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Tears burn behind my eyes, but I blink them back. “Want to talk more about your brother?”
His fingers slide from my wrist to lace through mine. He feels warm and steady, and I know he can tell that I’m breaking, that I’m barely keeping myself together. Somehow, he wants to make it better.
“Sophia.”
I shake my head. If I open my mouth, everything I’ve been keeping inside will spill out.
He waits. Patient. His thumb traces circles on my knuckles. The kindness undoes me.
Enzo keeps his eyes locked on the road, but his voice is clipped and sharp. “He was older. Stronger. Taught me how to throw a punch before I could shave. Opened the door to this life. Shut it behind me.” His throat tightens. “Gone now. Because of your father.”
Every syllable shrinks me. I want to say something, but words fail me.
I picture the loneliness of dying in prison and the cold weight of betrayal. My naive and eager testimony helped destroy a man I never knew.
The need to confess claws within me. To admit that my young voice naming names might’ve sealed Dante’s fate. To offer myself up for punishment, to take the hit, to stop being haunted by silence. Yet the fear…oh god, the fear…keeps me mute.
Back at the mini villa, I head directly into my room and decline all offers for dinner. Night comes, but sleep doesn’t.
I twist around in the sheets while relentless memories gnaw at me.
Dante’s name returns to my mind.
“You were only twenty,” I whisper to the dark. “You didn’t know. Father was the architect.” But the dark doesn’t accept excuses. The echo of my voice in that sterile room refuses to fade.
A knock disturbs my spiraling thoughts.
The door opens to reveal Enzo, who’s carrying the burden of a man publicly dissected, his shoulders heavy but unbowed. His eyes search my face, like he’s checking if I’m still in one piece. Even his compassion feels like possession.
“You all right?”
“I’m fine,” I claim, the lie brittle as twigs.
Though he turns to leave, he lingers for a few seconds at the threshold.
When he’s gone, I stumble out of bed and to the mirror above the dresser.
If I confess, will he still protect me? Or will he leave me to the wolves in anger? Fear and longing tangle until I can’t tell one from the other. Finally, exhaustion drags me under. I clench the sheets and curl into myself. But even in sleep, Mama’s voice whispers through the dark, circling me like smoke.
“Dante. Dante. Dante.”
The past isn’t done. Not with him. Not with me either.
Chapter 12
Enzo
My shoes slam against the gravel path behind the Benedetti estate, the impact jarring my bones. Sweat beads down the back of my neck as I run, just one name on my mind.
Sophia.
For two nights, I’ve left the mini villa early and returned late, timing it perfectly to avoid her. I come back only when I know she’ll be asleep, curled into blankets on the other side of that house.
But hell, that doesn’t make this any easier.
I’d thought avoidance, the oldest tool in a soldier’s box, would get her off my mind, but it didn’t work. The more space I put between us, the louder she gets in my head.
Marco corners me on the front steps of the main house, leaning against a pillar like he owns it. His mouth stretches into a knowing smirk. “You’ve been dodging your wife.”
