Extras Ch 7: Valentina - Terms of Survival

Extras Ch 7: Valentina - Terms of Survival

A few weeks after Valentina turned eighteen, Dante called her into his study and finally told her what he wanted in return.

"I want you to marry Kazimir."

Valentina knew Dante had been planning something for years. But marriage? To the boy she had practically spent the last fourteen years raising?

She did not laugh in his face, though the impulse was there. Instead, she tilted her head and studied him the way she might study a chess opponent who had just made a baffling move.

"You're serious."

"Completely." Dante leaned back in his chair. "You're of age now. A marriage between you two would consolidate power beautifully. You know the family. You understand the business." He smiled—that warm, practiced smile. "It’s Nadia and Viktor’s wish."

Valentina considered her response carefully. She had known, in the abstract, that Dante might try something like this. She was a piece on his board, after all, and marriage was one of the oldest moves in the game. But knowing it was possible and hearing it spoken aloud were two different things.

She thought of Kazimir—almost nineteen now but still soft around the edges despite all her lessons, still looking at her with those trusting grey eyes.

Marriage—to him? The idea was absurd.

"I'm not going to marry Kazimir," she said.

Dante's smile didn't falter. "Why not?"

"Because he's my brother." She said it flatly, without emotion. "Not by blood, but I've spent fourteen years protecting him and cleaning up his messes. But if you think I'd be willing to bear his children, you've misunderstood our relationship entirely."

"Marriage doesn't require love, Valentina. You know that."

"I'm not talking about love." She leaned forward, her dark eyes hard. "I'm talking about practicality. Kazimir is boring to me. He's predictable. I know him too well to see him as anything other than a child I helped raise. That's not a marriage. That's a farce."

Dante studied her for a long moment. Valentina could see the calculations turning behind his eyes—the weighing of options, the reassessment of strategies. This was not the answer he had wanted. But he was too smart to force the issue.

"What do you want, then?" he asked.

It was the same question she had asked him years ago, on a bench overlooking the sea. She appreciated the symmetry.

"I want what I've always wanted," she said. "To survive. To keep what's mine. To not be lied to." She paused. "You gave me a life, Dante. I haven't forgotten that. I know what I owe you. But I also made promises to Nadia and Viktor before they died. I promised to protect Kazimir."

Something flickered in Dante's expression at the mention of Nadia's name. It was there and gone in an instant, but Valentina caught it.

"So here's my offer," she continued. "I won't marry Kazimir. But I also won't interfere with your plans. Whatever you're after—whatever you've been after since before you found me in Milan—I won't stand in your way. As long as you keep Kazimir alive."

The word hung in the air between them. Alive. Not unharmed. Not unburdened. Just alive.

Dante's smile returned, sharper now. "But you've been helping him.”

He knew about Valentina recruiting Leo and Nikolai. He had seen new faces around the house recently.

"Yes." Valentina admitted, meeting his gaze without flinching. "But not anymore. From today on, I’m withdrawing my support. Whatever Kazimir becomes, he becomes on his own."

"You would abandon him? After all these years?"

"I'm not abandoning him. I'm stepping back." She stood, smoothing the front of her dress. "You asked what I wanted, Dante. This is it. A seat at the table without a ring on my finger. A role in your plans that doesn't involve my body. And the assurance that the boy I raised won't die because of it."

Dante was silent for a long moment. Then he laughed—a low, appreciative sound. "You drive a hard bargain."

"I learned from the best."

He stood and extended his hand. "Then we have an agreement, Valentina cara. You won't interfere with my plans. And in return, I'll keep that boy alive."

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

Dante, to his credit, kept his word.

He never asked her to marry Kazimir again. He never gave her orders that would endanger the boy's life. Instead, he began to involve her in the family's legitimate business operations—shipping schedules, property management, the endless paperwork that kept the Volkov empire running.

Dante praised her openly. He bought her gifts—pearls, dresses, books, and even a sleek red car. To the outside world, he was the perfect adoptive father, and she was his brilliant, beloved daughter.

But while he doted on her, he began to make Kazimir's life difficult.

It was subtle at first. A missed meeting here, an excluded memorandum there. Business associates who suddenly stopped returning Kazimir's calls. A whisper campaign that suggested the young heir was not quite ready for the responsibility of leadership.

Valentina watched from the sidelines as Kazimir struggled. She saw the frustration in his grey eyes and the tension in his jaw. He stayed up late in his study trying to untangle the knots Dante had tied around him. She saw him learning, adapting, growing harder. The softness she had spent years trying to temper was finally being burned away—not by her lessons, but by Dante's quiet, relentless pressure.

Kazimir cornered her in the garden one afternoon, about six months after her conversation with Dante. He was nineteen now. There was a new sharpness in his eyes.

"You've been avoiding me."

Valentina didn't look up from the rose bush she was pruning. She had taken over Nadia's garden years ago, tending the flowers with a devotion that surprised even her.

"I've been busy," she said. "Dante has me managing the coastal properties."

"I know." He sat down on the stone bench beside her, his elbows resting on his knees. "I also know you've been helping him."

"I work for the family. He's still managing a lot of affairs."

"He's trying to undermine me."

She finally looked at him. His grey eyes were fixed on her face, searching for something—an explanation, a reassurance, a sign that she was still on his side.

"He's testing you," she said. "There's a difference."

"Not from where I'm standing."

Valentina set down her pruning shears and turned to face him fully. "I made a deal with Dante," she said. "I told him I wouldn't interfere with his plans as long as he kept you alive."

Kazimir's expression didn't change, but something flickered in his eyes. "You what?"

"You heard me."

"You made a deal with the man who's trying to destroy me?"

"I made a deal with the man who could have killed you years ago." Her voice was flat, unapologetic. "I did what I had to do to keep you breathing. If that means stepping back and letting you handle your own battles, then that's what I'll do."

"You could have warned me."

"I'm warning you now." She picked up her shears and turned back to the roses. "I've put fourteen years of effort into you, Kaz. That's a significant investment. And since I'm the one who made that investment, I get to do whatever I want."

A beat of silence. Then, he laughed. It was not a happy laugh. It was tired and bitter.

"Is this your way of saying you're still on my side?"

Valentina snipped a dead branch and tossed it aside. "It's my way of saying I'm on my own side. But my side happens to overlap with yours more often than not."

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He studied her for a long moment. She could feel his gaze on her profile—the calculations she had taught him, applied to her. He knew she might betray him if the circumstances demanded it. She had trained him too well for him not to see it.

But he didn't call her out. He just sat there on the stone bench, watching her prune roses, and said nothing at all.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

Valentina was twenty-five when Dante told her about the girl.

"I've found a wife for Kazimir," he said over breakfast one morning. They were alone in the small dining room, the autumn light slanting through the windows. "A mute girl. Her father will likely trade her to cover his losses."

Valentina set down her coffee cup. "A mute?"

"She doesn't speak. Hasn't since she was a child, apparently." Dante's smile was pleasant, almost amused. "Traumatized, obedient, completely incapable of defending herself. She'll be easy to control."

"You want to humiliate him."

"I want to remind everyone that he's not ready to lead. A Volkov heir who can't even command his own wife."

Valentina considered this. It was a good move, strategically. Cruel, but effective. Dante had always been good at finding his opponents’ weak points.

"What do you want from me?" she asked.

He leaned back in his chair, his dark eyes gleaming. "I want you to test her. See if she is truly defective."

The girl arrived at the end of October.

Valentina watched from an upper window as a car pulled up the drive and a small, dark-haired figure was escorted out. Even from this distance, she could see the hunch of the girl's shoulders, the way she kept her eyes on the ground, the way she flinched when one of the soldiers brushed too close.

Pathetic, Valentina thought. But she reserved judgment. She had been a stray once, too. The girl might surprise her.

She didn't.

Five days later, Valentina saw her up close was in the second-floor hallway. The girl was creeping back toward the servants' stairs, when Valentina turned the corner and caught her.

Up close, she was even worse than Valentina had expected. Thin to the point of frailty, her eyes too big for her face, her posture that of a creature who had been beaten so often she no longer bothered to protect herself. She wore a cheap grey dress that hung off her frame like a sack. Her hands were still sticky with something—probably stolen food from the kitchen.

Valentina felt a flicker of something almost like disappointment. She had hoped, despite herself, that the girl might have some spark. Some fire. Some indication that she was more than just a warm body Dante had purchased to make a point.

But there was nothing. Just silence, trembling, and those downcast eyes.

That's it? An unremarkable, half-starved girl?

"So you're the charity case." Valentina let her contempt drip into every syllable as she circled the girl. "I heard they had to pay your father to take you."

She paused behind the girl, letting the silence stretch. She could feel the tension radiating off that thin frame, but still no reaction or defense.

"How… economical." Valentina completed her circle and stopped in front of her. She leaned in close, close enough to smell the cheap soap on the girl's skin. "Look at you. You're not a wife. You're an ornament. Something to sit quietly in the corner and look pretty."

The girl lowered her head even more, but she didn't reply.

"He'll break you, you know." Valentina let her voice drop to a vicious whisper, still trying to scare her. "It's not a matter of if. It's when. And when he's bored of the pieces, they'll sweep you out with the rest of the trash."

The words failed to land. There was nothing—no tears, no pleading, no anger—just that same dull, bovine acceptance, as if Valentina's words were merely a gust of wind.

How infuriating.

Valentina had dealt with many kinds of people in her twenty-five years. She had dealt with liars, schemers, and murderers. She had dealt with Dante's cold calculation and Viktor's sharp wisdom and Nadia's quiet grief. She had dealt with Kazimir's softness and Nikolai's fire and Leo's apathy.

But she had never dealt with someone who was simply... nothing. A void where a person should be. A silence that asked for nothing and gave nothing back.

"Useless," she spat. "Completely useless."

She turned and strode away. The girl's lack of reaction burned in her chest.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

The dinner was Dante's idea, of course. He loved spectacle. Loved putting people in situations where their weaknesses would be exposed and amplified.

But the moment the girl stumbled through the dining room doors in a familiar emerald dress, Valentina understood immediately what Dante was doing.

Nadia's color. Her dress. That deep, rich emerald—the same shade Nadia had worn in the garden, the same shade Valentina had chosen for her own dress tonight because it reminded her of the old woman.

And now this girl—this mute, cowering, useless girl—was wearing it like a joke at Nadia's expense.

Dante wasn't just humiliating Kazimir tonight. He was taunting Nadia's ghost: Look at this, the gesture said. This is what inherits your legacy. This is the granddaughter-in-law you get. This is what your precious family has become.

The emerald dress was a masterstroke—Valentina had to admit that, even as it made her blood boil.

She kept her smile in place throughout the dinner—she was too well-trained to let the mask slip in public—but inside, she was seething. When Dante prompted her with theatrical warmth, she answered with a cutting smile.

"Of course, Father. We welcome those who understand their place." She let her gaze sweep over the girl. "A silent wife is a peaceful wife, I suppose. If one has a taste for decorative furniture."

Polite laughter skittered around the table. The men exchanged glances and whispers. The girl continued to pick at her food and stared at the tablecloth like she was trying to dissolve into it.

Kazimir is losing respect by the minute, she thought. Dante is winning. And all because of this pathetic creature in my grandmother's color.

The girl was a weapon. A very effective one.

And she didn't even know it.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

Later that night, Valentina stood on the terrace, smoking a cigarette and trying to calm the fury still simmering in her veins.

The sea air was cold and sharp, tasting of salt and distant storms. She had changed out of her emerald dress, unable to bear wearing it any longer. Now, she donned a dark robe that did nothing to warm her.

And then, sound from the terrace doors, disturbing her peace. Valentina's fury ignited all over again.

It was that girl. She was still wearing the dress. The crumpled, ill-fitting, stolen dress. Her hair was falling out of its pins. Her face was streaked with tears and powder. She looked like a ghost—a pathetic, trembling ghost who had wandered into the wrong afterlife.

"Well." Valentina's voice came out like claws unsheathed. "Look what the storm washed up."

She stepped forward. The girl stepped back, retreating into the sitting room like prey driven into a corner.

"Lost, little thief?" A slow smile touched Valentina's lips. "Or did he already toss you aside?"

The girl's gaze dropped to the floor. Automatic. Submissive.

"Don't you dare look away from me." Valentina closed the distance between them, her fury building with every step. "You don't get to hide after what you did tonight."

She was close now. Close enough to smell the girl's cheap perfume, to see the way her pulse fluttered in her throat like a trapped bird.

"This dress." Valentina let her gaze crawl over the silk, slow and contemptuous. "You look pathetic in it. Do you even know who it was made for?"

She didn't wait for an answer. The girl wouldn't have given one anyway.

"It was meant for a respectable woman. Someone who would stand beside Kaz, not cower at his feet." Valentina's voice dropped to a hiss. "A woman who would be an asset. Not a joke."

Another step. The girl's back hit a small writing desk. Nowhere left to retreat.

"You are a stain on that dress." Valentina leaned in, her face inches from the girl's. "You make this family look weak."

The girl stared past her, eyes fixed on some point beyond Valentina's shoulder, and Valentina recognized that look. She had seen it years ago, in the hollow faces of the orphans in Milan—the ones who had given up, the children who escaped reality because life was unbearable.

The recognition made her angrier. Because unlike those children, this girl had been given a chance—a place in the Volkov mansion, a roof over her head, food in her stomach—and she was still cowering. Still trembling. Still nothing.

"You sat there tonight, in that dress, and you said nothing." Valentina's voice shook with contempt. "Did nothing. You are a void. A silence where there should be a voice. You are nothing."

The word landed. Valentina saw it hit. And still the girl didn't react.

The thin string of Valentina's patience snapped.

Her hand flashed out before she consciously decided to move—an open-handed slap that cracked across the girl's cheek.

And finally—finally—she got a reaction. A gasp. Tears. Pain.

There, Valentina thought. There you are.

"Look at me!"

Before the girl could comply, Valentina's fingers tangled in her hair and yanked. The girl's eyes, wide and wet with tears, finally met hers. For one brief moment, Valentina saw something flicker in those downcast eyes. A spark of fear. A flash of something that might have been defiance. And then it was gone.

Valentina’s gaze fell back to Nadia's dress, worn by a girl who had no right to it.

"This is an obscenity on you."

She spun the girl around and shoved her forward against the desk. Valentina's hands found the silk. She was destroying it. Tearing away every thread, every seam, every reminder of what this girl had been allowed to wear. It was better this way. Better to destroy the thing entirely than to let it be worn by someone who couldn't honor what it meant. Better to let Nadia's ghost rest in peace than to see her memory paraded around on the body of a living corpse.

With a final, furious wrench, she tore the last pinned section. The dress sagged, held on only by the girl's arms and the front closure.

"Get it off." Her breath came fast. "I don't want to see a single thread of it on you."

The girl's hands trembled violently as she fumbled with the remaining buttons. Eventually, they gave way. The silk slid from her shoulders and pooled at her feet.

Valentina looked at the girl—standing there in her thin chemise—and felt nothing but a cold, exhausted contempt.

"That's all you are. A scared little girl in underclothes. Not a wife. Not a Volkov. A mistake that needs to be corrected."

She stepped over the ruined silk. As she passed the girl, she leaned close, letting her breath ghost against her ear.

"He will break you." A final curse, soft and absolute. "You're only a pawn."

Then Valentina left because there was nothing else to say or see.

This useless girl will not last long on Dante’s board.

She was already dead. She just hadn't stopped breathing.