Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Sophia
I wake to the sound of footsteps outside my door. They're soft, almost imperceptible, but my senses have been on high alert since the funeral. I sit up in bed, my heart pounding, and glance at the clock on my nightstand. 5:47 a.m. The sky outside is just beginning to lighten, casting a pale blue glow over the room.
A knock follows, heavy and deliberate. It's Alessio. Of course it is.
"Come in." I sit up in my bed and rest my back against the headboard. I try to rub the sleep from my eyes.
Alessio steps inside, looking as composed as ever. His black shirt is unbuttoned at the collar, his sleeves are rolled up to his forearms. He doesn't say anything at first, just closes the door behind him and surveys the room. Checking for danger perhaps.
"You didn't drink the tea," he says, nodding toward the untouched cup on my desk.
"I wasn't thirsty," I reply, pulling the blanket tighter around me. "And it smelled like grass."
His dark eyes lock onto mine. "You are not drinking it for the taste, Sophia. Don't be a child."
"It's disgusting, Alessio. Are you trying to poison me?"
"For fuck's sake," he says in an exasperated tone. "Did you at least sleep?"
I give him a curt nod. "I did. What do you want? It's five in the morning. I'm assuming that you have a reason for being here at the ass crack of dawn."
He stares at me. His chocolate eyes are molten with intensity. Everything about this man is either one extreme or the other. Before my father's death, I think I had only heard him speak three sentences to me. So having him be so… vocal with me is something that I need to get used to.
"Needed to make sure you didn't off yourself in the middle of the night." He stalks over to my bed and comes to a halt by my bedside table. He looks down at the full cup of tea. "Glad to see that you didn't take the easy way out."
I pull the sheets closer to my chest when his irises flick back to me. Something is unnerving about his presence. This man is just so… all-consuming. I hate that.
I glare at him, trying to swallow the thickness in the air, my exhaustion making me more irritable than usual. "What do you want, Alessio?"
He folds his arms. "We need to talk about Trevor."
The name sends a chill down my spine. Trevor. Dead. I knew Trevor, not well, but enough to know that he was just a kid who had a whole life ahead of him.
"I thought you didn't want me to know about the ins and outs of what happened." Alessio had made it abundantly clear last night that he would handle everything. I wanted to see the body and the scene of the crime. One of my own had been taken down, and I needed to know. But he had said my eyes "were too fresh." Whatever the hell that means.
"What about him?" I ask, my tone steady.
Alessio studies me for a moment before answering. "Elliot was correct, his murder wasn't random. It was calculated. There was a message for you carved into his belly."
My stomach churns. What the fuck?
"What do you mean there was a message for me carved into his belly?" I can feel the bile slush in my stomach.
"Exactly that. Someone took a knife, carved a message onto his belly, and hung him in front of the warehouse for all to see. They wanted you to know that they are coming for you."
I gulp. "Wh-what did the message say?"
I wait with bated breath. A part of me wants to know, but then there is another part of me. The part that still wants to hide away from this world, that doesn't want to know. I don't want to admit it, but there is some truth to what Alessio has been saying. I am scared.
"La corona sanguinera."
The crown will bleed.
It is definitely a message and a strong one at that. I try to keep the emotion hidden from my face, but I know that it's pointless. I can physically feel the color drain from my face.
"I…" I have no words. What does one even say to that?
Alessio lets out a low-winded breath and walks around my bed. His body is at ease, his muscles completely relaxed, like he didn't just tell me that war has been declared on my head. He walks over to the window and peels back the curtain to let the light in from the rising sun. The rays are still rather dim, and the sky is still etched with blue greys.
"You see this, princess?" He points outside to the garden of the Romano estate. "Beyond these walls, there is a war on the horizon, and you are the number one target. Our world exists by a set of rules, brutal and punishing, but rules all the same. You need to learn to play by them and exploit the loopholes to the best of your advantage, or you will die. My job is to make sure that the little stray bullets don't hit you. But yours is to learn and understand where danger hides."
The quiet is thick.
"You cannot be stupid. You need to listen, and you need to start thinking like a true Romano."
"I know that," I snap, more out of frustration with myself than him. He is right. He has been since the wake. I am not in the same world I lived in for the past few years. "But who is doing this? And why?"
He steps closer, his presence filling the room. "Why? Power. Out of six families, yours is the most powerful and most lucrative. That kind of money and power in the hands of a woman is a slap in the face to the males who sit below you. I will find out who did this to Trevor, and we will get retribution. But you need to be ready, Sophia. Whoever did this, they're testing you, seeing how far they can push before you blink. Make sure you don't. No matter how bloody or dark it will get, hold your fucking nerve."
"I'm not going to break," I say, standing up and meeting his heat.
He doesn't look convinced. "We'll see."
He walks back to the side of my bed and waits for a moment. His eyes scan my face and then move over the length of my body, analyzing me.
"We have a meeting this morning. We need to brief you on what's been happening behind the scenes and the events leading up to your father's murder. Get dressed and ready for the day. I will come to find you when I have dealt with our Trevor issue."
He turns to walk out of my room, but then he pauses when he reaches the door. He looks over his shoulder with a pensive look in his eyes.
"Yes?" I ask, waiting for him to say what he wants to.
"I am sorry for your loss, Sophia. I never said it before at the funeral. Your father was a good man, he saved my life once, and I intend to keep you safe in return." He doesn't wait for me to accept his condolences. He walks out of the room, leaving me stunned.
I am not someone who is easily startled into stillness, but Alessio De Luca has made it a habit of stealing my words from my lips almost every time.
The Romano estate is eerily quiet as I walk through its halls later that morning. The sun is fully up now, casting long shadows across the marble floors. The house feels different without my father here—emptier, colder. The marble hallway echoes with my footsteps as I make my way to my first official debrief. This is it. The walk of the official Romano head.
I make my way to the study, where Alessio said we'd be meeting. When I step inside, he's already there, along with Domenico and a few of our top men. The tension in the room is palpable, like the calm before a storm. Every single face is solemn, a show of the horrors that await us.
"Ah, Sophia," Domenico says, standing as I enter. His smile is warm, but his eyes are sharp, and calculating. "We are waiting for you."
I take a seat at the head of the table, ignoring the way Domenico's gaze lingers on me. Alessio is standing by the window, his arms crossed, his expression unreadable.
Even if I don't feel like the boss, I need to fake it until I finally become the Romano that my father was.
"Let's not waste time on pleasantries," I say, trying to channel my father's authority. "What do we know about Trevor's murder?"
One of the men, Matteo, clears his throat. "We've been looking into it all night. The evidence suggests he was killed elsewhere and then moved to the warehouse. Whoever did it wanted us to find him."
"Well, that is obvious to me without the evidence. And the stolen shipment?" I ask. "How much did we lose, and what is our plan on getting all of that back?"
"Gone without a trace." Matteo's brown eyes meet mine. "Whoever took it was careful. No security footage, nothing. We suspect they may have had help from the inside. And for the amount we are looking at, it is about a loss of $2 million, boss."
A lightning bolt moves through my spine. "Are you saying we have a mole?"
No one speaks. They all just sit in their chairs without saying a word.
"Yes." Matteo speaks. "There is no way that someone would have known that the pills were there. This is a new warehouse and not on our current books."
Domenico leans back in his chair, his expression thoughtful. "This wasn't just about the shipment. It's a power play, Sophia. Someone wants to undermine you, to show the rest of the families that you're weak."
I feel the heat rise in my cheeks but force myself to stay calm. "Then we need to send a message of our own."
Domenico raises an eyebrow. "And what message would that be?"
I glance at Alessio, who nods subtly. "That I'm not to be underestimated. If they want to bring war to my doorstep, then to war we shall go."
The room falls silent, the weight of my words hanging in the air. Domenico is the first to break it, clapping his hands together.
"Very well, cara. To war then."
This is simply the beginning of the end.
Later that day, Alessio and I are in the car, heading to the warehouse where the murder had taken place. It is located on the outskirts of the city. The air between us is tense, filled with unspoken words. He doesn't want me to go and see what happened to Trevor, but I need to.
I need to begin to familiarize myself with the blood and gore of this world quickly. And besides, I need to pay my respects. I may not have known the guy personally, but he served my father well.
"When will the funeral be?" I slice through the stillness as we pass the long line of trees. "For Trevor."
"In three days. I have already arranged for all financial expenses to be taken care of for his grandmother."
My heart squeezes. "No other family? Just his grandmother?"
Alessio waits a beat before he responds. "He has a younger sister. She's in college doing her bachelor's in criminal justice, ironic enough. We will also cover her student fees until she finishes her education."
As much as I don't like his patronizing manner and his incessant need to put me in place, he has made this whole ordeal easy enough to process. I do not know what I would have done without him.
The quiet returns between the two of us. This time, however, it's not uncomfortable.
I lean deep into the soft leather of the seat and watch the trees continue to pass us by. The meeting still had me deep in my thoughts. I am far more out of my depth than I realize. There is a lot more that goes into this world.
"You handled yourself well in the meeting," Alessio says. "You were clear and concise, and you showed that you are not afraid of the weight of this role. You demonstrated the attributes of a leader."
I still don't feel it, though. I am barely treading water.
"Thanks," I reply, staring out the window. In truth, the meeting has been nothing but a blur to me. My mind went into autopilot while my thoughts ran wild. "You were stoic and brooding, a normal setting for you, I guess."
He glances at me, his expression softening just a fraction. "But words aren't enough, Sophia. You need to back them up with action. What happened to Trevor needs to be answered."
"I know that," I speak in a hushed tone. "I just don't know where to start. Blood and gore isn't exactly my area of expertise."
"Well, it so happens that those are the things that I excel at the most," he says, his tone still carrying the same edge but gentler than before. "You're not alone in this. We will figure this out."
I turn to look at him. For a moment, I see something in his eyes—something almost human. But just as I noticed it, he quickly wiped it from his eyes.
"Trust no one," I mutter under my breath, turning back to the window. The final words my father wanted me to etch into my brain. "Famous last words from my father."
"And you should hold those words close to your chest. The first rule of surviving in this world is learning not to trust anyone. Second-guess everyone, and always watch your back. Many will have their knives pointed at you."
I turn my head, tearing my pupils from the forest land and stare at his profile. His angled jaw is locked in place, and his knuckles are white from gripping the steering wheel far too tightly.
"Does that include you?"
The small ball in his throat bobs up and down before the words finally leave his lips. "No, I am the one person you can trust, Sophia."
"And how do I know that to be true?"
He turns his head toward me. "I could have killed you long ago, had it been my intention, Sophia. I only want to do my job and keep you alive."
The truth behind his words hit me like a ton of bricks all at once. For the first time since this whole ordeal began, I feel as though I truly do have someone on my side. I wonder how long it will last.