Chapter 23 - Sofia
My fingers find the bracelet at my wrist, the silver half-heart charm I discovered in my old room just weeks ago.
The metal is cool against my skin, unfamiliar still, and I twist it absently while staring out at the lake.
I’d slipped it on this morning without thinking, drawn to this piece of my past I can’t quite remember.
Alexei's voice drifts from his study, speaking Russian to someone in Moscow about funeral arrangements he won't attend.
His mother died yesterday asking for Mikhail, and now he's handling the aftermath with the same efficiency he brings to everything.
Except when he broke down on the porch, sobbing apologies into my skin, comparing himself to his father, seeing his own cruelty reflected back.
The lakehouse creaks around me, old wood settling in the morning air. Dawn came hours ago, but I've been sitting here on the couch, unable to shake this feeling that something's about to crack open. My hands won't stop trembling. Coffee sits cold and untouched on the side table.
I should eat something. Should do anything except what I'm about to do.
Mikhail's door stands slightly ajar down the hall.
I've been avoiding it since we arrived, too heavy, too haunted. But now, with Alexei occupied, I can't resist the pull anymore. My bare feet are silent on the wooden floors as I approach, though each board groans beneath my weight like it's trying to warn me back.
The door swings open at my touch.
The room preserves youth like an insect in amber.
Architecture books line shelves that reach the ceiling, spines cracked from use, corners folded to mark important passages.
Models of impossible buildings crowd every surface: bridges that curve like ribbons, towers that spiral toward heaven, a concert hall that looks like it's made of glass wings.
A teenage boy's dreams rendered in balsa wood and careful glue.
The morning light streaming through dusty windows makes everything glow like it's been dipped in honey. Even the dust motes dance with purpose, swirling in patterns that feel deliberate.
I sit on his bed, the mattress creaking beneath my weight. I breathe in the stale air that still somehow carries his scent: pencil shavings and the cologne teenage boys wear too much of, something green and hopeful.
Not searching. Just feeling.
But my eyes catch on the closet, door hanging open to reveal boxes stacked on the upper shelf. One has shifted forward, like it's been waiting.
I stand without deciding to, pull it down. Personal items, the box says in faded Cyrillic. My hands are already trembling though I don't know why.
Inside, tissue paper so old it crumbles at my touch. Letters in Russian I can read. Photos of people I don't recognize but feel I should. And beneath it all…
My vision tunnels.
A half-heart charm on a broken chain. Tarnished silver, the exact size and shape of—
My hands shake violently as I pull off my bracelet. Hold them together with fingers that won't stop trembling.
They fit.
Perfectly.
Two halves of one heart.
The room tilts sideways. My chest constricts, breath coming in short, painful gasps. And the wall in my mind, the one that's been cracking since I found Mikhail's diary, shatters completely.
The memories don't trickle. They crash over me like a dam bursting, but these aren't the fragments I recovered before. This is something deeper, darker, the part my mind locked away even from those partial memories.
The garden where I remember him teaching me Russian, but now there's more.
His voice, urgent, desperate: "This changes everything, Sofia."
Not just Russian lessons. Not just friendship. Something else.
The night before.
No. No, no, no.
But the memory comes anyway, unstoppable now that the final wall is down.
His face. Desperate. Different. Dark circles under his eyes, hands shaking. Not in the garden this time, at the edge of our property, near the gates where we sometimes met in secret.
"My father is planning something. Tomorrow night. At the meeting with the Morettis."
"What kind of something?"
"A massacre, Sofia. They're going to kill everyone. Your father. Your men. The Morettis. Everyone."
My chest constricts. Can't breathe. The room is spinning.
This. This is what he was trying to warn me about. The warning I remembered fragments of but never the substance.
"I have to warn them—"
"NO." His hands gripping mine so tight it hurts, desperation making him rough. "If you warn them, they'll know there's a leak. They'll know it was me."
"Misha, I can't just let my family die—"
"They won't all be there. Just your father and the senior men. But Sofia, listen to me—"
"My father—"
"If this gets traced back to me, my father will—" His voice breaks, real terror in it. "He'll kill me. Slowly. You know what Viktor Volkov is. You've heard the stories."
The night air in the memory suddenly feels suffocating. The scent of cigarette smoke from a passing guard making me nauseous.
"There has to be another way—"
"Promise me you won't warn them."
The words land like fists. I'm on the floor of Mikhail's room. When did I fall? My knees ache against the hardwood, palms pressed flat like I'm trying to hold myself to the earth.
"Promise me you won't be there. Just stay home. Stay safe. Let me figure out another way."
"There's no other way—"
"PROMISE ME." His face twisted with terror I've never seen before or since. "Please, Sofia. I'll find a way to stop it. I'll save your father. I'll do something. Just give me time. One day. Promise me."
And I—
Oh God.
I promised.
I promised to stay silent.
I promised to stay home.
The memory cuts deeper, sharper, drawing blood from my soul.
Sitting at dinner that night. My father kissing my forehead before leaving.
"Be good, principessa. Don't wait up." Marco, barely twenty-two but already serious, going with him.
Other men I've known all my life. Men who taught me to ride bikes, who snuck me candy, who called me their little princess.
Walking to their deaths.
And I knew.
I knew and I said nothing.
The copper taste floods my mouth. I'd bitten my tongue bloody to keep from screaming a warning. Watching them leave. My father's last smile, warm and trusting and completely unaware that his daughter was sending him to die.
Because a boy I loved asked me to stay quiet.
Because I was fifteen and in love and I thought one day would make a difference.
The aftermath crashes over me: waking to screaming. Luca's hands bloody, Dante taken prisoner. "Papa's dead. They're all dead."
Seventeen Rosettis. Dead.
Because I kept my promise.
Because I chose Mikhail over my own blood.
The guilt was so massive it broke my mind. Walls slamming down. Memories buried so deep that even when I recovered pieces, the garden, the Russian lessons, his gentle teaching, my mind kept this part locked away. The promise. The betrayal. The choice that destroyed everything.
Eleven years of nightmares. "Promise me, Sofia. Promise me." Over and over. Not memory but guilt, crying out in Russian-accented English. The ghost of my betrayal haunting my sleep.
I'm still on the floor, the two halves of the heart cutting into my palm where I grip them. Blood wells between my fingers, dripping onto Mikhail's floor, marking his room with my truth.
All this time. Even after remembering him, remembering our friendship, I thought there was something more I'd forgotten. Something about why he died. I thought I'd failed to keep my promise to Mikhail and that's why he died.
The truth is so much worse.
I kept my promise.
I kept my promise and my father died.
I kept my promise and seventeen men who trusted us died.
I kept my promise and became the worst kind of traitor.
Every death. Every funeral. Every year of Marco carrying the weight of leadership too young.
Dante's voice stolen by torture that happened because he was trying to protect us from an attack I could have warned them about.
Luca's mind cracking under the violence, becoming something sharp and dangerous.
Nico coming back from war to find his family decimated, forced to become our weapon.
Because I made a promise to a boy in a garden.
I didn't betray Mikhail.
I betrayed everyone else.
For him.
The nausea rises so fast I barely make it to the bathroom.
Emptying my stomach until there's nothing left but bile and self-hatred.
My reflection in the mirror is a stranger: hollow eyes, lips still swollen from Alexei's kisses this morning, looking like a woman who deserves love when really I'm a monster who let her father die.
I am the reason my father is dead.
The door opens somewhere. Alexei's footsteps in the hall, looking for me. "Sofia? Kotyonok, where are you?"
I can't. Can't face him. Can't tell him.
What would I even say?
"I chose your brother over my family."
"I let my father die because Mikhail asked me to."
"I'm the real villain in this story."
"Every death, every loss, every broken piece of our families, all of Ana's dead relatives, it all traces back to me."
My body moves without thought, pure instinct taking over. Shoes shoved on, not bothering with socks. Jacket grabbed from a hook by the back door. Out before he finds me, before I have to see recognition dawn in those pale eyes.
"Sofia!" His voice behind me, concerned but not yet alarmed.
But I'm already running.
The lake stretches dark despite the morning light, its surface like black glass. The woods are darker still, pressing in from all sides. I run without direction, without a plan. Just the animal need to escape. From Mikhail's ghost. From Alexei's eyes when he learns the truth. From myself.
From the girl who sat at dinner knowing her father would die in three hours and said nothing.
Branches tear at my jacket, leaving marks I don't feel. Roots catch my feet, sending me stumbling. I catch myself on rough bark that tears my palms, but I just keep running. The physical pain is nothing compared to what's ripping through my chest.
My mind screams with every step:
Murderer.
Traitor.
Monster.
I killed my father. Not with a gun. Not with a blade. With silence. With a promise to a boy who made me choose between his life and my family's.
And I chose him.
How can I face Marco? Tell him I knew? Tell him I sat there eating Maria's pasta while our father drove to his death? Tell him I chose a Russian boy over our blood?
How can I face Nico? The brother who pulled me from the wreckage, who trained me to be strong, who made a pact of truth with me? Tell him I was the wreckage all along? That every lie pales compared to the one I've been living?
How can I face Dante, who lost his voice trying to protect us from an ambush I could have prevented with five words?
How can I face myself?
The memories keep coming, relentless now that the dam has broken. Mikhail's face that last night, tears in his eyes. "I'll fix this. I'll find another way. Just don't say anything. Please, Sofia. Trust me."
And I did. I trusted him over every instinct screaming to warn my father.
I run until my legs give out, muscles cramping, lungs burning. Collapse against a tree, miles from the lakehouse. The sun has moved across the sky. Hours have passed without me noticing. The woods are thick here, and there's no path back even if I wanted one.
The half-heart bracelet is gone, dropped somewhere behind me. Lost in the woods or back in that room where everything shattered. Only weeks of carrying it after finding it in my old room, and now I finally understand what it meant. What it always meant. A badge of my betrayal.
Now I understand everything.
And I wish I didn't.