Chapter 33
SOPHIA
I walk out of Luca’s room and into the hallway, my hands trembling. They discharged me from the hospital this morning. Scott meets me in the hallway, giving me a hesitant smile.
“How’s he doing?”
“Pretty doped up but in good spirits.” I let out a heavy sigh. “What are you charging him with?”
“Kidnapping. Attempted murder.”
“He didn’t try to kill me.”
“He may as well have, Soph. You can’t expect me to look the other way because he’s Rosa’s father.”
I hang my head. “I know. I know that. I still don’t even know how you found us.”
“Tracked his phone to the cottage,” Scott explains. “It was a dead end other than some tire tracks leading to the city. I pulled up CCTV footage around their various buildings, including the mansion.”
“What about the old man?”
“Lorenzo? There’s nothing to hold him on, and even if there was, he’s riddled with cancer. He’d get compassionate release.”
“While Luca goes to prison?” My tone is incredulous. “What if I don’t want to press charges?”
Scott shakes his head, his face grim. “You can’t unring this bell, Soph. He’s going to do time. There’s nothing I can do about that.”
I bite my lip, fighting tears.
“I don’t want that.”
“I don’t regret saving you, Sophia. Who knows what might have happened if I didn’t show up?”
“I know. I know, and I’m grateful you saved me, too.” I hug him tightly. “It’s just…all this is confusing.”
“I know it is. Are you going to get Rosa?”
“I don’t know what to say to her. How to prepare her.”
Scott puts his hand on my shoulder. “Just tell her the truth.”
I stare at him. “That her daddy’s a criminal? That we’re going to have to visit him in prison?”
He sighs. “As much as she can understand, that is.”
I swallow hard and nod.
“You can take my car. I’m still doing paperwork from last night,” Scott mutters.
I chuckle. “Can’t say I miss that part of the job.”
He blinks at me. “Don’t tell me you’re not coming back, Soph.”
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “I don’t know if I’m cut out to be a detective, Scott.”
“I think you’re cut out to do anything you want,” Scott says sweetly, and I smile, hugging him tightly. He hands me his keys and I walk out to the parking garage, hitting the key fob until I see Scott’s car.
I slide into the driver’s side then drive to Agnes’ house. When I arrive, it’s around noon and Rosa’s out playing in the dirt.
“My shoes is dirty,” she says flatly when I scoop her up, pointing down at her feet, and I’m laughing and crying and she’s looking at me like I’ve lost my mind.
Maybe I have.
Agnes comes to the door, smiling behind the screen. “Well, hey there, stranger,” she says, and I burst into tears.
Agnes makes a distressed noise in the back of her throat and comes outside, taking Rosa from me and hugging me close.
“Oh, it’s alright, Sophia. Hard week?’
“You could say that,” I sniffle. “I need to take her home, we have some things to talk about.”
Agnes just nods. She doesn’t push, and that’s one of the things I love about her.
“Thank you so much, Aggie. For everything,” I tell her, and when I hug her for some reason it feels like goodbye.
When we arrive home, Rosa rushes to her room, picking out the dolls she’s missed.
I let her play for a while, sitting quietly on the edge of her twin bed.
“Mama? Wanna play?”
“Not yet, Rosie girl.” I pause, trying to think of how to say it. “Do you ever wonder about your daddy?”
“I don’t have a daddy,” she says matter-of-factly and it’s like a dagger through my heart.
“That’s not exactly true, honey.”
She looks up at me with wide green eyes. “I do have a daddy?”
“You do. His name is Luca and we’re going to visit him at the hospital?”
She frowns. “He’s sick?”
“A little bit. He got hurt, and the doctors helped him. So you can’t jump on him and stuff. And…he’s tied up.”
“Tied up?”
I wince. “Handcuffed. Just so he doesn’t get up and hurt himself.”
I’m lying to my daughter all over again, but I just can’t bear to tell her that her father’s going to prison. Not yet.
“We goin’ now? My shoes are dirty.”
“I’ll get your black ones.”
This time, she doesn’t put up a fuss as I dress her in a flouncy dress with tights and a pair of hi-top shoes. I put her dark hair back in a blue ribbon and she twirls around in her dress.
“Do I look pretty, Mama?”
“Gorgeous,” I respond with a bright smile, and I scoop her up into my arms, holding her on my hip as I lead her out to Scott’s car.
“Uncle Scott!” she calls when she sees the car, her face falling when he isn’t sitting in the driver’s seat.
“He’ll meet us at the hospital.”
“I wonder what he looks like,” she mumbles, clutching her dress in her tiny fists, and I realize belatedly that she’s nervous.
“Daddy’s going to love you,” I promise her, and I pray their first interaction will go off without a hitch.
The guard watching Luca steps out of the room when I arrive. It’s one of the perks of still being part of the police department, I guess.
Luca smiles brightly as I walk in, and when Rosa walks in after me his eyes widen as he looks down at her. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows hard.
“Hey there, pretty girl,” he murmurs, and Rosa shyly hides her face behind my legs.
“Don’t be shy now,” I tell her, and she smiles and walks up closer, slowly putting her hand on his.
He freezes, looking at her like she’s a cornered animal, then she leans up and kisses his hand.
“It’s nice to meet you, Daddy,” she says in the smallest voice, smiling at him, and he squeezes his eyes shut and then opens them again. Rosa frowns. “No cryin’, okay?”
“No crying,” he says hoarsely and blinks his wet green eyes rapidly.
“See my princess dress?” she asks, twirling around.
“I do. My princess looks so beautiful.”
She giggles. “I not a princess.”
He frowns. “Yes, you are. You’re our little princesses. And you want to know a secret?’
“Yes,” she breathes, and I can’t help but chuckle at her exuberance, fighting tears myself.
“Princesses get anything they want.”
“Not anything,” I complain.
Rosa’s eyes sparkle. “Even cake for breakfast.”
“No,” I start, but Luca cuts me off.
“Especially cake for breakfast.”
I roll my eyes, but I can’t stop smiling. He’s good with her. Better than I would have expected. An hour later, she’s coloring his fingernails in with marker and he looks down at her as if she hung the moon.
Another hour later and she’s down for her nap, curled against him with her thumb in her mouth.
He watches her like she’s something rare, something precious.
I brush her dark hair from her face.
“I can’t get her to stop sucking her thumb.”
“She’ll grow out of it.”
“What if she doesn’t?”
“She will,” he says confidently. “She’s just a baby, let her suck her thumb.”
“You’d let her get away with murder.”
He looks up at me. “And what about it?”
I laugh. “You can’t give her everything all the time.”
“Watch me.” He breathes in a sharp breath as she shifts and gets closer to him. “I can’t believe I missed so much of her life.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, guilt rushing through me, but Luca looks up at me with a frown.
“Don’t be sorry. You did the only thing you could to keep her safe. I wasn’t… I don’t know if I’ll ever be a good dad,” he says quietly.
“Luca—”
“No, let me say this. The way I grew up, the way Nico and I both grew up, the odds were stacked against us. We were born to this life. Bred to be mobsters. So the fact that you weren’t sure whether or not I’d be a good influence in her life…that makes sense, pixie.”
“It does?’
“Of course it does. You wanted to keep her from the life. I want that, too. I just want her to be happy and healthy.” He looks at me seriously. “And you won’t bring her to the prison?”
My mouth goes dry. “No. No, Luca, if you don’t want me to—”
“I don’t. Doc says I’ll be here for another week, at least. Just bring her to see me when you can.”
“I’ll bring her every day.”
“Every other,” he amends. “Don’t want her getting tired of me.”
I smile sadly. “I don’t think anyone could ever get tired of you.”
He snorts. “Could have fooled me.”
I take his hand. “I should have never left in the first place.”
“No. You were right to do it. I just wish things were different. I wish I was different.”
“But you are different, Luca. You’re not the same man you once were.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do. I love you, Luca, and I—”
I want to help him. I want to tell him everything will be okay, but I can’t. Like Scott said, I can’t unring the bell. What am I going to do?
“Don’t,” Luca says, cutting me off, his voice calm and quiet. “Let’s just enjoy the time we have, yeah?”
I nod, but I want to scream.
It’s not enough. It’s never going to be enough.
I don’t know what to do with myself when I leave the hospital. My house seems empty, not my own anymore. I don’t know if it ever felt like home, but it certainly doesn’t now.
I know what I need to do. I just have to gather the courage to do it.
And there’s only one person in my life who has ever given me courage.
I call my father around six, knowing it’s about when he eats dinner. Ninety percent of the time it’s a tv dinner, usually Salisbury steak.
“Hello?”
I’m still using the burner phone that Scott got me from the gift shop, so he doesn’t recognize the number.
“Papa?”
“Oh, my Sophie,” he breathes. “It’s been so long since I’ve heard from you. I keep calling.”
“I know. I know Dad, I’m sorry. I’ve been…working.”
“Working? Undercover? You’re being safe, aren’t you?”
“Papa?”
“Yes, honey?”
“Can I come over for dinner? I’ll bring that Thai food you like.”
“With the glass noodles? You know I can’t say no to that.”
I smile, tears pricking at the backs of my eyes. God, I’ve missed him.
“I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”
“Drive safe.”
I drop Rosa off at Agnes’s and swing by the Thai place to get my father’s glass noodles and myself some pho, and he opens the door when I knock, moving aside.
I walk inside and set up the food on the kitchen table.
“What brings you here so suddenly, Sophie?” he asks after we’re sat across from each other at the table.
“It’s been a hard week,” I admit, poking at my pho with my chopsticks. He uses a fork to scoop glass noodles into his mouth.
“Hard how?” he asks after he finishes chewing.
“I was undercover and, well, I met Rosa’s father.”
“Rosa’s father?” He blinks at me. “How…how did that go?”
“Good,” I say, hedging my answers. I can’t tell him that her father is Luca Rossi. He’d know the name.
He’d be afraid for me, and I can’t have that.
“And now?”
“He’s in trouble. Arrested.”
“Because of your undercover work?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then, honey, you should be proud.”
I frown, looking up at him. “But I’m not proud, Papa. I’m not proud, because he’s a good man, deep down. He’s lived a hard life.”
“And that excuses his criminal behavior?” My father scoffs. “Sophie. You know better than that.”
“What does it matter, though? The laws? They’re all flawed,” I argue, and my father hums in the back of his throat, looking at me curiously.
“You’re in love with him. Rosa’s father.”
I meet my father’s eyes, my lip trembling. “Yes.”
“And you feel it? Deep down, like in your bones?”
“Yes,” I breathe, never knowing how to put a name to that feeling.
“God. Sophie.” He sighs heavily and puts down his fork. “And you say he’s a good man? A good father?”
“I think so. I think he will be.”
“You have to know so, Sophie. You have to know that when everything goes to shit, he’ll have your back. Do you know that?”
My father has never looked at me so intensely. I blink at him, a little afraid.
“I do know that.”
My father throws up his hands, as if exasperated. “Well, then. There’s only one thing you can do.”
“And what’s that?” I ask, feeling defeated, my shoulders slumping.
“You fight for it. You fight for that feeling with everything you have.”
“What?” I’m shocked by his words. “You’re saying I should—”
“I’m saying I love you, my Sophie. That I’ll miss you. But if I tell you to set aside that feeling, the feeling I had for your mother, I’d be going against everything I’ve ever believed.”
“Oh, Papa.” I rush around the table, throwing myself into his arms and he grunts and puts them around me, holding me close while I sob into his chest. “You really think I could do it?”
“I think you can do anything you want,” he says sweetly, echoing Scott, and now I know what I have to do.
I have to talk to Scott.