I don't sleep.
Can't sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I see her face—pale, tear-streaked, saying I meant it like that changes anything.
It doesn't. It can't.
Except somewhere around 3 AM, between my fourth whiskey and my fifth attempt to stop thinking about her mouth, a different thought surfaces. One that's been nagging at me since I found those photographs.
Your family killed my parents ten years ago.
That's what she said. What she believes. What brought her into my house, my bed, my stupid vulnerable heart.
But here's the thing about being raised by Vittore De Luca: you learn to question everything. Every assumption. Every story. Every convenient narrative that makes someone else the villain.
Sophie Caruso believes we ordered the massacre.
But did we?
Dawn finds me driving to the main compound, exhausted and wired simultaneously. The kind of tired that makes your bones ache but your mind won't shut up. My reflection in the rearview mirror looks like shit—dark circles, jaw tight, the face of a man who just discovered the girl he loves was sent to destroy him.
Loved. Past tense. Get it together, idiota.
Padre's study smells like Cuban cigars and old money. He's already awake because the man apparently doesn't require sleep like mere mortals—just coffee, power, and the suffering of others.
"Alessandro." He looks up from his reports. "You look terrible."
"Rough night." I close the door behind me. "I need to ask you something."
"At dawn? Must be important."
I sit across from him, studying his face for any tell. Any flicker. Vittore De Luca doesn't give tells, but I've spent twenty-one years learning to read the man who raised me.
"Did we order the hit on the Caruso family ten years ago?"
The surprise on his face is genuine. I've seen Padre fake emotions countless times—this isn't that. This is real, unguarded confusion.
"Why are you asking about that?"
"I've been hearing things. Need to know our family's history." I keep my voice steady. "Need to understand the decisions that were made.”
Padre sets down his coffee cup with deliberate precision, studying me. The silence stretches until I can hear the grandfather clock ticking in the corner.
"No," he says finally. "We didn't."
My chest tightens.
"I actually respected the Carusos. Old blood, honorable people." Something flickers in his expression—something almost like regret. "Your mother liked them. Used to have tea with Mrs. Caruso before the children came along. Called her a kindred spirit."
Mom. Of course Mom knew them.
"Then who did it?" I ask, my voice rougher than intended. "Who ordered the massacre?"
"I don't know." Padre leans back, and for once he looks his age. "I've wondered for years. The Carusos were our allies, Alessandro. Their deaths weakened our position, started a war that cost us resources and men. Whoever ordered that hit wanted us bleeding."
"And you never found out who?"
"Investigations went nowhere. Too many parties benefited from the chaos." He picks up his coffee again. "Why the sudden interest?"
I can't tell him about Sophie. Not yet. Not until I have more.
"Just trying to understand the business," I say. "Historical context."
Padre's eyes narrow slightly—he knows I'm holding something back—but he doesn't push. "Be careful what questions you ask, Alessandro. Some answers come with prices you're not prepared to pay."
I leave his study with more questions than answers and a burning need to find the truth.
The main family office is quiet this early. Security nods me through because I'm the heir, expected to learn the business. What they don't know is that I'm about to tear through ten years of records looking for proof of something that will either vindicate my family or destroy everything I thought I knew.
Probably the second one. That seems to be my luck lately.
Hours blur together. Files spread across the desk like evidence of my deteriorating sanity. Financial records from a decade ago, shipping manifests, payment schedules. My eyes burn. Coffee goes cold beside me. I refill it, drink it cold, keep searching.
The Caruso massacre happened on March fifteenth. I pull every document from that month, from the months before and after. Looking for anomalies. For payments that don't fit. For any indication of who benefited from starting a war between families.
Most of it's useless. Routine business, territory payments, the normal machinery of organized crime.
Then I find it.
A payment record dated March thirteenth. Two days before the massacre. Money transferred to a shell company—the kind designed to hide origins and destinations. The amount is significant but not unusual.
What's unusual is the signature.
Marchetti.
My blood runs cold.
I pull more documents, searching frantically now. Another file—internal communication between Marchetti and unknown parties. The language is coded but unmistakable once you know what you're looking for.
"The Naples situation requires resolution."
"Removing the Caruso obstacle will benefit all parties."
"Frame successful. War proceeds as planned."
Cazzo. Cazzo, cazzo, cazzo.
Marchetti. The friendly Don who offered helpful advice at family dinners. Who commented on my fencing match. Who mentioned the Carusos with that calculated casualness that seemed innocent but now screams guilty.
He orchestrated the massacre. Framed my family. Started a war between De Luca and Caruso while his own power grew quietly in the shadows.
Ten years. Ten years of families destroying each other while the real enemy smiled and played mediator.
And Sophie—
I stop. The thought hits like a physical blow.
Sophie has been going after the wrong enemy her entire life. Her family has been hunting De Lucas, planning revenge, sending her into my house, my bed, my heart—all based on a lie that Marchetti carefully constructed.
She thought we killed her parents.
We didn't.
But Marchetti did.
I stare at the evidence spread across the desk, and despite everything—despite the lies, despite the betrayal, despite the fact that I kicked her out of my house less than twelve hours ago—my first thought is:
She needs to know this.
Her family has been going after the wrong enemy for ten years. She's been destroying herself with guilt and hatred aimed at the wrong target.
And somewhere underneath all my rage and hurt and whiskey-soaked heartbreak, I realize something devastating:
I still care about her.
Not Sofia Russo, the character she played. Sophie Caruso, the girl who came to avenge her family and fell in love with the wrong person.
The girl who was lied to just as thoroughly as I was—just by different people.
Stupido. You're going to help the woman who infiltrated your life and broke your heart.
Yeah. Apparently I am.
Because whatever Sophie did to me, whatever lies she told, she deserves to know the truth about her parents' deaths. She deserves to point her vengeance at the right target.
And maybe—maybe—there's still something real underneath all the deception.
Or maybe I'm just a lovesick idiota who can't let go.
Either way, I gather the evidence.
Sophie Caruso and I need to have a very different conversation than the one we had yesterday.