[Sofia’s POV]
Dante's apartment looks exactly like I feel: abandoned, desperate, and in serious need of professional intervention.
I'm sitting on his couch wrapped in a blanket that smells like cigarette smoke and poor life choices, tears streaming down my face while I try to explain how spectacularly I've destroyed everything we've been working toward for a decade.
"He knows." My voice comes out raw, wrecked. "Alessandro knows who I am. He kicked me out. It's over, Dante. Everything is over."
My brother paces the small living room like a caged animal, hands running through his hair in that way that means he's calculating survival odds and not liking the numbers. His jaw is tight, shoulders hunched with the kind of tension that precedes either violence or vomiting.
"If he tells Vittore, we're both dead." Dante's voice is tight, controlled in the way that means he's actually terrified underneath. "We need to disappear. Now. Tonight. I have contacts in Montreal who can—"
"Wait." I wipe my face with shaking hands, something nagging at the edges of my panic. "Wait, Dante, stop."
He freezes mid-pace. "What?"
"Something doesn't make sense." I force my brain to actually function instead of just replaying Alessandro's devastated expression on loop. "He didn't kill me. He had every right to—I infiltrated his home, his family, his life. Any other mafia heir would have put a bullet in me before I finished explaining."
"So he's weak. Soft. That's good for us—"
"No, listen." I sit up straighter, the analytical part of my mind finally waking up through the fog of grief. "He just told me to leave. Gave me five minutes to pack. Didn't call security, didn't alert Vittore, didn't do anything except throw me out."
Dante stops pacing. His eyes narrow with sudden interest.
"Why would he do that?" I press. "Why protect someone who betrayed him? Unless..." I trail off, not ready to finish the thought.
"Unless he's planning something worse," Dante suggests grimly.
"Or unless some part of him doesn't want me dead." The words taste like hope, which feels dangerous.
"Sophie, you can't possibly still—"
"That's not the point right now." I shake my head, forcing myself to focus. "The point is: who exposed me? The real Sofia Russo is living her best life in California. She has no reason to contact anyone here, no connection to Alessandro. Someone found her and sent the proof to him deliberately."
Dante goes very still. "Who knew you were using her identity?"
"Three people." I count on my fingers. "Me. You. And Tommy."
The silence that follows is deafening.
"Tommy would never—" Dante starts, but his voice lacks conviction.
"When did you last verify his background?" I ask quietly. "Actually verify it, not just trust what he told us?"
My brother's face cycles through several emotions—denial, confusion, dawning horror. "He's been with us since right after the massacre. He was practically family. He grew up with us—"
"Did he? Or did someone put him there?" I'm already reaching for Dante's laptop. "We trusted him completely because we had no reason not to. But what do we actually know about where he came from?"
Dante moves to his filing cabinet—the one with the false bottom where he keeps documents too sensitive for digital storage. His hands shake slightly as he pulls out old records, yellowed and fragile with age.
"These are from when Tommy first joined us," he says, spreading the papers across the coffee table. "Background verification, family connections, the whole thing."
I scan the documents while simultaneously searching online, making calls to old contacts who owe me favors. The answers come back slowly, and none of them are good.
"His timeline's off," I say, cross-referencing a document with my phone screen. "He said he was in Naples when the massacre happened, but this hotel receipt puts him in New York."
"That could be a mistake—"
"And this address he gave for his childhood home? Doesn't exist. Never existed. The street name is real, but the building number goes from forty-two to forty-six. No forty-four."
Dante's face goes pale. "That doesn't mean—"
"Keep looking."
We dig for another hour. Every rock we turn over reveals more discrepancies—dates that don't align, references that don't check out, a carefully constructed history that falls apart under actual scrutiny. The coffee table disappears under layers of evidence we should have examined years ago.
Then I find the photograph.
It's from a newspaper archive, fifteen years old. A charity event—the kind of high-society function where crime families pretend to be legitimate businessmen for an evening. The image quality is grainy, but the faces are clear enough.
Don Marchetti stands in the center, surrounded by his family. His wife in diamonds. His daughter in silk.
And his son.
The boy is maybe eight years old, grinning at the camera with an expression I've seen a thousand times. An expression I've trusted for over a decade.
Tommy.
"Oh god." I feel like I'm going to throw up. "Oh god, Dante, look at this."
My brother takes the laptop, and I watch the color drain from his face as he recognizes the same features I did. The same jawline. The same eyes. The same fucking smile that Tommy used when he told us he'd always have our backs.
"He's Marchetti's son." Dante's voice sounds like it's coming from very far away. "Tommy is Don Marchetti's son."
The betrayal hits me like a physical blow to the chest. Every conversation we had, every secret we shared, every piece of intelligence I passed through Tommy thinking it was going to help our mission—it all went straight to Marchetti. Every single word.
"He's been a plant this whole time." I'm crying again, but these tears are different. Angrier. "Since right after the massacre. Marchetti embedded his own son in our organization when we were children. When we were too traumatized and desperate to question anything."
"Every plan." Dante looks devastated in a way I've never seen before. "Every strategy. Every piece of information about the De Lucas—I gave it all to him. I trusted him like a brother."
"He exposed me to Alessandro," I realize, the pieces clicking together with sickening clarity. "He found the real Sofia Russo and sent the proof to create chaos. To keep us at war with the De Lucas while his family grows stronger."
"That's always been the goal." Dante sinks onto the couch like his legs can't hold him anymore. "Marchetti's goal. Keep De Luca and Caruso destroying each other while he quietly takes over everything."
I think about all the times Tommy checked on me, asked how I was doing, seemed so genuinely concerned. All the times he was warm and caring and made me feel less alone in this nightmare mission.
All lies. Every single moment.
"Ten years." My voice breaks. "He's been playing us for ten years, Dante. Since we were teenagers. Since we were grieving children who just wanted revenge for our parents."
Dante doesn't respond. He just stares at the photograph on the laptop screen—at the boy who would grow up to befriend him, earn his trust, and systematically destroy everything their family tried to rebuild.