So why this?
Sofia sat cross-legged on the floor, dust rising around her. The first page was dated two years before she was born.
I was sixteen when I ran there, thinking it would be my salvation.
She froze. Her mother had been barely eighteen when she had her. That was nearly twenty-five years ago. Sofia’s pulse quickened as she read. The orphanage her mother once described as strict but harmless was anything but. The pages spoke of cold floors, locked doors, and whispered prayers made in fear.
Then she read something worse:
I thought I’d escaped that life when I ran to the orphanage. But they gave me to him—the man with power, influence, and the ability to bend people to his will.
A chill ran through Sofia.Him.What did this mean? A part of her felt it was wrong to pry into her mother’s private thoughts, yet another part of Sofia ached to understand the woman who had loved her so fiercely while remaining so heartbreakingly out of reach. A shuddering breath escaped her, and she began to read. With every page she turned, raw emotions surged through her. She absorbed the horror her mother had endured, the fear and the unyielding will to survive. She saw the defiance and the quiet, relentless courage that had shaped her mother. A choked sound broke from Sofia’s throat, and she sobbed. Sofia turned another page, reading that one line over and over:
I don’t regret having her. She is mine, not his. He will never know she exists. I will keep her safe from him, and he will never find my darling Sofia.
Sofia went still, clutching the diary like a shield. Her father wasn’t dead. Anger rose through the shock, steady and scalding. He was the man her mother had spent a lifetime fleeing. For a moment, the room seemed to tilt. All the warnings, the cautious glances—they suddenly made sense. And with them came guilt. Had she ever complained about her mother’s caution? Every harsh word she had muttered now felt small, meaningless in the shadow of a life built on running and hiding. Sofia stayed there a long while, letting it sink in.
This man made my mother suffer, and he is possibly out in the world enjoying his life while his actions haunted her until the day she died.Anger rose in Sofia at the injustice her mother had endured, and that fury slowly hardened into resolve. Slowly, she stood and carried the diary downstairs. Each creaking step sounded like a verdict.
In the study, she cleared a space on the desk, pushed aside old mail, and opened the diary again. The words no longer felt like a confession—they were clues. When she found the name—St. Agnes Home for Girls—her stomach clenched. If thebuilding were gone, something would remain: records, archives, someone who remembered. Someone always remembers. She grabbed her phone and searched the internet. Only a few results appeared: archival mentions, a grainy photo of a crumbling brick building. Closed two decades ago. Still, she scrolled. The address was remote, deep in the mountains, the kind of place people forgot.
Her thoughts flicked to the attic and to the box labeledImportant Documents.There had to be more.
Minutes later, Sofia was back upstairs, her breath clouding in the cold air. She dragged the small box into the light. Inside: passports, certificates, photographs of her mother—young, beautiful, wary. Beneath them lay a yellowed envelope markedSt. Agnes.
Sofia’s chest squeezed. She tore it open. A hand-drawn map slipped out, the ink faded but legible. Roads wound through a mountain town she didn’t recognize. A single building was marked with a faint “X.”
Her pulse quickened as she traced the line. This was it—the beginning. But her mother’s warning echoed in her head:He will never know she exists.
Grief tangled with fury. Katya had spent a lifetime running, hiding, and surviving. Every careful step, every fear-driven choice had left its mark. The scars were now Sofia’s—etched deep, invisible but aching.
She returned downstairs and sank into the chair, the diary pressed to her chest. Anger surged, hot and unsteady. Could she really get justice for her mother? Could she bear what might follow? Her mother had spent decades protecting her. Was it her place to pick up that fight? A part of her wanted to put it down, to leave the past buried, and move on with her life. Sofia closed her eyes, thinking of her mother over the years.
“I cannot let this go,” she whispered. “Icannot.” She couldn’t let her mother’s suffering vanish into silence. Justice for what was stolen. Vengeance for the years ruined. Answers for wounds passed down—each thought coiled tight in her chest, urging her forward.
Finally, she clenched her fists. Katya had run. Sofia would find him and ensure he paid for what he did to her mother.
CHAPTER TWO
The alarm jerked Antonio awake. His breath was ragged. Sweat clung to his neck despite the cold air. This was his second dream in the same night. The dream was already slipping away, but its weight lingered—heavy, choking, insistent.
He sat on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, fingers raking through his hair. Footsteps. A gunshot. A voice—his own:Another one. Just another one.
Sleep had become an endurance test these last few months. Every time he closed his eyes, the past dragged him back: dark alleys, blurred faces, a gallery of the dead he was tired of curating. His hands trembled as he lit a cigarette. Smoke curled into the pale dawn, but it offered no comfort.
You’ve already lost count,the voice whispered in his head. Tonio clenched his jaw. Why the hell was he allowing the things he did to protect his family to rattle him? Why did each dream weigh heavier than the last?
A fragment of the dream surfaced: not an alley, but the club’s back office from last night. Marco Ricci’s pale, sweating face, his voice frayed with panic. “Tonio, please. It was a mistake. My boy, he’s sick—”
The memory ended at the sharp crack of Tonio’s pistol against Ricci’s teeth. It wasn’t the violence that haunted him, but the silence afterward. The way Marco looked at him, not with anger but with a broken, shattered understanding, as he broke the fingers of his right hand one by one. A necessary message. A just punishment. Yet the man’s quiet, wet sobs echoed louder than any scream. Tonio had done what needed to be done. He had been precise, controlled. And still...the sound lingered, pressing against him long after the memory faded, a reminder that even justice had a cost.
He had also taken thirty thousand dollars from his safe and knocked on the man’s door a day later. Ricci’s eyes had filled with pleading, and his wife had hurried to his side, her gaze wide with fear. Tonio held out the envelope.
“Take it for the boy’s hospital fees.”
Ricci went still, shock and gratitude warring in his eyes. When his wife snatched the envelope, Tonio turned and walked away without another word.
He ground out the cigarette, annoyance snapping through him. “Why the fuck am I even dreaming about them?”
