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35 Capítulos

CHAPTER TWENTY

RUNNING FROM LOVESOFIA POVThe city at night swallowed me whole, and for the first time in my entire life, nobody was watching.No guards at a fountain. No cameras above a hallway. No burner phone buzzing with instructions from a man who thought he owned my choices. Just me, alone, walking streets I didn't recognize with the cold air biting at my face and my thoughts racing faster than my feet could carry me away from them.I thought about the girl who used to press her ear against a bedroom door, counting footsteps, learning the sound of a lock the way other girls learned nursery rhymes. That girl would have never walked away from danger into more danger. That girl would have stayed exactly where she was told to stay, grateful for whatever scraps of safety someone handed her.I wasn't her anymore.I turned down an empty street and sat on the steps of a closed shop, pulling my knees up to my chest the same way I had in that hospital hallway, except this time no one was beside me offe

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THE VOICE MESSAGE SOFIA POVI played it again."Sofia. They found me. If you're hearing this, I need you to run and never look back."Then again."Sofia, what are you hearing," Katya asked, crouching in front of me, her hands gripping my shoulders. "Talk to me. What's in the background."I forced myself to listen past his voice this time, past the panic rising in my own chest, and caught something faint under the static. A low metal groan. Water somewhere close. The distant clang of something heavy hitting concrete."Water," I said, my voice shaking. "I hear water. And metal. Like a dock or a crane.""Good. That's good, that narrows it down." Katya's voice stayed calm, steady, the exact opposite of the chaos inside me. "Call Nikolai. Now."My hands shook so badly I nearly dropped the phone twice before the call connected."Sofia." Nikolai's voice came through fast, relief and panic tangled together. "Where are you, we've been looking everywhere-""Alessio sent me a voicemail." I cut

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

WHAT SOFIA WANTSSOFIA POVThe burner phone buzzed in my pocket as we drove, an unknown number lighting up the screen, and something in my gut told me to answer before I even thought it through."Sofia." Elena's voice came through smooth and unhurried, like she had all the time in the world. "I wondered how long it would take you to find the warehouse."My grip tightened on the phone. "Where is he.""Safe. For now." A pause, almost thoughtful. "You should know something before you come looking for him, something Alessio never bothered to mention.""I don't care about your history with him.""You should." Her tone sharpened slightly. "Because it's the reason any of this is happening at all."I glanced at Nikolai and Katya, both of them watching me from the front seat, and I put the call on speaker without a word."I met Alessio before any of this started," Elena continued, her voice carrying something old and worn underneath the calm. "Before his cousin's death. Before the war with the

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

COME ALONE SOFIA POVI stood in that cold office for a long time, Alessio's jacket pressed against my chest, turning the note over in my mind until the words stopped feeling like letters and started feeling like a sentence being handed down."Sofia." Nikolai's voice came through the earpiece again, careful this time. "Talk to me. What's the plan."I almost laughed. The plan. As if there was an easy answer sitting somewhere inside me waiting to be found.I thought about every version of myself that had made it to this moment. The girl who used to press her ear against a locked door and wait for permission to breathe. The girl who let Luca decide what she wore, what she ate, who she was allowed to love. I thought about Dimitri sliding a weapon across a table and calling it loyalty. I thought about every single person in my life who had tried to make my choices for me and called it protection.I was done letting fear decide anything for m

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

THE ROOM BEHIND THE DOORSOFIA POVThe arm around my throat tightened, cutting off my air for a half second, and something in me stopped thinking and started reacting.I drove my elbow back hard into the masked figure's ribs, the same way I had watched Nikolai train with his men on nights I wasn't supposed to be watching at all. The grip loosened just enough. I stomped down on their foot, twisted free of the arm, and spun to face them with my knife already out of my jacket before my mind caught up with what my body had just done.The figure staggered back, clearly surprised, and I didn't waste the opening. I lunged, blade slashing across their forearm, and they hissed in pain and stumbled further away, giving me the one thing I needed most.Distance.I didn't stay to finish the fight. I spun toward the door and slammed my palm against the handle, shoving it open with everything I had left in me."Alessio."He was slumped against the far wall, wrists chained to a pipe above his head, o

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

HIS WORDSSOFIA POV"You don't get to make that decision for me."The words came out sharper than I meant them to, but I didn't take them back. The car was still moving, streetlights sliding across Alessio's bruised face in slow strips of gold and dark, and his hand was still wrapped around mine from the moment he'd said it."Sofia, I just watched men with your father's insignia drag me into a locked room and chain me to a pipe." His voice stayed low, controlled, but I could hear the strain underneath it. "I'm not saying this out of control. I'm saying it because I almost died tonight because of people connected to him.""I know what happened tonight." My throat tightened around the words. "I was there. I'm the one who found you.""Then you understand why I can't just stand by while you keep opening doors to a man who has already proven he'll use you, use Gianna, use anyone, to get what he wants.""He's still my father." I pulled my hand free of his, needing the space even in that cra

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

THE NAME SHE SAIDGIANNA POVThe ceiling tiles blurred and sharpened and blurred again, and I kept trying to count them just to have something steady to hold onto while my mind drifted in and out of the fog the medication wrapped around me.Pain lived somewhere in my shoulder, dull now instead of the white hot agony I remembered from the warehouse floor, but my thoughts felt loose and slippery, fragments sliding past before I could grab hold of them properly. I remembered rope cutting into my wrists. I remembered the smell of rust and cold concrete. I remembered Luca's voice, low and urgent, pacing somewhere near the back of that room while he thought nobody was paying attention.I had been paying attention.I always paid attention, even scared out of my mind, even with my hands tied behind a chair and my heart slamming so hard I thought it might give out before anyone ever got the chance to hurt me.Luca had been on the phone.The me

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

PAKHANALESSIO POVGianna's monitor was still screaming in my head long after we left the hospital, the word she'd forced out through her pain following me into the car like something alive, crawling under my skin and refusing to settle.Pakhan.I had heard the word before, years ago, passed quietly between older men in rooms I wasn't technically supposed to be in, always spoken carefully, like saying it too loud might summon something nobody wanted summoned. I never asked what it meant back then. I was young, focused on my own war, blind to anything that didn't involve Luca Vecchio's name.I was paying attention now."Start making calls," I told Nikolai the moment we got back to the safehouse, already pulling out my own phone, scrolling through contacts I hadn't touched in years. "Every old contact who might know something. I don't care what it costs us.""On it." Nikolai's face was grim, already dialing before he finished speaking.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

BLOOD ABOVE BLOODSOFIA POVI found Katya in the kitchen of the safehouse, staring into a cup of coffee she clearly wasn't drinking, and something about the way her shoulders curled inward told me she already knew why I'd come looking for her."Katya." I kept my voice level even though my hands were shaking. "I need you to tell me what Pakhan means. Right now. No more half answers."Her eyes flicked up to mine, and for the first time since I'd met her, the sharp confidence she always wore like armor cracked wide open, fear bleeding through in a way that frightened me more than anything Stefan or Dimitri had said so far."Sit down," she said quietly."I don't want to sit down. I want an answer.""Sofia, please." Her voice shook slightly. "Just sit down."Something in her tone made me obey, sliding into the chair across from her, my heart already hammering with dread before she'd said a single word."It's our grandfather," she finally said, the words coming out flat and heavy, like she'

CHAPTER THIRTY

THE BROTHER WHO WAITSSOFIA POVThe knock came soft and measured, nothing like the urgent pounding we'd grown used to over the past weeks, and something about that careful restraint put me on edge before I'd even seen who stood on the other side of the door.Nikolai checked the window first, gun already drawn, and whatever he saw made him frown in confusion rather than alarm."Unfamiliar face," he said quietly. "Alone. No visible weapons. Says he's family.""Family," I repeated, exchanging a glance with Katya, who had gone very still beside me."Open it," Alessio said, positioning himself near the door, tense and ready despite the stranger's apparent lack of threat.The man who stepped through wore his charm like a well tailored suit, every bit as polished and deliberate. He was older than Dimitri by a few years, silver threading through dark hair in a way that suggested distinguished age rather than weariness, and his smile arrived a

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