Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Sophia
The November wind cuts through my coat like it's made of paper. My teeth won't stop chattering, but I can't tell if it's from the cold or the terror that's been eating at me for ten days straight.
Ten days. That's how long I've known my life was over.
I press my palm against Rosso's door, the wood smooth under my frozen fingers. Three in the morning, and the restaurant sits dark except for a thin line of light bleeding from somewhere deep inside.
My mother loved small Italian restaurants like this one.
She's been dead three weeks. Three weeks since the cancer finally won, and I held her hand while she slipped away, whispering apologies I didn't understand then.
I understand them now.
"I'm sorry, baby," she'd said, her voice barely a whisper. "I tried to keep you away from all of it."
All of it meant Uncle Francesco. All of it meant the family business she'd spent twenty years protecting me from. All of it meant the monster I'm supposed to marry in three weeks.
My stomach twists, and I have to swallow hard to keep from throwing up right here on the sidewalk.
Daniil Morozov.
Even thinking his name makes my skin crawl. Francesco announced it at dinner like he was telling me about the weather. "You'll marry Daniil next month. It's good for business."
Good for business. Not "He'll treat you well" or "You'll be happy." Just good for business.
The other men at the table wouldn't even look at me. That's when I knew how bad it was. These men—killers, thieves, criminals—couldn't meet my eyes when Francesco said Daniil's name.
I found out why later. Overheard two of Francesco's soldiers talking when they thought I was asleep.
"Poor kid," one said. "You hear what happened to his last girlfriend?"
"Which one? The Russian girl they found in pieces, or the waitress who just disappeared?"
"Both. Man's a fucking psycho. Even Francesco's scared of him."
Pieces. They found a girl in pieces.
My hands shake harder as I knock on Rosso's door. Soft at first, then louder when no one answers. I know someone's here.I saw a shadow move past the window a minute ago.
"Please," I whisper, then louder. "Please, I need help."
Nothing.
I knock again, harder this time. My knuckles sting from the cold and the force of it. "I know someone's in there. Please. I just—I need—"
What? What do I need? Sanctuary? Protection? Someone to save me from my own family?
I'm Francesco Torrino's niece. No one in Chicago will help me. No one would dare.
But I had to try. Mom always said the Sartoris were different from the other families. "They have rules," she'd tell me. "Lines they won't cross." She never said it outright, but I understood. If I ever needed help, really needed it, maybe they'd be the ones to ask.
Except Mom didn't know I'd need help from my own uncle.
The wind picks up, and I wrap my arms around myself.
The bruises on my upper arm throb where Francesco grabbed me yesterday when I tried to refuse the engagement.
"You'll do as you're told," he'd said, his fingers digging in hard enough to leave marks.
"Your mother made you soft, but you're a Torrino. You'll serve the family."
Serve the family by marrying a monster. Serve the family by dying in pieces like those other girls.
I lean my forehead against the door, exhaustion making me dizzy. I've been walking for two hours, too scared to take a cab in case Francesco's men were watching.
The flash drive burns against my palm where I've been clutching it for the past hour. Such a small thing to hold my uncle's destruction—or mine, depending on who gets it first.
I recorded everything. Three weeks of Francesco's meetings when he thought I was upstairs grieving my mother. The deals with the Russians. The cop he's been paying off. The shipment he stole from the Sartoris last week, laughing about how Pietro would lose his mind.
Evidence that could destroy him. Evidence that could get me killed.
But that's all I have to bargain with.
My fingers trace the restaurant's name etched in the glass. Rosso's. Lorenzo Sartori owns this place. I know because Francesco complains about it constantly. How Lorenzo turned legitimate businesses into an empire while keeping his hands clean of the real family work.
"Soft," Francesco calls him. "Thinks he's better than the rest of us with his restaurants and his suits."
But I remember different.
I was eight, chasing a ball into Michigan Avenue traffic. My mother's scream still echoes in my nightmares sometimes. The taxi should have killed me. Would have, if a man hadn't yanked me back so hard we both hit the pavement.
"You okay, piccola?" His voice had been gentle. Blood dripped from a gash on his palm where he'd scraped it. "You gotta be more careful."
He'd walked me back to my mother, who'd been crying too hard to speak. Later, she told me who he was. Lorenzo Sartori. The enemy's son.
"But he saved me," I'd said, confused by the idea that someone bad could do something good.
"Sometimes," she'd said carefully, "people are more complicated than the families they're born into."
Twelve years. He was twenty-two then, which makes him thirty-four now. I know it because I've searched for him online these days. Second in command of the Sartori family. The diplomat, they call him, though Francesco says that's just another word for manipulator.
The man who saved me might not exist anymore. Twelve years in this life changes people. Hardens them. Breaks them into shapes that fit the violence better.
But I'm out of options.
The door suddenly opens, and I stumble forward, barely catching myself. Light floods my vision, and when it clears, I'm staring at a man in a suit. Not Lorenzo.
"We're closed," he says, already moving to shut the door.
"Wait!" I wedge my foot in the gap, desperation making me bold. "I need to see Lorenzo Sartori."
His eyes narrow. "Nobody sees Mr. Sartori without an appointment."
"Tell him—" My voice cracks. I clear my throat and try again. "Tell him Sophia Torrino is here. Tell him the girl from Michigan Avenue needs his help."
The glance that he gives me says everything to me.
"Torrino?" His hand moves to his hip, where I can see the outline of a gun. "Francesco's niece?"
"Yes." The word tastes like ash. "But I'm not here for him. I'm here because—" I pull out the flash drive, holding it up like a white flag. "Because I have information the Sartoris need. About the shipment. About everything."
The man stares at me for a long moment. I can see him weighing options, calculating risks. Finally, he steps back.
"Wait here."
The door closes in my face. I'm left standing in the cold again, but they haven't sent me away.
Yet.
I press my back against the brick wall, legs shaking from more than cold.
The door opens again.
Lorenzo
The office door opens without a knock. Only one person has that privilege.
"We have a situation." Dante's voice cuts through the whiskey haze I've been cultivating for the past hour.
I don't look up from the shipping manifests. "Unless the docks are on fire or Pietro's finally snapped and killed someone important, it can wait."
"Sophia Torrino is downstairs asking for you."
The glass stops halfway to my mouth. I set it down carefully, my mind already calculating angles. Francesco's niece. Here. At three in the morning.
"Alone?" I'm already reaching for the Glock in my desk drawer, checking the chamber with practiced efficiency.
"Far as I can tell." Dante moves further into the room, his presence filling the space the way it always does. "I had Aldo check the perimeter. No cars idling. She walked here. Been standing outside for ten minutes before she knocked.
"Armed?"
"Not unless she's hiding something impressive under that coat. Girl's half-frozen and scared enough to shake apart."
I stand, tucking the gun into my waistband. "Could be a setup. Francesco is using family to get close."
"Could be." Dante's expression doesn't change, but I catch the slight shift in his stance. Ready for violence at a word from me. "But she mentioned Michigan Avenue. Said the girl from Michigan Avenue needs your help."
Fuck. She remembers.
Twelve years ago. The kid with the ball and the death wish. Dark hair, huge eyes, mother crying hard enough to make a scene. I'd walked away with blood on my hands—my own, for once—and tried to forget about it.
"She has information about the shipment," Dante adds. "Showed Aldo a flash drive."
This is a trap. Has to be. Francesco Torrino doesn't make moves this obvious unless he's desperate or playing a deeper game. But the girl...
"Bring her up." The words come out before I can think better of them. "Through the kitchen, back stairs. And Dante—" He pauses at the door. "Keep your hand on your gun."
"Always do."
The door closes behind him with a soft click.
I pour another whiskey, then think better of it and pour one for her too. If this is a trap, at least I'll die with good liquor in my system. If it's not...
Christ, what kind of desperation drives a Torrino to my door?
Dante Castellani has been watching my back since we were teenagers. His father worked for mine until a deal went bad and bullets started flying. Dante took three bullets meant for me that night, nearly bled out in my arms in some warehouse on the South Side. He was eighteen. I was sixteen.
He lived. His father didn't.
My father took him in after that—not out of charity, but because he recognized what I'd already known.
Dante was born for this life. Not just the violence, though he excels at that, but the strategy.
The loyalty. The ability to see three moves ahead while everyone else is still reacting to the last one.
Six-foot-three of controlled menace, Dante commands a room without saying a word.
He's got this way of going completely still right before violence erupts, like a wolf deciding whether you're worth the energy to kill.
The scar through his left eyebrow makes him look perpetually skeptical, which isn't far from the truth.
He's my consigliere now, the only person outside my family I trust completely. Dante would burn Chicago to the ground if I asked him to. Hell, he'd probably enjoy it.
The knock comes exactly three minutes later. Professional, measured—Dante's signature even in something as simple as announcing himself.
"Come."
The door opens and she walks in first, Dante close behind. He shuts the door with, then positions himself against it, arms crossed. His message is clear: no one leaves without permission.
Sophia Torrino stops three feet inside my office and freezes.
She's not the little girl I pulled from traffic anymore. Twenty, maybe twenty-one now. Dark honey hair falls past her shoulders in waves that the November wind has turned wild. Her coat hangs open, revealing a simple black dress underneath.
But it's her eyes that stop me cold. Same honey-brown as twelve years ago, but the innocence is gone. Replaced by something I recognize too well—desperation barely held in check by sheer will.
She's shaking. Her lips have taken on a bluish tint that says she's been outside too long. This is fear, bone-deep and primal. The kind that comes from knowing exactly how bad things can get.
Still, she doesn't speak.
"You're dripping on my carpet," I say, keeping my voice neutral.
She blinks, looks down at the puddle forming around her boots. "Sorry, I—"
"Sit." I gesture to one of the leather chairs across from my desk. "Before you collapse."
She moves like she's walking through quicksand, each step careful. When she sits, she perches on the edge of the chair, ready to run. Smart girl.
Though if she needs to run from me, she's already lost.
I push the whiskey across the desk. "Drink."
Her hand trembles as she reaches for it, and she has to use both hands to bring the glass to her lips. The first sip makes her cough, but she takes another anyway. Color starts returning to her cheeks.
"Better?"
She nods, sets the glass down carefully. Her fingers twist in her lap, and I notice her nails are bitten down to the quick. When she finally speaks, her voice is barely above a whisper.
"You saved my life once."
I wait. Let the silence stretch until she has to fill it.
"I need you to do it again."
Jesus fucking Christ.
The curse ricochets through my skull while I keep my expression blank. This is exactly what I don't need. A Torrino sitting in my office at three in the morning, asking for protection.
"That's a heavy request, Miss Torrino."
"I know what I'm asking." Her chin lifts, and for a second I see something fierce underneath the fear. "I know who you are. What you are. I know coming here makes me a traitor to my family."
"Then why?"
She reaches into her coat pocket, and I see Dante shift slightly. But she only pulls out a flash drive, sets it on my desk between us.
"Because in ten days, I'm supposed to marry Daniil Morozov." Her voice cracks on his name. "And I'd rather be a living traitor than a dead bride."
The name hangs in the air like a loaded gun. Morozov. The Russian psychopath who's been turning Chicago's underworld into his personal playground. The one who supposedly left his last girlfriend in pieces—literally.
And Francesco's selling his own niece to him.