind of Don can't control his own wife?”
It was a disaster. And Dante, predictably, took full advantage. He didn't gloat openly—that wasn't his style. But Valentina saw the satisfaction in his eyes. He had always been good at using other people's weaknesses, and Kazimir had given him a feast.
A week after the purge, Dante called for a family dinner.
And Valentina was curious. A dinner would force Kazimir and the girl out of that room. She wanted to see what had become of the mute, trembling creature who had been broken in the cellar.
When the dining room doors opened, the girl walked in on Kazimir's arm, and Valentina felt her eyebrows rise in genuine surprise.
The girl was different. Thin, yes, but Kazimir had clearly been feeding her. The angles of her frame were less skeletal now, the skin less translucent.
But more importantly, there was something new in the way she held herself. She still kept her eyes carefully lowered, but her shoulders were no longer hunched in that pathetic curl.
Interesting, Valentina thought. Whatever those men did to her, it woke something up.
Kazimir guided the girl to her chair with a hand at the small of her back—a proprietary gesture that Valentina noted with a raised brow. The girl's eyes tracked him without seeming to, a constant peripheral awareness that spoke of dependence and something else Valentina couldn't quite name.
Throughout the dinner, Valentina watched. She watched Kazimir cut the girl's food into small, precise pieces and transfer them to her plate. She watched the girl eat without the paralyzed terror of the first dinner. She watched the girl's eyes flick toward Kazimir at every unfamiliar sound, every sudden movement, checking his face for guidance the way a child checks a parent.
When Dante spoke to her, the girl's hands began to tremble beneath the table. But the girl didn't break.
Then Kazimir's hand found her back, and Valentina watched the girl's expression shift—the terror receded, replaced by something fragile and desperate.
Oh, Valentina thought, disgusted and fascinated in equal measure. She actually trusts him. She's gone and developed feelings for the stupid boy.
It was absurd. This creature who had been nothing—a void, a silence, a walking corpse—had somehow attached herself to Kazimir like a barnacle to a ship. And Kazimir, the idiot, was letting her.
"She is my wife," he said, his voice cutting through Dante's elegant taunting. "She doesn't need to speak to be heard."
Wife. Valentina had known Kazimir for twenty years, and she had never heard that particular tone in his voice—fierce, protective, and stupidly sincere. She laughed, letting the sound cut through the moment.
"How romantic, Kaz. I didn't know you had it in you."
But even as she said it, Valentina felt something complicated shift in her chest. Not approval—she still thought the girl was a burden, but perhaps she was not completely useless. If nothing else, she had at least made Kazimir grow a spine.
Dante, of course, made his move before dessert was finished.
"Valentina, cara." He waved a hand toward the door. "Why don't you show piccolina the gallery? The moonlight through those windows is exquisite tonight. Kaz and I have business to discuss—man's business, too dull for delicate ears."
Delicate ears. Valentina nearly snorted. A separation dressed as courtesy.
She rose and extended her hand. "Come, little bird. Let us leave the men to do their growling."
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
The gallery was cold and long, lined with portraits of dead Volkovs who stared down from their gilded frames with expressions ranging from stern to cruel. Moonlight poured through the tall windows, silver and cold, painting the floor in stripes.
Valentina led the girl to the center of the gallery and stopped in front of the largest portrait—Nadia and Viktor, painted together in the prime of their lives. Nadia's emerald eyes gazed down at them, gentle and knowing. Viktor's grey eyes were sharp, assessing, so like Kazimir's that Valentina felt the familiar ache in her chest.
She turned to face the girl. Time to see what the cellar had really made of her.
"Alone at last." Valentina let her smile curl slowly, a blade being drawn. "Tell me, little bird: do you actually believe he cares about you?"
The girl said nothing. But she didn't drop her eyes.
Valentina tilted her head, cataloging. The old silence was still there, but it was different now. The girl's hands trembled—she couldn't hide that—but she was standing her ground, however unsteadily.
"No? You're smarter than you look." Valentina laughed and began to circle the way she had in the hallway almost a month ago. "He doesn't care. He's incapable of it. Kazimir Volkov has ice where his heart should be. Always has."
A lie—a blatant, ridiculous lie. Kazimir was the softest man Valentina had ever known. But the girl didn't know that—not in the place where fear lived. Valentina wanted to see if she truly trusted Kazimir.
The girl's jaw tightened, and her fingers pressed harder into her palms, but she didn't break eye contact.
She didn't take the bait. Good. But what about something more personal?
Valentina let her voice drift over the girl's shoulder. "I've known him since we were children. Played together. Fought together. Almost…" She let the silence stretch. "Almost a great many things."
The jealousy test. Every woman who cared about a man had that tender spot—the fear that someone else had a prior claim, a deeper history, a relationship that could never quite be matched. Valentina watched the girl's face, expecting to see something crack. A flicker of doubt.
But the girl held on. Her jaw tightened further. Her fingers pressed harder into her palms. She did not flinch.
Valentina felt a flicker of approval. Either she is not jealous. Or she's learned to hide it. Either way, she's got more control than I gave her credit for.
But let's strip away the romance entirely and see what's left.
"You're a tool, little bird. Just a piece on a board. He needs a wife? He finds a wife. He needs to make a statement? He parades you." She raised a brow, letting the words sink in. "Men like Kazimir can't love. If you become a weakness in this household—" She snapped her fingers near the girl's face. "—you're gone."
The girl flinched. It was small—a hitch in her breathing, a tremor through her shoulders. But it was there.
"There it is. The rabbit, still in there. Still breakable. Still nothing," Valentina taunted.
Then the girl did something unexpected. She lifted her chin and met Valentina's gaze directly. Her eyes burned with the stubborn, furious refusal to be broken.
Valentina's smile faltered. A flicker of genuine surprise crossed her features.
Well, she thought, delighted. Well, well, well!
But Valentina wasn't done. The girl had withstood lies about Kazimir's heart, insinuations about his past, the reduction of herself to a tool. She had withstood the implication that she was disposable. But there was one weapon she hadn't faced yet—the one that would cut closest to the bone, because it wasn't a lie. It was the truth, twisted just enough to become poisonous.
Valentina recovered quickly, letting the mask re-form, letting her voice turn uglier. She pushed harder, the way she always pushed, testing the limits of this new resilience.
The final test: shame. The one thing that could destroy a person from the inside out, even after they'd learned to stand against everything else.
She mentioned the cellar. The rumors. The cruel jokes the men told about her getting passed around like cheap wine. She mentioned the question, vicious and quiet, whether the girl had asked for it. She watched the girl's face crumble at the edges, watched the shame and horror flicker in her eyes, watched the spiral try to pull her under.
But the girl didn't break. Even when her whole body flinched. Even when tears burned at the corners of her eyes. Even when Valentina saw her teetering on the edge of that dark, familiar abyss—the girl didn't fall. She held Valentina's gaze, wet-eyed and trembling, and she didn't let go.
She can take it now, Valentina realized. Whatever happened in that cellar, it didn't destroy her—it forged her into a makeshift blade.
The old Elena—the void, the silence, the corpse in the grey wool dress—would have crumbled under this assault. She would have retreated into herself and disappeared, the way she had in the hallway, the way she had during the first dinner, the way she had when Valentina had tested her previously.
But this girl, the one standing in front of Nadia's portrait with fire in her eyes—this girl was something else entirely. Not strong yet. Not by a long shot. There was still too much fear in her, too much trembling, too many cracks in her armor. But the cracks weren't shattering—they were holding together well.
Valentina let out a short laugh. "Well. Perhaps I was wrong about you. Perhaps there is something under that silence."
She didn't apologize. She wasn't sorry for the things she had said—not the cruel words, not the slap, not the torn dress. Everything she had done to this girl had been a test, and the girl had finally passed. An apology now would be an insult to both of them. Instead, Valentina left first, leaving the girl alone to pull herself together in the silence.
Valentina did not go far. She hid behind a large pillar and waited until Kazimir appeared at the other end of the gallery. She saw them meet. She saw the girl lift her hand and take his. Then the two walked away together, hand in hand, disappearing into the light at the end of the hall.
Valentina turned away and looked up at the portrait.
Nadia's emerald eyes gazed down at her, gentle and knowing. Viktor's grey eyes were sharp, assessing. Valentina stood beneath them for a long moment, the silence of the gallery pressing in around her.
Would you have been satisfied? she asked silently. Is this the kind of granddaughter-in-law you would have wanted?
She thought about it. Nadia had loved outcasts. She had taken Valentina in without hesitation and given her a home. The old woman had seen her fire beneath the dirt and decided it was worth nurturing. She would have seen the same thing in Elena—not the trembling and the fear, but the stubbornness and desperate will to survive.
And Viktor? Viktor would have approved of anyone who could make Kazimir into the man he needed to be. If this mute, broken girl was the catalyst that finally forced Kazimir to stop drifting and start fighting, Viktor would have welcomed her with open arms.
She's not what I would have chosen, Valentina thought. She's not strong, clever, or polished. She's not an asset in the way I understand assets. But she's got something. Something that might be enough.
She turned away from the portraits, leaving the ghosts behind.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
That night, she sat on the balcony of her room with a cigarette and a glass of wine, watching the sea churn against the cliffs.
The air was cold, sharp with the promise of winter. The stars were hidden behind clouds. Somewhere in the house, Kazimir was with the girl, probably fussing over her, probably telling her she had done well tonight.
Stupid boy, Valentina thought. But there was no venom in it. Just exhaustion. Just the faint, reluctant affection she had never quite been able to shake.
She had spent twenty years trying to protect him. Trying to make him strong. Trying to prepare him for the moment when Dante would make his final move. And now, when the battle was still looming, when everything she had worked for was still in jeopardy, the thing that might finally save him was a mute girl who had been broken and rebuilt.
Life has a strange sense of humor, she thought.
She crushed her cigarette against the stone railing and went inside.
Dante’s game was still in motion. Valentina didn't know what would happen next, but she knew one thing with absolute certainty: The Kazimir who had stood in her doorway at dawn, ready to kill, was not the same boy she had taught to play chess in the garden. He was someone new. Someone that might—if the cards fell right—be strong enough to win.
Valentina climbed into bed and closed her eyes.
Don't disappoint me, stupid boy, she thought. I've invested too much in you to watch you fail now.