Chapter 29 - Sofia
I’m hiding in the pink walls of my childhood bedroom while they mock me with their innocence. I have barely set foot in here since the night of the massacre, choosing to sleep down the hall instead. But here I am.
Ballet posters stare down from where I tacked them up at twelve, frozen dancers in perfect positions I'll never achieve again.
This shrine to the girl who didn't know she'd destroy everything feels like a tomb now.
My throat is so tight I have to force each breath past the grief lodged there like broken glass.
My hands won't stop shaking since Marco told me to get out.
The tray Nico brought this morning sits untouched on my old desk. Toast gone cold, coffee forming a skin on top. The smell of it makes my stomach revolt. How can I eat when my father's last meal was interrupted by bullets I could have prevented?
I check my phone again. Nothing from Marco. His silence is louder than any accusation could be.
A knock. Firm, decisive. Nico again.
"Family meeting," he says through the door, his voice carrying that military edge. "Downstairs. Now."
I don't move from where I'm curled on the narrow bed, knees to chest, still wearing the same tattered clothes I arrived in. The cotton sticks to my skin with dried sweat and tears. "I'm not hungry."
"It's not about food, and it's not negotiable. Family meeting. Now."
Something in his tone makes me look up. This isn't gentle Nico checking on me. This is the soldier giving orders.
"Marco?" I ask, already knowing, the word scraping my raw throat.
A pause that tells me everything. "He's not coming."
The words land like stones in my chest, each one heavier than the last until I can barely breathe around them. My oldest brother, who raised us all after Papa died, who held this family together with pure will, refuses to be in the same room as me.
"Be there in five minutes," Nico says. "Don't make me carry you."
His footsteps retreat. I uncurl slowly, joints protesting from holding the same position too long.
The mirror on my old vanity shows a ghost: hollow eyes, tangled hair, the general look of someone who's been drowning in guilt.
The ghost of Alexei's hands still burns on my skin.
My body remembers even if my heart is too broken to care.
The walk downstairs feels like approaching my execution.
Each step on the familiar stairs brings back a thousand memories of running down these same steps as a child, racing Alessandro to breakfast, sliding down the banister until Maria caught us.
The marble is cold under my bare feet, each step sending shivers up my legs.
Now I descend like a condemned woman, the chill seeping into my bones.
The family room door stands open. I pause at the threshold, taking in the scene that makes my stomach clench. The leather and wood polish scent that usually comforts me now feels suffocating.
Dante stands by the window, still as always, afternoon light casting his profile in sharp relief.
The smell of cigarette smoke clings to his clothes, sharper than usual, like he's been chain-smoking.
There's something in his posture that speaks of decisions made.
Luca paces the far wall like something caged, his usual lazy grace replaced with barely contained violence.
Every few seconds his hand twitches toward where he keeps his knives.
Alessandro sits on the leather couch, staring at his hands, unable or unwilling to look up as I enter.
And there, at the head of the table where he's sat for eleven years, Marco's chair stands empty.
The absence is louder than any accusation. That chair has never been empty during a family meeting. Not once since Papa died. Even when Marco was shot, he was there, bleeding through bandages but present. Now it sits vacant, a monument to my betrayal.
Nico guides me to a chair with a hand on my elbow, gentle but firm.
The leather is cold against my bare legs, making me shiver.
He positions himself beside me, solid and warm, a wall between me and whatever comes next.
Guardian. Protector. The brother who made a pact of truth with me that I've shattered beyond repair.
"Sit," he says softly, his cinnamon gum scent familiar and heartbreaking.
I sink deeper into the chair, pulling my knees up despite knowing it makes me look like a child. The room feels too large, too empty. We're missing people. Marco's absence creates a vacuum that pulls at all of us, destabilizing everything.
This is my trial. My brothers as judge and jury. And I already know the verdict.
Dante breaks the silence, turning from the window with that liquid grace that makes people forget he can't speak until they realize he hasn't. The soft whisper of his clothes moving through air is the only sound.
"We need to talk about what you told Marco," he signs, each movement precise, his hands cutting through the afternoon light.
I brace for the accusations. For Luca to explode, for Alessandro to list every family member who died, for them to catalogue my sins in excruciating detail. My shoulders pull up involuntarily, muscles tensing for the blow.
Instead, Dante crosses the room and does something unexpected.
He crouches in front of my chair, putting himself below my eye level, making himself smaller.
Non-threatening. It's what you do with frightened animals or traumatized children.
His cologne, that expensive one Ana buys him, wraps around me.
"I need to tell you something," he signs slowly, making sure I'm watching. "And you're not going to like it."
My chest tightens, ribs feeling like they might crack. What could be worse than what I've already confessed?
His hands move with careful deliberation, the whisper of skin through air almost musical. "I've known about your promise to Mikhail for years."
The room goes completely still. Even Luca stops pacing, frozen mid-step. The words don't make sense. Can't make sense.
"After Papa died, I searched your room," Dante continues, his dark eyes never leaving mine. "Found a letter from Mikhail hidden in your desk. It detailed everything. The massacre plan, his warning to you, the promise he made you give not to tell anyone."
"There was no letter," I whisper, my voice cracking from disuse, throat raw. "I would have—"
"I destroyed it," he signs.
The admission rocks me back in my chair, the leather creaking, cold sweat breaking across my skin.
"To protect you," he signs quickly, seeing my face. "You'd already blocked everything out. Your mind was protecting you from the trauma. If you'd found that letter, learned the truth while you were still so fragile…"
"You KNEW?" The words tear from my throat, raw and bleeding. "All this time, you knew?"
"Yes."
"And you never told me?"
He doesn't flinch from my accusation. "You didn't remember. Your mind protected you the only way it could. I thought—" He stops, starts again, hands moving more slowly. "I thought if you never remembered, you'd never have to carry it."
"I've been trying to remember for eleven years!" I'm on my feet now, the chair falling backward with a crash that echoes. "Since I was fourteen, I've been struggling with fragments, with nightmares, with guilt I couldn't name or understand. And you KNEW?"
My whole body shakes, muscles trembling with rage and betrayal and something that feels like drowning.
Luca makes a sound, low and dangerous. "You knew she betrayed us and you said nothing?"
Dante stands slowly, facing Luca now but still signing so I can see. "I knew she was a fifteen-year-old girl who made an impossible choice."
"She let Papa die!" Luca's voice rises, his famous control cracking like ice under pressure.
"She was a child." Dante's hands move sharply now, angry, cutting through the air with violent precision. "A child in love who was asked to choose between her father and a boy who would die if she spoke. What would you have done?"
"I would have chosen family!"
"Even if it was Faith?" Dante signs, and Luca stops mid-stride. "We both know you would have chosen Faith over anyone. Besides, Mikhail also promised her he would stop the massacre."
"Which he failed to do," Alessandro says.
Dante turns back to me, his expression softer now. "I forgave you years ago, Sofia. Before you even knew there was something to forgive."
"How can you—" The words catch in my throat, salt from tears burning my lips.
"Because you were fifteen. Because a boy you loved begged you to trust him, to give him time to find another way.
Because if you'd known Papa would actually die, if you'd known there was no other way, you might have chosen differently.
" He pauses, hands still for a moment. "Or maybe not. But you were a CHILD."
"Scores of people died," I whisper, the words barely audible past the constriction in my throat.
"Yes. And you've been dying slowly ever since. Isn't that punishment enough?"
The silence that follows feels heavy enough to crush bones. Then Luca explodes.
He crosses the room in three strides, and suddenly he's drawn a knife from somewhere on his person. The blade appears in his hand like deadly magic, silver death catching the afternoon light. My body knows that knife, has seen it splatter walls red, has watched it work with surgical precision.
"We blamed the Morettis for years!" His voice cracks, actual tears in those pale blue eyes that never cry. "Then the Russians. And all along Sofia could have prevented it. Dante, your own wife wanted to kill you over this!"
"And I didn't let her," Dante signs calmly. "Just like I'm not letting you do this."
Luca's closer now, close enough that I can see his hand shaking. Not from fear. From rage so pure it's making his whole body vibrate like a struck tuning fork.
"Papa DIED. Uncle Enzo. Cousin Matteo. Twenty-three years old with a pregnant wife. Because she was fucking a Volkov!"