Chapter 5
CHAPTER 5
SOFIA
I stared at my phone, Uncle Ernesto's voice echoing in my ears. Marco is dead. The family needs you.
"When?" I managed to ask, my voice barely audible.
"Last night. He was ambushed after a dinner out." Ernesto's tone was clipped, businesslike. As if we weren't discussing my cousin's murder—his own son. "I'll be in touch with details. Be ready."
The line went dead before I could respond. I lowered the phone, staring at the disconnected call on the screen as if it might offer some explanation for the bomb that had just been dropped.
Marco had been ambushed? By who? Sure, I knew the Savocas had enemies, but Marco had been leading things well. Everything had been going smoothly as far as I knew.
Then again, it wasn't like I'd stayed in touch.
Was Ernesto just grieving? He'd sounded too… formal. Maybe it was the shock of it all. Not to mention he'd be expected to now take Marco's place as head of the family. A title he'd missed out on when my father had died due to his own errors.
This wasn't right. Not Marco.
"Sofia?" Gray's voice broke through my shock. His hand was still on my arm, warm and steady. "What's wrong?"
I blinked, suddenly remembering where I was. In Grayson Cassaro's car. The morning after I'd slept with him. My best friend's brother. A man connected to a world I'd spent years running from.
A world that was now reaching for me again.
"It's nothing," I lied, forcing a smile that felt brittle on my face. "Just work. We lost a patient I was fond of."
Gray's expression softened with sympathy. "I'm sorry to hear that. Were you close?"
"As close as you can be to someone you're trying to save," I said, the lie coming easy. I'd had years of practice, after all. "It happens in my line of work, but it never gets easier."
"I can imagine." His thumb traced a small circle on my arm. "Is there anything I can do?"
I shook my head. "No, but thank you."
His phone buzzed then, saving me from having to maintain the charade. He glanced at the screen and frowned.
"I need to take this," he said apologetically. "Business."
I nodded, grateful for the distraction. As he answered the call, his voice dropping into that smooth, professional tone I recognized, I turned back to the window.
Marco was dead.
My cousin. The one who'd stepped up when I'd wanted to step away. The one who'd protected me when I was a child from his own father alongside my own. The one who'd taught me how to shoot a gun when I was ten, his hands steady over mine as he showed me how to aim, saying I needed to know how to protect myself no matter what. The one who'd looked at me with a mixture of pride and disappointment when I told him I didn't want to stay after my father died.
"Family is forever, Sofia," he'd said. "You can't just walk away, not fully. But I know this is what you want. And I understand. You need to do this. So I'll do this."
And now he was gone.
I closed my eyes, memories washing over me. My father, Antonio Savoca, had been a force of nature. Feared and respected in equal measure. He'd taken over the family business when his own father was gunned down, and he'd built it into something formidable. Something dangerous.
And then there was my mother. Gabriella Passeri. The sole survivor of the Passeri family massacre—a massacre orchestrated by my own family. She'd been eighteen when the Savocas wiped out her family. Beautiful, terrified, and alone. My father had seen her and decided to claim her as a prize. A trophy wife from a fallen family. A reminder to all what happened to those who tried to oppose them.
He'd married her, not out of love but out of lust and a desire for control. A beautiful woman he could bend to his will. And she had bent—outwardly at least. She'd learned to be the perfect mafia wife. Silent when needed, charming when required, and gave him an heir.
But she was never fully one of them. The Savocas had made sure she knew it. Only my father's protection had kept her safe. Only his word had prevented her from joining her family in death.
Unlike the Donatis and other families who kept their women in the dark, the Savocas believed in full immersion. The women were expected to be just as involved as the men. Just as loyal. Just as ruthless if needed, although they rarely actually got blood on their hands. But also compliant, giving their bodies and lives for the family if it was demanded.
My mother had played her part well, but there was always a softness to her that the others lacked.
A softness she'd passed to me, along with her warnings.
"This life will consume you if you let it, Sofia," she'd whispered to me on countless nights. "It will take everything and leave nothing but blood and regret."
But my father had other plans for me. He'd seen my potential early, when Marco had taught me to shoot. My steady hands were an asset in his eyes. My ability to blend in, to appear harmless. By twelve, I was running errands for him. By thirteen, I was delivering messages to those who needed reminding of their debts. By fourteen, I'd made my first kill.
No one suspected the teenage girl with the innocent smile. No one saw the danger until it was too late.
My mother had hated it. Had fought with my father over it. But in the Savoca family, the patriarch's word was law. And Antonio Savoca had decided his daughter would be his secret weapon.
When he died—gunned down by a rival family when I was only seventeen, supposedly a territory dispute—everything changed. My mother, no longer protected by her husband's status, fled to Italy. Back to her roots, away from the target on her back. She'd urged me to leave too. And I’d refused.
"You don't have to be what he made you," she'd said as she packed her bags. "You can be something else. Someone else."
And I'd tried. God, how I'd tried.
My father, in what turned out to be his final act of control only a week before his death, had named me his underboss—replacing Uncle Ernesto after a disastrous decision by my uncle that had cost several Savoca lives. At seventeen, I'd been positioned to take over if anything happened to him. A contingency plan he'd never shared with me.
I found out that he'd only done it as a temporary measure while he decided on another family member more suitable for the position.
Why he chose me as the stand-in, I'd never fully know. Maybe it was because he'd thought he'd manipulated me into exactly who he wanted me to be.
How wrong he was.
When he'd died, his will and desires were brought to light, and the family was up in arms about my supposed new status. I wasn't even eighteen, they believed I had no right to the position.
Ernesto had been furious, but many of the family had agreed he also didn't have a say to the title, not after his recent blunder at the time.
Marco had whispered to me to name him, he was older, and he'd make sure I'd be safe. Even if I was too young, I still had a say thanks to my father's will.
So I did. I'd renounced it immediately, passing on my title to Marco before the family, a man I deemed more suitable to lead.
Marco had stepped up in my place, and I'd been allowed to leave—a rarity in our world. Perhaps because I was a woman. Perhaps because Marco had convinced them I was more valuable as a legitimate connection later on, or that since I was still so young, I was no threat. Whatever reasoning he'd used, he'd set me free.
He'd been the brother I'd never had.
And now he was dead.
I'd tried to leave, tried to become someone else, something more. I'd gone to nursing school. Gotten a legitimate career. A life away from the family business.
But now the family had other ideas.
"Duty calls." Gray's voice brought me back to the present. He'd finished his call and was looking at me with an easy smile. "Sorry about that. Business never sleeps, especially when Leo's tied up."
I forced myself to focus. "Sounds exciting. New ventures?"
He nodded, relaxing into the seat beside me. "We're diversifying some of our shipping interests. Nothing too exciting, but it keeps the board happy."
"I'm sure it does." I managed a small smile.
"Remember that time we all went to that dive bar while you guys were in college?" he asked suddenly, changing the subject. "When you were determined to prove you could beat anyone at pool?"
The memory surfaced, pushing back the darker thoughts momentarily.
"Right, yeah, I remember." My lip curled slightly.
It was not long after the pair of them had confronted me about who I was, after having watched me as Meredith's friend for a year. Only then had I realized who Meredith was, how she was tied to the Donati, but I'd become best friends with her, and I hadn't wanted to end the only solid relationship I'd made since leaving my family years before.
I'd learned who Leo and Gray were, and as a sign of good faith, and that we all wanted what was best for Meredith, we'd organized to all get together since Meredith had passed a big test with flying colors.
"You hustled that group of frat boys out of two hundred dollars, it was a sight to see."
"They never saw it coming." I managed a soft smile at the memory.
Gray laughed, the sound warm and genuine. "And Meredith was your accomplice, pretending to give you terrible advice the whole time."
"We made a good team," I admitted, the memory bittersweet now. Those had been simpler days, although just as tense in some ways. We'd all come to an agreement to protect Meredith, and the two men had agreed to leave me be in peace, the entire Donati family willing to look the other way if I just looked out for Meredith. Something I had already been doing with our friendship.
"We all did," he agreed. "Though I think Leo was ready to step in when those guys started getting rowdy."
"Leo's always ready for a fight," I said, remembering how Leo had been composed yet tense, ready to move, to put any man on his ass if required, or in the ground. Even then, there had been something dangerous about him other than his last name. The blood that ran in his veins. The blood of a killer.
Something you recognized when the same kind of blood pulsed through your own veins.
"Not always," Gray countered. "But when it comes to protecting what's his? Absolutely."
"He loved her even then, didn't he?" I mused, recalling how he'd watched Meredith back then. I'd thought it was odd, especially when Meredith had explained their relationship, how Leo and her brother were such good friends since they were young.
"Yeah, I just refused to believe it," Gray said with a sigh, but he was smiling. "He's always looked out for us. For her."
The conversation continued, memories flowing between us. Gray reminiscing about the times we'd all spent together over the years, many times without Leo. Small moments I'd almost forgotten. A birthday dinner for Meredith where I'd accidentally set the dessert on fire. A weekend at the lake where Gray had tried to teach me to water ski and failed miserably. The night we'd all stayed up watching terrible horror movies, making fun of the plot holes.
It was strange how normal it all seemed in retrospect. How easily I'd slipped into their world like I'd always been a part of it. Perhaps that's why I'd felt comfortable with them, despite everything. We were all pretending to be something we weren't, hiding things. Even Meredith had been hiding things, although she'd blocked them out.
The car slowed as we approached my neighborhood, the elegant homes and manicured lawns a testament to my successful escape from my past. Or so I'd thought.
Apparently, I'd never truly left.
Did you ever truly leave?
Gray's voice swam through my mind.
"This is me," I said as we pulled up to my house—the renovated old-style mansion I'd purchased with my "inheritance" money when I'd finished college and moved out of the dorms. Money that had been blood-soaked long before it reached my bank account.
Gray nodded to his driver, who stepped out to open my door. Gray followed, walking me to my front steps.
"Well," I said, fishing my keys from my purse. "This is goodbye, I guess."
He hesitated, standing closer than necessary. "It doesn't have to be, Sof."
I looked up at him, at the face I'd known for years but had only truly seen last night. The face that had hovered over mine in the darkness, his eyes intense as he moved within me.
His words made my chest ache and a lump form in my throat. So he'd felt something more too then. That was the only reasoning for those words. Either that, or he was hoping to continue our no strings attached fun.
But the look in his eye told me it was the former.
"Gray..." I started, then stopped. What could I say? That last night had been a mistake? That I was being pulled back into a world that I wanted no part of? That I was not who he thought I was? Sure, he knew I was a Savoca, but he didn’t know all of it.
That Marco's death was going to upend my life, and anything we could've attempted to pursue was bound to go up in flames?
"I know, I know," he said as he clucked his tongue and glanced across the gardens around my home. "No strings attached. Just some fun. We leave it behind us."
"Right," I said, relief and disappointment mingling in my chest. "Exactly."
He nodded, then leaned in to press a kiss to my cheek. His lips lingered for a moment, warm against my skin.
"Take care, Sofia," he murmured.
"You too," I replied. "Enjoy the Bahamas. Get yourself a nice tan."
He stepped back, his expression masked. "Thanks. And... I'm sorry about your patient."
The lie I'd almost forgotten. "These things happen," I said with a practiced shrug. "Part of the job."
I watched as he returned to his car, waited until it pulled away from the curb, then entered my house. As soon as the door closed behind me, I leaned against it, my legs finally giving way as I slid to the floor.
The tears came then, hot and silent. For Marco, who had protected me. For the life I'd thought I'd escaped. For the innocence I'd never truly had.
I didn't know what Ernesto wanted from me, why he'd called. But I knew one thing for certain. With Marco's death, everything was about to change for the Savoca family.
And somehow, despite all my efforts to leave that world behind, I was being pulled back into its deadly orbit.