Chapter Four: Sofia

I hadn’t meant to stay this long.

Tuscany was supposed to be temporary—a brief retreat, a last-minute pause button on the chaos of my life in Rome. But the air here had a strange weight, thick with ghosts and memory. And now that I’d seen him… I wasn’t sure I could leave at all.

Luca Moretti.

The boy who became a blade. The boy who kissed me beneath the olive tree when I was sixteen, with the sun in my hair and rebellion in my blood. He used to smile like the world hadn’t touched him yet. But now?

Now, his smile could shatter stone.

I saw it in his eyes the day he watched me from the vineyard path—he was pretending not to feel. But pretending was never his strength. His strength was in the way he stood still while the rest of the world burned around him. His strength was silence.

But even silence speaks if you know how to listen.

I had tried so hard not to look at him. Not to remember how his name had once lived on my lips like a prayer I wasn’t supposed to say. But I was older now. Wiser. And I knew better than to be charmed by a man like Luca Moretti.

Didn’t I?

The morning I found the note on the fencepost near the winery, my hands trembled. No name. Just a time. A place. The handwriting is unmistakable. Bold. Slanted. Luca.

I told myself I’d ignore it. That I owed him nothing.

But of course, I went.

The chapel ruins were the same as I remembered—crumbling stones overgrown with ivy, vines threading through cracked marble-like veins through flesh. This was where we’d made a thousand childhood pacts. This was where he’d first told me he wanted out.

Of the family.

Of the blood.

Of everything.

And now he stood there like a statue carved from war, darker than memory allowed. His jaw was tighter, his eyes colder, but it was still him.

I didn't let him speak first.

“You don’t get to summon me.”

“I didn’t summon,” he said. “I asked.”

“You didn’t ask. You assumed.”

His lips twitched. “Some things haven’t changed.”

“No,” I said. “Some things have changed too much.”

We stood in silence. The wind swept between us, dragging ghosts from the trees.

Then he asked the question I hadn’t expected.

“Why are you here, Sofia?”

I froze.

“I told you. I needed space. From the city. From expectations.”

“That’s not it.”

“Why do you care?”

He looked at me for a long moment, and I hated how steady his gaze was. As he could see through the layers I’d carefully built.

“I care,” he said finally, “because Volpe’s back.”

The name hit me like a match to dry leaves.

“Volpe?” I whispered. “That’s not possible.”

“He’s been moving money through Florence. Now Siena. Your name is on a list.”

I blinked. “What list?”

“Of people he sees as threats. Or leverage.”

I swallowed hard. The last time Volpe’s name had surfaced, my father was still alive. Still scheming. Still trying to merge the Mancini influence with the Moretti power base—until someone ended him.

Until someone made me an orphan.

I shook off the thought. “You think I’m leverage?”

“I think you’re in danger.”

“And you think I should trust you to protect me?”

He didn’t answer.

He didn’t have to.

The Luca I’d loved once would have thrown himself between me and a bullet. But the Luca standing before me now? I didn’t know if he’d take that bullet—or fire it.

“I can take care of myself,” I said.

His voice dropped. “Not from men like Volpe.”

“I’m not a child.”

“No,” he said. “You’re not. Which is exactly why I’m worried.”

That shut me up. Because there was something raw in his voice I hadn’t heard in years. Something close to guilt. Maybe even regret.

But I couldn’t let myself go there. Not with him.

Not after everything.

“I have to go,” I said.

He nodded once. “Be careful, Sofia.”

As I turned, his voice stopped me again.

“You should know… the night your father died…”

I stiffened. My blood ran cold.