“I’m not sure how Sophia and Giuseppe’s paths first crossed,” I begin carefully. “Matteo has never gone into those details. But I remember when she arrived—sixteen years old, scared, pregnant, and completely traumatized.”
The memory surfaces with painful clarity.
Sophia as she was then—not the calculating manipulator she became, but a terrified girl who flinched every time Giuseppe entered a room.
Her voice had been soft, broken, like someone who’d learned that speaking too loudly brought unwanted attention.
“She was so young,” I continue, watching Bianca’s face carefully. “Innocent in ways that made it obvious what Giuseppe had done to her. She was terrified of him. You could see it in the way she positioned herself to always have an exit route, the way she’d go completely silent when he was around.”
Bianca bites her lip, and I can see her processing this image of her mother as a victim rather than a villain.
“Why did Matteo marry her?”
The question I’ve been dreading. Mostly because I’ve never understood it. “I don’t know. Matteo never disclosed his reasons or explained what drove that decision. All I knew was that one day Sophia and Matteo were married, and you came along soon after with Matteo claiming you as his own.”
“Did he protect her?” Bianca demands, gripping the chair tightly. “Did Giuseppe hurt Sop–my mother after she and Matteo were married?”
I don’t miss the way she almost called Sophia by her first name. “To the best of his abilities. But Giuseppe was a mean old bastard who saw Sophia as his property, regardless of her marriage to his son. The situation was…” I pause, searching for words. “Fucked up doesn’t begin to cover it.”
Bianca looks away.
By the way she’s narrowing her eyes, she’s connecting pieces of her childhood that probably never made sense before.
“Matteo tried to shield her, but living in that house, under Giuseppe’s roof, with constant reminders of what he’d done to her…it changed Sophia. She became hardened, calculating, manipulative. The sweet, terrified girl disappeared, replaced by someone who could manipulate the fuck out of anyone.”
“That’s why she was never a mother to me,” Bianca whispers, her voice barely audible. “Why she was always at parties, always somewhere else. She couldn’t stand being around Giuseppe’s child, especially since I look like him.”
The pain in her voice cuts through me.
I have my own opinions about how Sophia treated Bianca—opinions I keep to myself because they won’t help anything now.
A child shouldn’t have to pay for the circumstances of their conception, but Sophia was too broken to separate the innocent daughter from the monster who created her.
“You andMatteolook alike,” I say instead. “The DeLuca features are strong in both of you. You have his eyes, his bone structure. Anyone looking at you would see the family resemblance.”
“But not to Sophia.”
Outside of the eye shape and maybe some minor features, no. Bianca is a true DeLuca. “No, I admit. “Not to Sophia.”
Bianca is quiet for a long moment, staring out the window, her gaze faraway.
When she speaks again, her voice is harder. “What happened near the end? Something happened between Matteo and Sophia that ended in her death. What was that? The video was never clear.”
I close my eyes, cursing at the Calabreses for releasing that video that nearly damned Matteo.
“There were whispers that she was meeting with enemies, sharing information, undermining family operations.” I turn back to face her. “Matteo spent a long time getting proof. He wanted to understand the scope of the betrayal before deciding how to respond.”
“And when he got that proof?” Her voice is barely above a whisper.
I hesitate, unsure how much of this story belongs to me to tell.
But the desperation in her eyes, the need to understand what happened to her mother, breaks down my resistance.
“When Sophia’s alliance with Johnny Calabrese became undeniable, Matteo confronted her. At the lake house.”
“But why?” Bianca demands. “Why did she do it? Why betray the family?”
I shrug. “She was going to go public with Giuseppe’s transgressions against her. Expose everything he’d done, destroy the family’s reputation and power.”
