Chapter 33
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Marina
Ascream tears through the silence.
Not a normal scream. Not the startled yelp of a nightmare or the sharp cry of someone who's stubbed their toe in the dark. This is something else entirely. It reaches into my chest and squeezes until I can't breathe.
I'm on my feet before my eyes fully open, my body moving on instinct while my brain scrambles to catch up. The hallway outside our bedroom stretches ahead of me, dark except for the thin strip of light spilling from under a door at the far end.
The scream comes again. Longer this time. The kind of sound a person makes when something inside them has been ripped out by the roots.
Sophia.
My bare feet slap against the hardwood as I run.
The floor is cold. My heart hammers against my ribs so hard I can feel it in my throat, in my temples, behind my eyes.
Every step feels too slow. The hallway stretches forever, the walls closing in around me, and all I can think is no, no, no, please no — a prayer directed at nobody, at everybody, at whatever force in the universe decides to make someone react this way.
I round the corner. Sophia's bedroom door is open, light pouring into the hallway like a wound.
I stop in the doorway.
Nico stands in the center of the room with his arms locked around Sophia from behind. She thrashes against him — fists swinging, elbows driving backward, her whole body twisting and bucking like a trapped animal.
"You're lying!" The words rip from her throat, shredded and barely recognizable. "You're LYING! Lorenzo! LORENZO!"
"Sophia." Nico's voice is strained in a way I've never heard from him. "Sophia, stop. Please. You're going to hurt yourself."
She doesn't stop. She drives her elbow into his ribs and he grunts but doesn't release her.
Her fists beat against his forearms, his chest, anywhere she can reach.
The sounds coming out of her aren't words anymore — they're something older than language, something that lives in the part of us that existed before we learned to speak.
I've seen scenes like this before. And they all had to do with death.
I work with foster children who've lost parents, siblings, entire families. I've held teenagers who sobbed until they couldn't breathe, rocked toddlers who screamed for mothers who were never coming back.
I step into the room. My legs feel disconnected from my body, like I'm watching myself move from somewhere far away.
"What happened?" The words come out too quiet. Like I'm asking about the weather instead of the reason my best friend is clawing at a man twice her size and screaming her husband's name. "Sophia, what happened?"
She turns her head toward me. The movement is sharp, violent, like a cornered animal assessing a new threat. Her face is destroyed. Eyes swollen and red, cheeks streaked with tears and snot, her mouth twisted into a shape that doesn't look like it belongs on a human face.
"He's dead." Her voice drops to something worse than screaming. Flat. Empty. A husk of sound with all the life burned out of it. "Lorenzo is dead."
The floor tilts beneath me.
I grab the doorframe because my knees are buckling, because the room is spinning, because the words don't make sense. They're arranged in the right order but my brain refuses to process them into meaning.
Lorenzo is dead.
Sophia's legs give out. Nico catches her, lowering them both to the ground with a controlled descent that tells me he's been holding her up for a while.
She crumples against him, still hitting his chest with weakening fists.
Slower now, each blow carrying less force, as if her body is running out of fuel even though her grief has barely started.
And underneath the shock, underneath the disbelief and the horror, a different thought pushes through. Cold and sharp and selfish and I hate myself for thinking it but I can't stop:
Where is Dante?
He kissed my forehead like a man saying goodbye.
Is he dead too?
Is he lying somewhere right now while I stand here frozen in a doorway?
The thought nearly sends me to the floor beside Sophia. My vision narrows. My chest constricts. For three horrible seconds, I can't breathe at all.
Then I shove it down. Lock it in a box. Slam the lid shut.
But Nico would’ve said if he was dead too. Right?
Not now. You can fall apart later. Right now, she needs you.
I drop to my knees beside Sophia. I reach for her, pulling her away from Nico and into my arms, and she comes.
"Sophia." I press my mouth against her hair. "I'm here. I'm right here."
She collapses into me. Her fingers dig into my shoulders hard. Her body shakes with sobs so violent I can barely hold her.
"He promised." The words come out mangled, soaked in tears and pressed against my collarbone. "He promised he'd come back. He always comes back. He always—"
Her voice dissolves into a wail that I feel in my bones.
I hold her tighter. Press my cheek against the top of her head. Close my eyes.
I don't say it's okay because it's not okay.
I don't say I'm sorry because the word is too small for this.
I don't say anything at all. I just hold her the way she held me when I woke up in that hospital bed two years ago — fiercely, desperately, like I could absorb her pain through contact alone if I just squeezed hard enough.
"Move. Move aside."
Giulia's voice cuts through the chaos with the practiced authority of a woman who has weathered decades of this family's disasters.
She appears in the doorway with a glass of water in one hand and a small pill bottle in the other, her face pale but composed in the way that only comes from having buried people before.
"Get her on the bed," Giulia says. "Now. Before she hurts herself—"
She stops mid-sentence.
"Just get her on the bed," she finishes quietly.
Nico nods and reaches for Sophia, but the moment his hands touch her she erupts again.
"No!" The scream tears through the room, sending a physical jolt through everyone present. "I have to go to him! I have to see him! Let me GO!"
"Sophia, you can't." Nico's composure finally breaks all the way. His voice cracks on her name, and I see his hands trembling as he tries to hold her without hurting her. "There's nothing — you can't—"
"Don't tell me what I can't do!" She shoves against his chest with a strength that shouldn't be possible from a woman her size. "That's my HUSBAND! That's my—"
The fight goes out of her mid-sentence, like a candle flame snuffed by wind. She folds in on herself, her screams collapsing into sobs that are somehow worse. Quiet and broken and hopeless.
I grab her face. Force her to look at me. Her skin is hot under my palms. Wet with tears.
"Sophia." I keep my voice as steady as I can, which isn't very. "Look at me. Just look at me."
Her wild eyes find mine. Unfocused. Swimming.
"Breathe." The word feels pathetic. A bandage on a bullet wound. But it's all I have. "Please. Just breathe with me."
"I can't." She shakes her head, fresh tears spilling down her cheeks. "I can't breathe, Marina. He's gone. He's gone and I can't—"
She breaks off into sobs again, and I pull her against me and hold on.
Together — Giulia on one side, me on the other, Nico hovering behind us — we half-carry, half-guide Sophia toward the bed. She fights us every step. Her nails scratch my arm. Her elbow catches my ribs and I gasp but don't let go.
We get her onto the mattress. She curls into a fetal position immediately, her arms wrapped tight around her stomach in a gesture that looks like she's trying to hold herself together from flying apart.
I climb onto the bed beside her. Pull her against me. Her body shakes so hard the whole mattress trembles beneath us, the headboard tapping softly against the wall with each convulsion.
"I'm here." I whisper the words into her hair, over and over, a rhythm meant to anchor her to something real. "I'm here. I'm not leaving. I'm right here."
She clings to me and cries.
Giulia stands by the bed. Her hand rests on Sophia's back, rubbing slow circles, and she murmurs something in Italian that sounds like a prayer. Maybe it is. Maybe prayer is the only thing that makes sense when the world does this to people.
I stare at the ceiling and hold my best friend while her world falls apart.
Minutes pass. Maybe ten. Maybe an hour. Time has stopped meaning anything.
Where is Dante?
The thought surfaces again. Urgent. Desperate.
Is he alive? Is he safe? Is he coming back?
I don't know.
I don't know anything except that my best friend’s husband is dead and I can't fix any of it.
I can't fix a single goddamn thing.
So I hold her. And I wait. And I pray that Dante walks through that door.
Dante
The compound gates open.
I pull the car through. My hands grip the steering wheel. Steady. Controlled.
The scratches on my face sting. Three parallel lines across my left cheek where the glass caught me. They'll bruise by morning.
Good.
I need to look like I was there. Like I tried to save him.
The car stops in front of the main house. I sit for a moment. Breathe.
This is the part that matters. The performance. The grief I need to wear like a second skin.
Twenty years I've done this. Lied. Killed. Pretended.
This is just another job.
I open the door. Step out.
I walk toward the front door.
The door opens before I reach it.
Giulia stands in the doorway. Her face is pale. Her eyes are red.
"Dante." She says my name like a prayer. Like she's thanking God I'm alive.
She rushes forward. Wraps her arms around me.
I go still.
Her embrace is warm. Maternal. The kind of touch I haven't felt since my mother died.
"Thank God." She pulls back. Studies my face. Her fingers brush the scratches on my cheek. "You're hurt."
"It's nothing." My voice sounds wrong. Too flat. I adjust. Add grief. "I couldn't—I tried to get to him. I couldn't."
Giulia's eyes fill with tears.
"Everyone is in Sophia's bedroom." She steps aside. "Go. They need you."
I nod.