CHAPTER ONE—WELCOME BACK 

Sophia POV

"Sign those papers and become a De Luca willingly, Sophia, because if you walk out of this room tonight without writing your name on that contract, your brother's body will be floating somewhere near the Palermo docks before sunrise."

Gilbert De Luca said it calmly, like threatening people was normal for him, like he'd rehearsed the exact temperature his voice needed to hit so I'd understand he meant every word.

My hands tightened around the edge of the table while I stared at the marriage papers in front of me. Luca sat beside his father without saying a word, looking completely unaffected by what was happening, and the room felt too quiet and too cold, so quiet I could hear my own heartbeat, and I hated that they could probably see how scared I was.

"You people are insane," I said quietly.

Gilbert smiled a little. "And yet you're still sitting here."

I looked at Luca again, waiting for him to stop this, to say something, anything, but he just leaned back in his chair with that same unreadable expression on his face, like none of this concerned him, and that annoyed me more than the threat did.

"You can't force me into marriage."

"Actually," Gilbert said, sliding the papers closer to me, "I can."

I swallowed hard and looked down at my brother's picture sitting on the table beside the contract, and I knew Matteo had been terrified when they took it, because he hated Sicily even more than I did, and everything about this city felt cursed, and I should have listened to my father years ago, I should have stayed far away from Palermo and the De Luca family exactly the way he warned me to before he died, but eight months earlier, returning to Sicily had seemed like a good idea. God, I was stupid.

Eight months earlier.

Coming back to Palermo after ten years felt strange the second I stepped out of the airport, because the city still looked exactly the same, narrow streets and old buildings and black cars moving around like they owned the roads, and even the air felt heavy there, like Sicily remembered everything people tried to bury.

Matteo complained the entire drive from the airport while I stared outside the taxi window pretending I wasn't nervous. He hated the idea of coming back, and honestly, he had every right to, because Palermo had already taken everything from us.

"I still think this is a terrible idea," Matteo muttered beside me. "We could've stayed in Florence."

"We're only here for a few weeks."

"That's what you said before booking a six-month apartment."

I ignored him because he wasn't completely wrong, and part of me knew coming back here wasn't smart, but after years of hearing half-truths and rumors about our parents, I needed answers, and I was tired of pretending the past didn't exist.

The moment the taxi stopped in front of my aunt Rosa's house, I noticed the look on her face immediately, and it was fear, actual fear, and she hugged Matteo tightly first before pulling me inside the house quickly, like somebody might have been watching us from outside.

"You shouldn't have come back," she said immediately after locking the door. "Especially now."

I frowned. "What does that mean?"

Rosa hesitated before lowering her voice. "Things are getting bad in Palermo again. Families are fighting. People are dying."

Matteo rolled his eyes. "That sounds like normal Sicily."

"This isn't a joke," she snapped. "Three people were killed last week."

The room went silent after that, and I exchanged a look with Matteo before turning back to her slowly.

"Who killed them?"

Nobody answered right away, and then Rosa finally whispered the name I had spent years trying not to hear.

"The De Lucas."

A cold feeling settled inside my chest immediately, and even after ten years, that name still carried the same weight, the same fear, and Rosa looked at me carefully before speaking again.

"Sophia, if your father were alive right now, he would tell you to leave Palermo immediately."

I forced out a small laugh even though my stomach suddenly felt tight. "You're acting like they'll care that Adrian Rossi's daughter came back to Sicily."

"You don't understand these people."

"No," I said quietly, "I understand them perfectly." Or at least I thought I did.

The next few days passed quietly, but something about Palermo kept putting me on edge, because men in black cars stayed parked outside certain buildings for hours, and people lowered their voices anytime the mafia families were mentioned, and even Matteo stopped joking around after noticing how tense everyone had become.

By the fourth day I was already tired of staying inside Rosa's house listening to warnings every five minutes, so when she mentioned the annual city gala happening that night, I decided immediately that I was going.

"No," Rosa said instantly. "Absolutely not."

I frowned while fixing my earrings in the mirror. "It's just a gala."

"It's not just a gala. Important families will be there."

"I'm not a child anymore."

"That's exactly why I'm worried."

I turned around to face her properly. "I came back to Palermo to stop being afraid of this city, and I'm not going to hide inside this house forever."

Rosa looked like she wanted to argue more, but Matteo walked past us eating chips like none of it concerned him.

"She's going anyway," he said casually. "You know how stubborn she is."

I pointed at him immediately. "Exactly."

"You're both disasters," Rosa muttered.

I spent almost an hour choosing the dress, and I ended up in a black satin gown that hugged my body perfectly, with thin straps resting on my shoulders and a slit running up one side of my leg, not too revealing but enough to make me feel confident for the first time since I'd come back to Palermo.

An hour later I found myself standing inside the Palazzo Bellucci Hotel trying not to look overwhelmed, because the gala was massive, full of expensive dresses and politicians and rich businessmen and security stationed everywhere, while crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling and classical music played softly underneath all of it, and everybody who mattered in Sicily seemed to be there, and I suddenly understood why Rosa hadn't wanted me to come.

"Maybe we should leave after thirty minutes," Matteo whispered beside me while staring around nervously.

I laughed softly. "You're the one acting scared now?"

Before he could answer, movement near the entrance caught everyone's attention at once, and the entire atmosphere in the room changed, people straightening instantly, some stepping aside, others lowering their voices, and that was when I saw him for the first time.

I knew that face. I had seen it too many times, on news websites, in business articles, in blurry CCTV footage tied to crimes nobody could ever prove against him.

Luca De Luca.

Tall, calm, cold, he walked into the gala surrounded by guards and men in black suits while people greeted him carefully, like saying the wrong thing could get them killed, and his expression never changed once, not when women stared at him, not when politicians shook his hand, nothing.

"You know," Matteo muttered quietly, "he somehow looks worse in person."

I almost laughed. Almost, because before I could respond, somebody bumped into me hard enough to knock me off balance, and wine spilled down the front of my dress in the same instant, cold liquid soaking through the fabric while shocked gasps rippled through the crowd around us, and I froze, and then I slowly looked up.

Luca De Luca stared down at me with the same calm expression, as if he hadn't just ruined my dress in front of half the city.

One of the men behind him stepped forward immediately. "We'll pay for the dress."

I blinked slowly. "That's it?"

Luca reached into his pocket calmly and pulled out a black card, holding it toward me without even the pretense of an apology, and the arrogance in that single movement annoyed me more than the wine had.

"You spilled wine on me."

"And you'll be compensated for it."

His voice was deep, calm, unbothered, like money solved everything, and something inside me snapped, maybe because of the attitude, maybe because everyone around us looked too terrified to even breathe near him, or maybe because I was simply done watching men like Luca De Luca act untouchable.

Before I could stop myself, I grabbed the wine glass from a waiter passing beside me and poured the entire thing directly onto Luca's white shirt.

The ballroom went completely silent. Nobody moved, nobody breathed, and Luca looked down slowly at the wine staining his shirt before lifting his eyes back to mine, and for the first time all night, I saw something real on his face: danger.

"You should be compensated too," I said sweetly, and slapped him across the face.

The sound cracked through the ballroom so loudly that even the musicians stopped playing.

And that was the exact moment my life in Palermo officially ended.