Chapter 44
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—they 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 her own brother.
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 kept 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 it'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 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 an 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.