While thinking. Thinking. Thinking. Contemplating my options—and the consequences. My rightful place is the Don's throne. Do I want it? Fuck yeah. But at what price? I don't give a shit about Edoardo and the other capos, except one. Marcello.Herbrother. Am I willing to fight him?
Stephano?
I don't owe that bastard anything, but I can't deny that Irespect the man. He's smart, calculating, and ruthless if driven too far, a side he hasn't shown many people.
Then there's still the Venezuelans and an open promise I made Aurelio. That I would kill him. Whatever Edoardo is up to with the Venezuelans has already opened a door for them. First, I need to find out why. What leverage do they have over Edoardo, or what did they offer him? Then I can start thinking about taking the throne from him.
Mornings are mine and hers. I make coffee the way I was taught in other men’s kitchens—strong, bitter, black enough to sting—but she takes hers with two sugars, plenty of creamer, and a softness I didn’t know how to name until it lived in my kitchen. She sits at the table in one of my shirts, feet tucked under, and the world trims down to the light on her jaw and the way she sips like everything important is happening in small motions.
We walk the forest she calls hers now. The trees here know our cycle: I take the left turn at the broken slab, she lingers at the stream and counts stones like a child practicing a spell.
The walking is not just a quiet romance. It’s reconnaissance in small ways. I watch the way she breathes when she hears a twig snap, the way her shoulders knot when a shadow leans wrong. Some things have softened—her laugh comes easier—but not the flinch. I keep my hand close, an invisible line she can step into if the night unravels.
Esther changes things. She hands Sophia tools that look ridiculous but do the job, and with every session, the girl who used to fold small starts to take up space. I’ve sat in on a few of those sessions, not because I want to hear the dirt, but because I’m not too proud to learn how not to make things worse. The last thing I want is to be the one who snaps the thread she’s just started to sew back together.
Esther is practical with me; she intuits what I need to hear and doesn’t bother with platitudes. “Let her control the pace,” she says, blunt as a file. “Your job is to keep the door closed until she says otherwise.” Those are words I can live by. We’ve been doing it. In the bedroom, she’s in charge; she takes the top to stay grounded, and after the first time I tried to take the lead and felt her go cold under me, I learned to follow. It’s not a weakness. It’s trust-building between us.
Then Esther says the line that makes me bristle, “SayingI’ll kill himor promising violent reprisal often terrifies, not reassures. It retraumatizes. If you want to make her feel safe, make the safety practical: guards, locks, routine.” I can get the routine. I can do boring. Boring keeps people breathing. But she doesn’t know my Sophia the way I do. My Sophia is not all chiffon and apologies. She’s Carlos Orsi’s daughter; she understands debts and how they’re paid. She didn’t flinch when I cut the men down in the alley. She didn’t weep when Roberto died over three days; if anything, she watched with a quiet that felt like agreement. Maybe she won’t say it aloud. Maybe she won’t admit it even to herself. But I saw her pupils dilatewhen I said Carlos was next. She felt something in the promise. She’s not some fragile thing who needs speeches; she’s a woman who recognizes the language of consequences. When it’s just us, when the world is off the map for a few hours, Sophia lets herself be the dangerous thing she’s been hiding. And that is just as therapeutic for her as her breathing exercises, just on a different level.
So we move quicker than most would. Twice daily, Sophia does her grounding practice. Short sessions with Esther, breathing, the safe-place stone, and a little bilateral tapping that makes Sophia blink like she’s surfacing. She comes out of the room quieter each time, her eyes are less ringed, her spine a degree straighter. The change isn’t dramatic. It isn’t movie magic. It’s a collar loosened and a hand lifted from a throat. She knows I’m her blade in the dark, hidden and ready whenever she needs me.
Work calls. Umbra Arcana never stops needing attention.
Gray wants a line coded differently.
Leo wants a node hardened.
Countless messages from Stephano. I've been ignoring him so far, but sooner or later, I'll have to deal with him. One way or another.
Men who saw me as nothing wire money into my accounts now.
There are nights when she talks, and nights when she doesn’t. When she does, she tells me about her. Sometimes about Roberto, sometimes about her friends, beforeand after. She asks me to look for Cammie, who vanished into thin air the night Enrico attacked the Giordano's house, and I'm glad to be able to do something for her.
I tell her about the Omertà Infernale and Umbra Arcana. And about the men and women who work for me. About the man in Belarus who still owes me a favor, or the woman in Maine who just hired us because her reputation is being attacked on social media. We talk about Edoardo and what my bloodline means. She listens better than anyone ever has listened to me. Sometimes she nods like she understands the territory. Sometimes she just squeezes my hand, and the rest of my sentences fall away.
One night, she tells me, “I feel safer with you.” It’s not a marriage vow or a fanfare. It’s a fact, spoken in the voice of someone who has learned to name things that keep the floor from dropping out. I take it in like oxygen.
Talkingwith Esther is like nothing I've ever done before. She's like a mom, a friend, a teacher, and a sister, all rolled into one. I trust her, I feel safe with her. But I'm not an idiot. She's an outsider, and there are things she'll never be able to understand. She might think she understands what women like me are going through, and she means well, but she can never and will never fully understand what it was like for me. Me. A mafia princess. I can't tell her the silent rage that still simmers in my veins. I can tell her about the resentment I feel for my father for having sold me like a piece of furniture, but I can't tell her how I feel about Raffael promising me that he'll be next. That he'll be the one who makes sure Daddy Dearest won't have too many breaths left.
So I take Esther’s advice where I need it, and I plan and plot with Raffael about the other things that make me feel alive again.
“What does Raffael do to your body when he’s near?” she asks now, simple and blunt.
It takes me a minute to answer.He makes me scream his nameis the first thing that comes to mind, especially after the orgasm he wrought from me this morning. But that's not where Esther is going with her question, and I adjust my answer. “He lets me breathe,” I say truthfully. “With Roberto, there was always this low hum of danger underscoring the hum of everything. With Raf, the hum silences. My shoulders drop without me telling them. I stop counting exits. I can… set my jaw without tasting blood.” A small laugh escapes me at the truth of my words.
Esther nods. “Name three things he does that Roberto never did.”
I start lifting fingers. “He asks. Not orders. He asks if he can come into a room, if he can sit with me, if I want him there. He respects me. He gave me a phone with all the information from my old one, and he hasn't checked it once." Not that I know of, anyway. But I trust him. He's shown me, with everything he does for me, that I can. "He asks me what I like, what movie I'd like to watch, what I'd like to eat or drink. He compliments me when no one else is listening."
“You say heasks,” Esther repeats. “That’s consent. That matters.”
It’s so simple and so huge that I feel foolish for not seeing it before. “I thought love was grand gestures,” I say. “Flowers and jewels. But this—this asking—feels quieter, safer. I’m scared I’ll confuse it. Is this love, or just safe?”
“You can feel both,” she says. “Safety is a foundation. Love can grow from it. But your nervous system also learns safety, and that’s what we’re building first. Tell me aloud, three things he does that make you feel safe.”
I force the words into the room like little bricks. “He asks. He keeps promises. He leaves when I need space.”
She sits with that, then hands me a flat, smooth stone, the one from before. “Anchor those words to the stone. Practice when you’re calm. When panic arrives, hold it and name those things. Your brain will remember the difference between being protected and being taken.”
