21. Sophia
SOPHIA
The bakery smells like cinnamon, which is the first thing that almost undoes me before I've even ordered anything.
I stand just inside the door for a second longer than I need to, letting it settle into my lungs—warm, sweet, exactly the smell that's been failing to materialize in my own kitchen for eleven days straight, no matter how many batches I ruin trying.
There's something almost cruel about it.
Like the universe decided that today, of all days, I needed to walk into a bakery that's gotten effortlessly right the one thing I can't stop getting wrong.
The case is full of them. Apple cinnamon. Rows of them, golden-domed, the tops cracked just slightly the way they're supposed to crack, not sunken in the middle like mine, not hard and burnt at the bottom from sitting on the wrong rack while my mind was somewhere else entirely.
I stare at them longer than is reasonable for someone simply buying muffins, and for one absurd moment I want to ask the girl behind the counter what she's doing differently.
What I'm doing wrong. As if the answer might actually be in the recipe and not somewhere upstairs in a bedroom I’m not allowed to enter.
"Six of those," I say, pointing.
She boxes them without comment, ties the string, slides the box across with a small, easy smile that has no idea what it's participating in—no idea that the woman buying them has spent days, weeks, months failing at this exact thing.
I pay. My fingers aren't quite steady on the card reader. I tell myself it's nothing, that I'm just tired, even though I know exactly what it actually is.
I step back outside.
The cold hits immediately, sharper than I expect after the bakery's warmth, the contrast enough to make my eyes water for half a second before I blink it away.
It's a clean kind of cold, though—the kind that clears something out rather than just hurting—and for one brief stretch of pavement I let myself just stand in it.
No locked doors out here.
No flinching.
Just cold air against my face and a box of muffins I didn't have to fight for and Andrei fifteen feet away by the truck, scanning the street the way he never quite stops doing, present but not hovering, giving me exactly enough room to feel, for a few seconds, almost like a normal woman doing a normal errand on a normal afternoon.
I almost let myself enjoy it.
Then a car door opens.
I don't notice it at first. Just the sound, ordinary, unremarkable.
But something in Andrei's posture changes instantly, his whole body going still and alert in a way that makes my stomach drop before I've even turned to look.
He's already moving, the casual lean completely gone, and that animal shift of a man who reads danger for a living is what makes the hair on the back of my neck stand straight up.
"Sophia Sinclair."
The voice is wrong before I can identify why. Too composed. Too unhurried, like it's been rehearsed in a very quiet room, at length, until all the edges were filed off.
I turn.
And the world fucking tilts.
I've seen her face before—galas, charity boards, the kind of photographs where everyone looks lit from within because they can afford to be.
But photographs don't prepare you for what Valeria Capello does to a sidewalk.
She stands like she owns it, like the concrete arranged itself around her.
Elegant coat. Flawless posture. Dark eyes—bottomless, ancient—catalog me in one slow, dissecting sweep, peeling back skin and story until I feel flayed open under the overcast sky.
"You know who I am," she says. Not a question. A statement carved from velvet and venom.
Time slows the way it does right before a blade finds bone—every heartbeat a separate, deliberate hammer against my ribs.
It’s a strange kind of clarity, finally coming face to face with evil.
Finally looking at the face of a thing you knew you hated, but only now truly feel how deeply rooted that hatred is.
Like it’s born from marrow, engraved in bone.
“I know exactly who you are.” My voice comes out flat and cold, the way it gets when I’m too angry for tone. “Unfortunately.”
Andrei moves between us. “Sophia. Truck. Now.”
“It’s all right. I only want a moment.” Her eyes find mine over Andrei’s shoulder, and she looks at me with the focused, assessing quiet of a woman evaluating what something is worth before she decides what to do with it.
My stomach tightens. That look doesn’t promise violence. It promises something worse—calculation. Like she’s already measuring how much of me she’d have to carve away to make Reth bleed.
I step around him before he can stop me. His fingers brush my elbow—tight, warning—then release. “Whatever you came here to say, say it and then get back in your car and drive it off something tall.”
A pause. Something shifts behind her eyes—recalibrating, almost amused—and somehow that’s worse. That she finds me interesting. That I’m a curiosity to her instead of a threat.
“You’re quite forthright,” she murmurs, the words smooth as silk dragged over broken glass.
"And you're quite good at standing on sidewalks looking expensive while the people you've destroyed try to put themselves back together. Must be a real skill."
The corner of her mouth lifts, not quite a smile, more like a predator testing the weight of new prey. And in that moment, I understand with sickening certainty why Reth fears her. Not just because she’s powerful.
Because she enjoys the game.
“How is Nazareth doing?” she asks, and the question detonates. The casual possession in it.
“Are you fucking serious?” I laugh, but it’s ugly. Broken. “You pump him full of poison, lock him in a cell, break him until his body forgets it belongs to him, and now you want to know how he’s doing? Like he’s some mutual friend you’re politely checking on?”
“I’m simply—”
“You’re simply a monster wearing a pretty coat,” I cut in, voice shaking with the kind of fury that feels like it could split me open. “You don’t get to act like you’re concerned. You don’t have that fucking right.”
Her dark eyes linger on me, patient, almost gentle in the most terrifying way possible. Like she’s watching a child throw a tantrum she knows will end soon.
I hate how small she makes me feel.
My hands are clenched so tight my nails bite into my palms. I can feel the tremble in my arms, the heat rising in my face, but I don’t care. I want her to see it. I want her to feel every ounce of the fury I’ve been carrying since the moment I saw what she did to him.
“I’m afraid you haven’t been part of our story long enough to tell me what I can or cannot do when it comes to Nazareth.”
“Don’t,” I seethe, stepping forward even as Andrei tries to pull me back. “Don’t you fucking say his name. You don’t get to say it. You don’t get to breathe it. Not after what you did to him.”
Valeria’s expression doesn’t change. If anything, the faint curve of her mouth deepens, as if my rage is nothing more than an amusing little breeze against her skin.
She watches me, calm and curious.
Then that smile deepens.
She watches me with the calm, clinical curiosity of a woman examining a mildly interesting insect pinned beneath glass.
“Oh, Sophia. I don’t blame you for falling for him.” She exhales softly, the sound almost sensual. “That beautiful, violent creature I shaped. The way he bleeds, the way he breaks so perfectly.”
My stomach turns.
“But he’s only going to break your heart, darling. He’s a pet, and a pet needs to be kept.”
“Fuck you,” I snarl, stepping forward so aggressively that Andrei’s hand clamps down hard on my shoulder.
“He is not your pet. He is not your anything. You don’t get to talk about him like he’s some broken thing you own.
He survived you. He got away from you. And if you ever try to put a leash on him again, I will rip your fucking throat out myself. ”
Valeria simply tilts her head, that same serene, faintly amused smile playing on her lips, like my hatred is the sweetest thing she’s heard all day.
“You still don’t understand.” She steps closer.
Close enough I can smell her perfume—something expensive and cold, like lilies left to rot in a mausoleum.
“You will never understand the relationship we have. Your mind is too small, too… ordinary to grasp it. I had him for weeks. Alone. Desperate. High.”
Her gaze drifts over me, like she’s waiting for the crack to appear.
“And when he was shaking, sweating, barely conscious… his body still recognized mine. Still got hard for me. Forgetting you ever…existed.”
I feel it happen—something vital inside me snapping clean in two. My stomach drops. My lungs forget how to work. The bakery box slips from my fingers and hits the pavement, muffins spilling like small, golden failures.
It’s a full, catastrophic halt, the way a heart monitor flat lines, the way a building doesn’t fall so much as it simply ceases to be standing.
For a second, the world is nothing but white noise and the echo of his words.
“You have no idea what I’ve done.”
“You have no idea how profoundly I fucked up, Cherry-red.”
Something in my chest goes completely quiet. Not numb. Quiet. The way a room goes quiet when someone has just dropped a glass and it hasn’t shattered yet, when everyone has stopped breathing and is just watching it fall.
Then it does.
A sound tears out of me—small, broken, inhuman. Not a sob. Not yet. Just the sound of something dying.
Valeria watches me like she can see me break in real time. Her smile widens, the smile of a woman who knows she’s already won.
She leans in, savoring it. “He will never be yours, Sophia. Every time he looks at you, he sees exactly how broken he is. That’s why he’ll always crawl back to me. Because with me, there’s no shame in the monster. And we both know… that’s exactly what he is.”
“Burn in hell,” I seethe.
“You might love the man, Sophia. But me? I love the monster.”
Rage and pain collide so violently I can’t tell which is which.
I swing.
My fist connects with the side of her face—dull, meaty, real. Her head snaps sideways. Blood blooms on her lip. The sight of it should satisfy me. It doesn’t. It only makes the hurt deeper, uglier, because nothing I do to her will undo what she did to him.
“You lying bitch,” I hiss, voice cracking. Andrei’s arms lock around me from behind, hauling me back, but I’m still thrashing, still screaming. “You pathetic fucking parasite!”
I twist violently, elbow flying, heels digging into the ground. “Let me go! Andrei—let me go!”
Security rushes us. Valeria lifts one elegant hand, blood on her teeth, and stops them with a smile that belongs in nightmares.
“Leave her,” she says softly. “She’s not worth it.”
“Fuck you!” I scream, lunging again even as Andrei drags me toward the truck. My voice shreds itself raw. “Stay the fuck away from him! Do you hear me? Stay away!”
The car door slams.
I collapse into the seat, knees to my chest, arms wrapped so tight around my shins I can barely breathe.
The sobs come then—ugly, violent, tearing out of me like they’re trying to claw their way free of my body.
I scream into my knees until my throat gives out, until the only sound left is ragged, broken gasping.
Nothing can fix this.
I can’t fix him. I can’t erase what she did. I can’t stop the image of him—shaking, desperate, hard for her—from carving itself into my mind.
The sobs tear through me harder, until my whole body shakes with them. I clutch my knees like they’re the only thing still holding me together, while the truck pulls away and the streetlights blur into streaks of gold through my tears.
Her voice keeps looping in my head, soft and satisfied, like a poison I can’t spit out.
She thinks she’s won.
She thinks she owns him.
And maybe…maybe she’s right.