Chapter Eighteen Alexandra
The compound has a rhythm I'm starting to recognize.
Morning patrols at six. Shift changes at noon and midnight.
The kitchen serves meals at predictable hours, and the corridors clear out in the late afternoon when the soldiers who aren't on duty retreat to their quarters for rest or recreation.
There's a pattern to everything, especially with all the changes in surveillance equipment and internalizing systems.
I've been here almost a month now. Strange how quickly captivity became something else. Something that feels, against all logic, like home.
My days have structure. Mornings in the war room with Leone and the intelligence team, combing through data, chasing threads.
Giovanni’s name has opened doors we didn't know existed.
Old files. Older grudges. People who remember him, who worked with him, who have stories they've been sitting on for twenty years.
Afternoons are different.
"Again," Emilio says.
I square my stance, raise my hands, and throw the punch exactly the way he taught me. It connects with the pad he's holding, a satisfying thwack that reverberates up my arm.
"Better." He shifts the pad to his other hand. "Now combination. Jab, cross, hook."
I throw the combination. It's sloppy, I know it's sloppy, but it's better than it was a week ago. Better than the first day, when I swung so wide Emilio laughed for five straight minutes.
"You're dropping your shoulder on the hook," he says. "Keep it tight. Power comes from rotation, not reach."
"Easy for you to say. You've been doing this your whole life."
"And you've been doing it for six days." He grins, that easy Emilio smile that makes him look nothing like a man who's killed more people than I can count. "Give it time. You're not trying to become a fighter. You're trying to survive long enough for backup to arrive."
That's the goal. Not to turn me into some foolish action hero, but to give me the basics. How to throw a punch that actually hurts. How to break a grip. How to create distance and find an exit. The type of skills that might have helped in that Castillo safehouse, if I'd had them.
I throw the combination again. Tighter this time. The hook lands clean.
"There it is." Emilio drops the pad and rolls his shoulders. "Take five. Hydrate."
I grab the water bottle from the bench and drink deeply.
The training room is in the basement, bare concrete and fluorescent lights, equipped with bags and pads and mats that have seen better days.
It smells like sweat and rubber and faint chemical, probably the cleaning solution they use to sanitize the equipment.
"Can I ask you something?" I say.
"You just did."
I resist the urge to throw my water bottle at his head. "Something real."
Emilio's expression shifts. The grin fades, suddenly serious. More focused.
"Shoot."
"Leone's sister. What happened to her?"
The silence that follows is heavy. Emilio looks away, toward the punching bags hanging at the far end of the room. His jaw works like he's chewing on something that won't go down.
"That's not my story to tell," he says finally.
"I know. But he won't tell me. Every time I bring it up, he changes the subject or shuts down. And I can see it eating at him, Emilio. Whatever happened, it's still there. Under the surface."
"Yeah." He exhales. "It's always been there. Long as I've known him."
"What do you know?"
He's quiet. Then he sits down on the bench beside me, elbows on his knees, hands clasped.
"I know it happened before he came to Aurelio. Before any of this." He gestures vaguely at the compound around us. "He was twelve, I think. Or, uhhh, thirteen. His sister was younger. Nine or ten."
"What was her name?"
"Sofia."
The name settles into me. A dead girl I've never met, connected to a man I love by blood and tragedy.
"Someone took her," Emilio continues. "Rival crew.
They wanted something from Leone's father, and they figured a kid was good leverage.
The ransom was set, the exchange was planned, and then.
.." He shakes his head. "It went wrong. I don't know the details.
Leone doesn't talk about it. But they found her body three weeks later. "
Three weeks. My stomach turns.
"And Leone?"
"Leone was twelve when he made his first kill. The man who took his sister. He tracked him down, found where he lived, and..." Emilio's voice trails off. "You can guess the rest."
I can. The image forms unbidden: a young Leone, younger but already hardening into the man he'd become, standing over a body with blood on his hands. His first kill. Not for money or duty or orders. For revenge.
"That's why he is the way he is," I say quietly.
"Part of it. The rest..." Emilio shrugs. "Life in this world does things to people. Aurelio saw something in him, after. Took him in. Trained him. Gave him a purpose beyond just surviving."
"And turned him into a weapon."
"Gave him a way to use what he already was." Emilio looks at me. "Leone was never going to be a civilian, Alexandra. Not after what happened. Aurelio didn't make him into a killer. He gave him a direction to point."
I absorb that. Try to fit it into the picture I've been building of the man I share a bed with every night. The silences. The nightmares. The way he checks the room before he sleeps, the way he wakes at the slightest sound, the way he holds me like I might disappear if he loosens his grip.
"It all makes sense now."
"We all have a story, Alexandra.” Emilio stands, stretches, picks up the training pad again. "You’re good for him. He's different since you showed up. Less..." He searches for the word. "Frozen."
"Frozen?"
"Leone's been operating on autopilot for years.
Goes through the motions. Does the job. Follows orders.
But there's nothing behind it, you know?
No fire. No reason except that this is what he does, so he keeps doing it.
" Emilio holds up the pad. "You gave him something to care about again.
That's either going to save him or destroy him. Probably both."
"That's reassuring."
"I'm not trying to reassure you. I'm trying to prepare you." His grin returns, but there's an edge to it now. "You're in this, Alexandra. All the way in. Whatever comes next, you face it with him. So you better know what you're fighting for."
I stand. Square my stance. Raise my hands.
"Again," I say.
We train for another hour. By the end, my arms are shaking and my shoulders are screaming and I've sweated through my shirt twice. But my punches are cleaner. My footwork is steadier. I can feel myself getting stronger, not in any dramatic way, but incrementally. Day by day.
I shower in the women's locker room, which is really just a repurposed storage closet with a drain and a showerhead. The water is lukewarm at best, but I don't care. I stand under the spray and let it wash away the sweat and the tension and everything Emilio told me.
Sofia. Nine or ten years old. Taken. Killed. And her brother, twelve and already broken, tracking down her killer and doing what needed to be done.
That's the man I love. Not despite that history, but in full knowledge of it. The violence and the trauma and the parts of him that will never heal.
I towel off and dress in clean clothes. Head for our quarters.
Leone is at the desk when I arrive, reading something on his laptop. He looks up when I enter, and his eyes track over me, taking in the damp hair, the flushed skin, the slight stiffness in my movements.
"How was training?" he asks.
"Brutal. Emilio is a sadist."
"He's thorough. There's a difference."
I cross to him, lean down, and press a kiss to his forehead. He catches my hand, brings it to his mouth, brushes his lips across my knuckles. A small gesture. Intimate. The kind of thing that still surprises me, every time.
"Can we talk?" I ask.
His expression shifts. Cautious. "About what?"
"About Sofia."
The name lands like a stone in still water. I watch the ripples spread across his face. The tightening around his eyes. The way his jaw locks.
"Emilio told you," he says. Not a question.
"He told me some of it. I want to hear the rest from you."
I think he's going to refuse. Push back, change the subject, deploy one of the dozen deflection tactics I've learned to recognize over the past month. But then something in him shifts. A decision made. A wall coming down.
"Sit," he says.
I sit on the edge of the bed, facing him. He stays in the chair, hands flat on his thighs, like he needs the physical anchor to tell this story.
"I was twelve," he begins. "Sofia was nine. Our father worked for a Bonaccorso crew on the east side. Low level. Muscle for hire. He wasn't important, not after marrying my mother, but he was loyal, and loyalty made him useful."
"What happened?"
"Rival outfit wanted to send a message. My father had been part of an operation that went wrong, killed one of their men.
Accident, supposedly. But they didn't care about accidents.
They wanted blood." He pauses. "They took Sofia from the park three blocks from our apartment.
Broad daylight. She was playing on the swings when they grabbed her. "
I don't speak. Don't move. let him talk.
"The ransom was fifty thousand dollars. My father didn't have it.
He tried to scrape together what he could, borrowed from everyone he knew, but it wasn't enough.
He went to his bosses, begged them for help, and they.
.." Leone's voice goes flat. Empty. "They told him she was just a girl. Not worth the money."
"Jesus."
"My mother tried to go to the police. My father stopped her. Said it would only make things worse. So they negotiated. Stalled. Tried to buy time while they figured out how to get the money."
"How long?"