Chapter Six
Rafael
Los Angeles feels unreal beneath my feet.
The air is warmer than it should be, the city sprawling and indifferent around us as though it has no idea what it is holding.
Bianca walks beside me, her hand tight in mine, as though letting go for even a second might allow the truth to slip through our fingers.
Dante moves on my other side, alert and watchful as always.
Enzo scans the streets, trying to read our surroundings as though they might give something away, while Matteo lingers a step behind, restless energy coiled tightly through his shoulders and his jaw set as though he is holding back words he doesn't trust himself to say yet.
After speaking to Valeria, nothing feels the same.
She hadn't offered explanations or details.
She had simply looked at me for a long moment before telling me that Sabrina was on her way back to L.A.
But it changed everything because it meant my daughter had been here.
She had been living in this city, breathing its air and walking its streets while we searched the world for her.
Seventeen years of grief, and she had been right here.
When we returned and told the family, the house descended into chaos. Seven sons spoke at once, anger, disbelief and relief crashing together until the walls seemed to shake. Some demanded revenge. Others wanted answers. Every one of them wanted to see her.
Bianca didn't raise her voice. She stood in silence until the noise finally faded, her hands trembling at her sides.
Then she looked at me, her eyes glassy, and seventeen years of grief finally broke through her control.
She collapsed against me, sobbing into my chest as though the ground had given way beneath her.
“She's alive,” she whispered over and over.
I held her as tightly as I could.
Every one of our sons wanted to come with us to Los Angeles, but we couldn't bring all of them.
Only Dante, Enzo and Matteo would come. We couldn't bring an army to Sabrina's doorstep, not after everything she'd survived.
If Valeria was right, Sabrina had built something here, something fragile and hard-won.
We wouldn't be the ones to tear it apart.
The problem was that we didn't know how to find her.
Sabrina Moretti might not exist on any record anymore. She could have been erased, buried beneath another name and another life, leaving us with nothing but the knowledge that she was somewhere in this city.
So we drove.
Los Angeles stretched endlessly around us, street after street folding into one another as we searched for anything that might pull at my chest the way it had the night she disappeared. Hours passed with nothing to show for them, and the silence inside the car grew heavier with every mile.
Then, just after sunrise, I saw her.
She stepped out of a bakery with cardboard boxes cradled carefully in her arms. The sign above her read Sweet Puffs, but I barely registered it. What caught my attention was the way she moved – aware, controlled, her gaze sweeping across the street as though she were accustomed to being watched.
Matteo slowed the car instinctively, easing us back so we wouldn't draw attention.
None of us said anything, but we were thinking the same thing. If she noticed us, she would run, and I didn't know if I could survive watching her disappear again.
We followed at a distance.
She walked several blocks before turning towards an ageing building set back from the street.
The moment she stepped through the gate, the front doors burst open and children spilled outside, laughing and shouting as they crowded around her.
Small hands reached for the boxes she carried, and she let them take them without hesitation, smiling in a way that felt both practised and genuine.
Then I saw him.
A little boy stood apart from the others, watching her with absolute certainty. He was no older than four, with dark hair falling into his eyes and a grin that stretched across his face the moment she looked his way. He waited for her attention before running towards her.
She took his hand immediately.
They walked inside together, her steps slowing to match his while she listened to whatever he was saying. The doors closed behind them, and the noise faded.
She didn't come back out.
Hours passed as we remained parked across the street. Bianca sat beside me with her hands folded tightly in her lap, her knuckles pale. Every so often she leaned forward as though she might open the door, only to stop herself.
None of us moved.
We watched shadows shift behind windows we couldn't see into, each of us wondering what would happen when Sabrina finally walked back outside.
Would she recognise us? Would she want anything to do with us?
After seventeen years, would we be parents and brothers to her, or would we simply be strangers claiming a place in a life she had never known?
Around eight o'clock, she finally stepped outside, but she wasn't alone. An older woman stood at the entrance watching as Sabrina walked away, making sure she left before closing the door behind her.
We watched Sabrina disappear down the street.
My chest tightened with every step she took. I wanted to call her name. I wanted to run across the road and pull her into my arms.
I didn't.
Ten minutes later, she returned to the building. The lights had gone out, but she continued towards it without hesitation. She carefully slid open a window and slipped inside.
I leaned forward, unable to look away.
Why was she sneaking into the orphanage? Where else would she go if she had nowhere else to go? She was a minor. She should have been there officially, under the care of people who were supposed to protect her, and yet she moved as though she didn't belong there at all.
Bianca shifted beside me, sensing the same unease.
We stayed.
The orphanage stood quiet across the street as the hours dragged on. Bianca eventually fell asleep beside me, exhaustion finally pulling her under, while Enzo and Matteo sprawled across the back seat, their own exhaustion catching up with them.
I didn't sleep.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the empty crib all over again. The same cold fear settled in my chest – the fear that Sabrina would disappear before we had the chance to reach her, sending us back to the beginning.
Dante stayed awake too. My oldest sat rigidly, his eyes fixed on the orphanage as though he could guard it simply by refusing to look away. I didn't tell him to sleep. I knew he wouldn't listen, and I had no right to demand something from him that I couldn't do myself.
I've run a mafia for twenty-seven years. Hesitation gets people killed. There is no room for doubt when blood can spill in seconds and legacies can collapse just as quickly. You act, or you die. It's always been that simple.
But tonight, I couldn't act.
All I could do was think.
What if she didn't want to come back with us? What if she ran the moment she realised who we were? What if she looked at us and felt nothing? After seventeen years of searching, what would I do if I lost her again?
I had no answers.
Only the fear that, after finally finding my daughter, I might still lose her.