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Chapter 29

Sophia

I sit in the secretary’s office at Wayfield Elementary. It feels like an age ago since I’ve been in this kind of environment, with cheerful charts and little teaching aids that once felt like home.

Now these things seem like props in someone else’s play.

I’ve spent the last three days scrolling through job listings like a woman possessed. Or maybe I’m just desperate. Hard to tell the difference anymore.

I’ve scoured through dozens of schools with bright banners promising “safe environments” and “collaborative communities,” and the irony would make me laugh if I weren’t so tired.

Safe? As if that word ever meant anything, as if I haven’t learned how fragile that word is when men with guns decide otherwise. I’ve clicked through ten—maybe twelve—applications, my fingers on autopilot while my heart lingers somewhere else entirely, still back at the villa I’m pretending I don’t miss.

With every “submit” button, I’m attempting to reforge a version of myself that no longer exists. The Sophia who believed in gold stars and talking things through feels like a ghost. The woman I am now knows how to handle a gun. Has watched men die and even killed.

But I tell myself that I need to try to get the old Sophia back. If I put myself in a world where old Sophia reigned supreme, maybe it’ll work.

So here I am for an interview, where self-delusion is one of my new traits.

The interviewer’s voice is pleasant, her smile professionally warm. She asks about classroom management and conflict resolution as if those are real problems.

I give her the answers I think I should, the ones that pre-mob Sophia would’ve offered without thinking. Then she mentions “bullying.” Images flash unbidden…men bleeding in warehouses…Enzo’s rough hands guiding mine around a gun with surprising gentleness…his breath in my ear whispering instructions…

Focus, Sophia!

“How would you handle a student who exhibits aggressive behavior?” she asks.

My mouth opens. What comes out is far from the textbook answer about de-escalation and positive reinforcement.

“You assess the threat level first. Then you neutralize it quickly, before anyone else gets hurt. Hesitation gets people killed.”

Her pen stops moving.

“I mean…” I try to recover, but the damage is done. “I meant…redirecting energy. Into…positive channels.”

Her composed expression falters.

I apologize—because I’m still polite even when I’m having a breakdown—then I gather my bag and walk out before she can finish her next question or call security or whatever happens to job candidates who go slightly unhinged.

Outside, the air slaps me awake, the wind howling through the street and pulling at my hair like it wants to shake sense into me. My reflection in a café window stares back at me. I find the same face and a completely different soul, and isn’t that just the most disturbing thing? My eyes used to be soft, the kind of eyes that children trusted and parents liked. Now they gleam with a hardness and coldness that stems from witnessing too much violence.

A street musician plays nearby, his guitar trembling through “Con te partirò.” Time to Say Goodbye.

My mother used to hum this tune when Vincent still pretended to be a good husband and father, back when we all pretended our family was normal.

Nostalgia lodges in my throat. And then, like he always does, Enzo floods my mind. The heat of his touch, the gravel in his voice when he said my name like it was worth keeping…

Every night, dreams drag me back to him whether I want them to or not. I remember his mouth on my skin, how his restraint felt more dangerous than violence, and the hunger that matched my own. I wake up gasping, not from fear but from missing him, missing the woman I was becoming before I ran away like a coward.

My thumb brushes the bare place where my wedding ring used to sit. The absence burns. It feels like something was violently torn off rather than just taken. Like an amputation.

Maybe he’s pacing right now, angry. Maybe he’s sitting alone, the city outside his window, a drink in his hand as he pretends not to care. He was always good at pretending.

Guilt hits like sudden, merciless surf. Because no matter what I tell myself, some twisted part of me still wants him. Even if he killed my father. Even if loving him means destruction.

A smooth, familiar voice interrupts the thought. “Sophia?”

Jacob.