Chapter 8 - THE SCARS WE CARRYSophia looked up as his heavy footsteps approached the settee. She didn't flinch, nor did she cower. She simply placed her small sketchbook down, stood up, and placed her body slightly in front of Emma, a protective motherly shield even in a room full of federal agents.
“You don't need to guard her anymore, Sophia,” Aleandro said softly, stopping a few feet away. His harsh, imposing posture softened just a fraction—a microscopic shift that only someone who knew him for decades would ever notice. “The house is secure. The threat is gone.”
“Threats don't disappear just because the cuffs go on, Mr. Moretti,” Sophia replied, her voice steady, carrying an edge of sharp, unyielding truth. “I spent three years working in this fortress thinking my daughter was safe behind your gates. Then your own blood tried to frame me for murder while my child watched me get dragged away in chains.”
Aleandro winced. It was a rare, painful admission of guilt for a man who rarely apologized to anyone, living or dead.
“You saved my life today,” Aleandro said, ignoring the rhetorical detour. “You and your daughter. If Emma hadn’t grabbed that EpiPen... I would be cold in the ground right now, and Vincent would be sitting in my chair.”
“I didn't save you because you're a mob boss,” Sophia shot back, her dark eyes flashing with fierce dignity. “I saved you because nobody deserves to choke to death on a hardwood floor while people walk right past the door. It’s called being human. Something this house seemed to forget a long time ago.”
Before Aleandro could formulate a response, a small tug on his trouser leg made him look down.
Emma was staring up at him, her wide eyes blinking innocently. In her small, sticky hand, she held out a crayon drawing. It was a crude, beautiful mess of blue, red, and black lines.
“For you,” Emma whispered, her earlier terror completely forgotten. “It’s a big gray bear. But he’s not scary anymore because he has a shiny stick.”
Aleandro stared down at the paper. A strange, unfamiliar constriction tightened in his chest—not the lethal closing of his throat from the poison, but something entirely different, something warm and terrifyingly vulnerable.
Slowly, carefully, the most feared man in New York knelt down on the expensive marble floor, ignoring the dirt, and took the crayon drawing from the little girl's hand.
“Thank you, Emma,” he murmured, his voice thick with a emotion he hadn’t felt since he buried his own sister decades ago.
Sophia watched him, her guarded expression softening just a fraction. But just as the air in the room began to settle, a sharp, jarring ringtone broke the silence.
It wasn't a phone. It was the private, encrypted satellite receiver sitting on the mahogany console behind them—a line that only connected to one place: The Council of Elders in Palermo.
Aleandro’s face hardened instantly. He stood up, his soft expression vanishing, replaced once again by the mask of the syndicate boss.
He walked over, picked up the heavy black receiver, and pressed it to his ear.
“Speak,” Aleandro ordered.
May you like
A cold, elderly voice crackled through the static from across the Atlantic Ocean. “Aleandro. We saw the data purge. We saw the federal raids. You cleaned your house, but you left the front door wide open. And the Council does not tolerate loose ends—especially little girls with pink backpacks.”
Aleandro’s grip on the receiver turned his knuckles bone-white. The war for the Moretti empire wasn't over. It had just gone global.
