Chapter Thirty-Two
Sabrina
We were all sitting in the living room when the front door opened. The sound was enough to change the atmosphere. Conversations didn't stop immediately, but they softened as everyone turned towards the hallway.
A voice came from the entrance, and from Carlo's reaction, it seemed Nonna and Nonno had arrived.
Carlo stood immediately. “Come,” he said, already crossing the room towards Dario and me. He caught both our hands and pulled us up before either of us had the chance to react.
The rest of the room followed.
We moved together through the hallway, the noise of the house fading behind us with every step. By the time we reached the front of the house, they were already there, walking towards us.
Nonna saw me first and stopped completely, as though her body had forgotten how to continue forward. For a second, she simply stared. Her hand lifted slightly before dropping again, as though she didn't quite trust what she was seeing.
“Sabrina,” she said.
My name sounded different coming from her.
Then she crossed the distance between us.
I didn't move. Her arms came around me and held on as though she were trying to reclaim every year that had been stolen from her. It wasn't gentle at first. It was tight and immediate, like she was afraid I might disappear again if she let go.
I stood still before slowly allowing myself to lean into her. Her breath shook against my shoulder.
“I'm so sorry,” she whispered.
She pulled back just enough to look at me properly, her hands still holding my arms as though she needed to make sure I was real.
Then she said it, quieter this time.
“I am proud of you.”
Before I could think too deeply about it, she turned towards Dario. Her expression changed instantly, grief replaced by something softer.
“Oh,” she breathed, stepping towards him.
Dario stiffened slightly, looking between her and everyone else as though he were trying to decide whether this was safe.
Nonna reached him and cupped his face in her hands, pinching his cheeks without hesitation.
“You are a sweet little angel,” she said warmly.
From behind us, Dad muttered, “He's nothing but the devil.”
There was a beat of silence.
Both Mum and Nonna turned towards him.
“Shush,” Mum said flatly.
Nonna didn't even hesitate. “Yes. Shush.”
Nonno had been watching Dario the entire time Nonna was speaking to me, as though he were trying to understand him before saying a word. When Nonna finally stepped back, still holding onto my arms for a second longer than necessary, Nonno moved forward until he was standing in front of Dario.
Dario looked up at him immediately, his chin slightly raised as though he were already preparing himself for whatever came next.
For a moment, neither of them spoke, both seemingly deciding what to make of the other.
Then Nonno crouched slightly so he was closer to Dario's height.
“So,” he said quietly. “You're the one everyone's been talking about.”
Dario blinked.
“Depends who you're asking.”
A pause followed, and Nonno gave a small hum, almost as though he approved of the answer.
“That sounds about right.”
Dario narrowed his eyes slightly. “You're Nonno.”
“I am.”
Dario nodded once, as if confirming something.
“You don't look as scary as Dad says you are.”
A faint exhale of amusement escaped Nonno.
“Your Dad says a lot of things.”
“He exaggerates.”
“Does he?”
“Yes.”
Nonno glanced briefly towards Dad. “I'll keep that in mind.”
Dario seemed satisfied with the answer.
For a few seconds, they simply looked at each other. Then Nonno leaned forward slightly and lowered his voice as though sharing a secret.
“It makes sense.”
Dario tilted his head. “What does?”
“That everyone likes you.”
Dario looked entirely unsurprised.
Nonno's mouth twitched. “You're a cute one.”
“I know.”
A laugh escaped from somewhere behind us.
Dario ignored it completely, carrying the confidence of someone who had never doubted that fact for a second.
Nonno shook his head slightly, the smile finally breaking through.
“God help us all.”
This time, almost everyone laughed.
***
For the first time in days, there were no cousins arguing, no Valentino appearing where he shouldn't, and no voices spilling through the hallways. They had all left two days ago, and although I'd only been part of this family for two months, the silence already felt wrong.
Most of my brothers had gone to Leonardo's fight, leaving only me, Dario, Mum, Dad, Nonno and Nonna in the house. Everyone else had gone to bed hours ago, and Dario was asleep in my room. The rest of the house had settled into darkness, leaving me as the only person still awake.
The digital clock on the oven glowed faintly, marking just after midnight.
I sat at the kitchen island with a mug of tea I'd long since stopped drinking, my fingers resting loosely around the ceramic as it cooled. The house was still in a way it never usually was, and the silence gave me too much room to think.
Thinking had never been my problem. Getting my mind to stop was.
Tonight, my thoughts drifted backwards, back before New York, before the island, before I knew who my family was, before the DNA test changed everything.
One question refused to leave me.
Why was Nonno proud of me?
It had followed me since he'd said it, repeating quietly in the background of everything else. Nonna had said it too, both of them using the same words without explanation. I had never asked why.
Every time I thought I would, something stopped me before I could speak. It was easier to leave the question unspoken than to risk what the answer might do.
It was almost absurd. I was one of the most feared assassins in the underground.
People looked over their shoulders to avoid me, and entire organisations adjusted their plans around the possibility of my presence.
Yet I couldn't ask my own grandfather a simple question, all because I wasn't sure I could handle what his answer might mean.
For seventeen years, I'd lived without any of them.
Ivan had made sure of that.
At some point, my mind stopped offering anything useful, so at one in the morning I got up, went to the cupboard and found a packet of crisps. It wasn't a solution, but it was something I could control.
I returned to the kitchen island and sat back down, the house still and dim around me. For a while, there was only the sound of the packet opening and the sharp crunch that followed each bite.
Then I heard a breath beside me.
I turned my head.
Nonno was standing there in silence, as though he'd always been there and I'd simply failed to notice. My brain emptied itself of every coherent thought in an instant. I'd been too focused on the crisps to hear him enter.
I swallowed what I was chewing slowly, recovering what little dignity I had left.
“Hi,” I said carefully.
His eyes moved from the packet in my hands back to my face with an unreadable calm.
“You eat like a raccoon in a dumpster.”
I paused, then lowered the packet slightly.
“How exactly do you know what a raccoon in a dumpster eats like?”
He ignored the question entirely.
“You crunch louder than my knees when I stand up.”
“That is not a compliment,” I said. “And your knees are not a fair comparison. They are ancient.”
A faint exhale left him, not quite a laugh, but close enough to count. He leaned lightly against the counter beside me, his presence calm in a way that contrasted sharply with how silently he'd appeared.
“Why are you awake?” he asked.
“I could ask you the same question.”
“I had a feeling you were awake.”
I raised an eyebrow. “So you came to check on me?”
He nodded once.
A silence settled between us, not uncomfortable, but heavy in a way I couldn't place.
After a moment, he asked, “Why are you not sleeping?”
“I am,” I said. “Just not successfully.”
That earned a subtle shift in his expression.
“Too much on your mind?”
“Yeah.”
He studied me for a moment longer before speaking again.
“Is one of those things why I said I am proud of you?”
My hands paused.
“Yes.”
He didn't look away, so I didn't either.
“I don't understand it,” I said. “I've been here two months. I haven't done anything here that would explain that.”
“It is not what you have done here,” he said at last. “It is what you did before you came here.”
The words settled heavily between us.
“You don't know what I did before I came here,” I said quietly.
“I know more than you think,” he replied. “More than most people in this house know.”
“I know who you are,” he added.
The air changed.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
He didn't answer immediately. He simply held my gaze, steady and unshaken, as if waiting for me to reach the same conclusion.
Then he asked, “Do you remember me at all?”
I stared at him for a moment, trying to decide whether that was a serious question.
Remember him?
Of course. How could I possibly forget someone I had never met before in my life? The question itself felt absurd. I'd spent seventeen years not knowing this man existed. Even after finding my family, I'd only known him for a matter of days.
“That's a very optimistic question,” I said dryly.
Nonno didn't smile. His expression remained unchanged, his gaze steady on mine as though he were waiting for me to reach a conclusion he'd already arrived at long ago.
I let out a quiet breath and shook my head.
“With all due respect, Nonno, I was kidnapped seventeen years ago. I wasn't exactly making family memories after that.”
The longer he watched me, the more the certainty in his expression unsettled me. He wasn't asking out of hope. He wasn't testing a theory.
He knew something.
And somehow, that certainty made me search my memory anyway.
At first there was nothing. Then, somewhere deep in the back of my mind, something shifted. Not a memory, but a feeling. A strange sense of familiarity settled heavily in my chest.
I frowned, trying to grasp it before it disappeared. The kitchen around me seemed quieter than before, the silence stretching between us as my thoughts turned inward.
Then a name surfaced without warning.
Anna Sergeyevna Petrova.
The name alone made my skin crawl.