3. Sofia
SOFIA
The sun is melting into the Ligurian Sea when I notice them.
Gold light bleeds across the harbor, making everything look soft and dreamy. The fishing boats in the harbor bob with lazy little creaks, their hulls painted in chipped blues and whites that catch the last of the evening glow.
Salt hangs in the air thick enough that I can taste it every time the breeze shifts, mingling with roasted espresso, warm sugar, and the faint citrus perfume of the woman seated two tables over.
It’s beautiful in the way Italy always seems determined to be.
As if the country itself has decided ugliness is beneath it.
I’m sitting at the small wrought-iron table outside Caffe del Porto with Giulia and Matteo, our textbooks splayed open in front of us beneath the amber wash of the sunset.
My political theory notes are spread beside a half-finished cappuccino gone lukewarm, the pages curled at the corners from the sea air and my restless hands.
There are highlighter marks everywhere, notes scrawled into the margins with questions I still haven’t answered.
It should all feel terribly important and ordinary right now.
Giulia is in the middle of a theatrical rant, waving her espresso spoon in the air around her as she tears apart Professor Rossi’s grading curve with the kind of passionate outrage only she can summon.
Her dark curls bounce as she leans across the table. “I’m serious, Sofia. I handed in twelve pages of analysis and he wrote, ‘Promising, but lacking rigor’ in the margin. What the hell is that even supposed to mean?”
Matteo snorts beside her, bent low over his textbook.
He’s supposed to be taking notes but instead, he’s sketching what is definitely another ridiculous caricature of Rossi in the margins, all exaggerated eyebrows and a monstrous frown.
When he tilts the page my way, I see he’s added tiny devil horns and a speech bubble that says, ‘Cite Hobbes again, you coward.’
I laugh, a real one this time, the sound slipping out of me with the easy rhythm this place encourages.
That’s what you do here. You laugh too loudly, stay out too late.
You pretend your life is made of easy things like essays and overdue readings and whether you’ll go dancing this weekend or stay in and watch movies with your friends.
You pretend the world is small and sunlit and safe. You pretend your surname is just a surname and not something that in another country would make some get on their hands and knees and beg for their lives.
I’m good at pretending.
I’ve had years of practice.
Still, even while I smile, that same prickle moves over the nape of my neck.
It’s been following me for days now. Maybe longer.
A sensation more than anything concrete I can put an actual name to.
The awareness of being watched without ever catching anyone in the act has long since grown old.
Each moment I feel it happening is small enough to dismiss on its own, but together, they’ve started to form something much less coincidental.
I know better than to mention it to Giulia or Matteo. Giulia would spiral and insist I report it to campus security, who would then ask a lot of useless questions and then do absolutely nothing about it. How could they when I’d be essentially reporting ghosts?
Matteo would try to make a joke out of it, make me laugh to try and soften the edges of my worrying. He means well. They both do. But neither of them understands the kind of life that trains a girl to notice details like this before she’s old enough to articulate why.
I’ve had that awareness since I was thirteen.
That was the year I first understood my last name carried a weight I was not allowed to examine.
The year “for your safety” became the answer to every question worth asking.
Boarding school followed not long after, then university.
Years of distance from my homeland had been polished to almost look like freedom from the family I’d been born into.
But now things are starting to shift.
I reach down to pull another textbook from my bag, fingers brushing over the pens I keep loose at the bottom and the tub of lip balm I still need to replace.
The slim leather notebook I carry everywhere is tucked against my laptop.
One of my bracelets slides against my wrist with a soft metallic whisper as I yank on it and pull it free.
That’s when I see them, two men standing just inside the entrance of the cafe.
For half a beat, nothing happens. A waiter slips past carrying a tray of Aperol spritzes and someone at the bar laughs as a motorbike buzzes past the doors.
The moment my gaze catches on them, the soft warmth of the afternoon seems to disintegrate.
They are both dressed in dark clothing too severe for a seaside cafe filled with students and tourists this time of year. They scan the patio with slow, methodical sweeps that have nothing to do with choosing a table and everything to do with locating a target.
When their eyes land on me, my stomach tightens instantly.
I know what they are before they move. Not by their faces—I’ve never seen these men before in my life—but their posture has a language all on its own. It’s the same stiff-backed vigilance and subtly squared shoulders that give them away every time.
For one stupid second, my first instinct is relief.
Maybe this is routine, one of those invisible layers to my life I’ve spent years pretending not to notice.
Maybe my unease over the past few days finally has an explanation that doesn’t involve some horrible omen finally coming to get me.
But relief curdles almost instantly into dread when I remember something very important.
My uncle has never sent for me like this.
Giulia is still talking, completely oblivious. “And then he told me my thesis lacked intellectual courage, which is honestly rich coming from a man who has been teaching the same lecture notes since the Renaissance.”
Matteo grins. “Maybe your thesis simply failed to seduce him. Isn’t that what he’s always talking about? Languages and love, or whatever?”
She throws a sugar packet at his head.
I should say something, excuse myself before both sides of my life come crashing into each other.
I’ve been playing the part of the wealthy international student with a normal life and normal worries for so long, I can’t even remember the last time I ever mentioned otherwise.
But something inside me has already gone stiff and silent, keeping me glued to my chair.
The taller of the two men starts toward our table.
His pace is unhurried, but every step carries the same quiet authority I know my uncle’s men are trained to have.
The second one hangs back by the entrance, his attention roaming the patio and the street beyond it, covering whatever reconnaissance it’s taken to find me.
When Giulia finally notices my expression, her brows pinch together. “Sofia? You okay?”
I don’t answer right away. Because what am I supposed to say?
There are men who are going to be approaching our table who might belong to the family no one is supposed to ask me about?
There is no version of that truth that is going to sound sane.
Especially coming from someone pretending to have a completely boring life.
Ice shoots through my veins when the man stops next to the table.
Up close, he looks even more wrong for this place.
Mid-thirties, maybe, and tall as hell. The broad shoulders hidden under his black jacket make him look even more intimidating.
My eyes drop down to his hip before he can brush the sides of his jacket closer to his body, latching onto the weapon strapped there.
“You need to come with me,” he says in Russian.
I breathe in slowly, painfully aware of the two sets of eyes fixed on me. Giulia and Matteo know I’m from Russia. That part has always been impossible to hide. No matter how many years I’ve spent here or how much Italy has softened the sharpest parts of my accent, some things still give me away.
Over the years, as I’ve folded myself into this sunlit life, my life in Russia has become something I use more in conversation than recalling from true memory.
I think they’ve started to forget that my roots are not soft.
They’ve grown used to this version of me, Sofia who studies late at night and laughs too hard at bad jokes and rolls her eyes at Matteo’s flirting.
Now it has been made painfully obvious again that there is another version of me underneath all this borrowed normality.
I make myself straighten in my chair before answering back in Russian. “May I ask why?”
The man inclines his head once. It is such a small gesture that looks respectful on the surface, but there’s nothing yielding about it. It’s acknowledgment, not deference to my status. “We need to speak with you. Privately.”
Matteo looks between us, confusion already tightening his features into a frown. He can’t understand the words, but he can hear enough of this man’s tone to know this isn’t a casual reunion. It’s obvious whatever is happening doesn’t belong to the version of me he knows.
“Is everything okay?” he asks.
His question comes in Italian, and for one stupid second I want to cling to the normalcy of it, explain away that this is some family emergency I need to attend to and will be right back or a misunderstanding that they have the wrong person.
I don’t answer him. Honestly, I’m not sure how.
How am I supposed to explain any of this when I barely understand it myself?
Sorry my hidden life has just walked into my life without warning. Sorry the part of me no one is supposed to know about has apparently decided to drag itself out into the open between cappuccinos and exam prep.