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Jacob sighs. “Soph…”
I barely hear him anymore. Images rush back. Enzo standing in that manor, his eyes bloodshot, his voice cracking when he told me to leave. He wasn’t angry. He was breaking.
“He doesn’t do anything halfway. Not love, not rage, not mercy. That man bleeds devotion.” I’m talking to myself now and should just hang up.
Jacob’s tone floods with concern, “Hey, are you…?”
“I’m okay, Jacob. I’m sorry. I’m just mumbling. Thank you.”
I disconnect the call.
Enzo’s out there somewhere, carrying a war on his back because of me.
When my phone buzzes later, I’m sitting by the window, watching the rain smear the city into watercolor streaks. An unknown number flashes on the screen. I pick up anyway. “It’s Izzy,” she announces before I can speak. “Don’t hang up.”
“He’s going to get himself killed.” No greeting. No pretense. Her voice is tight, urgent. “Enzo’s planning a strike tonight. Volkov’s main compound in Staten Island.”
My stomach twists. “Alone?”
“Pretty much. Gabi’s pulling support. Distancing the family. If Enzo goes through with this, he won’t come back.”
For a moment, I can’t breathe. Then a thought sparks.
“Send me the location.”
“Sophia—”
“Please, Izzy.” My voice cracks, but I don’t care. “You didn’t call me just to deliver bad news. You want someone to stop him. So let me try.”
A pause. “Don’t make me regret this.”
By the time the message pings through, I’m already packing my black hoodie, jeans, cash, and the small gun Enzo taught me to use. My hands don’t shake. I check the gun the way Enzo showed me—magazine, chamber, safety—then slide it into the back of my jeans.
The storm has arrived, falling hard and heavy, completely transforming the world into something biblical and dramatic, which feels appropriate given that I’m apparently having some kind of religious experience or mental break. Jury’s still out on which one.
Outside, the water hits hard, like a cleansing liquid fire.
Even the weather in my life has become poetic.
I choose to walk with my head down. My heartbeat’s in sync with the thunder because I’ve clearly lost my mind, so soggy, dramatic gestures seem fitting.
Enzo’s expression on the night of the disaster is the first thing that comes to my mind. How his eyes darkened with fury and deeper hurt, along with something that looked like heartbreak, if heartbreak wore leather and carried a gun. His profound love was present even in his rage. I was just too scared to see it then.
He’s not the beast that I was always afraid of. He’s more complicated, more human, and somehow, that’s more terrifying.
He confined his emotions like they were dangerous animals and offered me a chance to see them anyway, let me peek behind the walls he’s spent a lifetime building. And I slinked away like a coward, as if leaving would somehow keep me safer when all it’s done is isolate me.
Not this time.
I’m going to find him tonight even if it kills me…and given my recent track record, that’s saying something. I’ll pull him out of the fire or die trying, because living without him isn’t really living.
Rain beats down on my baseball hat and soaks through my clothes like it’s personally offended by my life choices. Tears…rain…I can’t tell the difference anymore.
It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except reaching Enzo before Vincent’s fire consumes him. Before I lose the only person who ever made me feel alive.
The city buzzes around me as millions of people go about their lives, completely unaware that somewhere in its veins, a woman’s walking back toward the man she once called dangerous, ready to prove that love—real love, the kind that survives mob wars and family betrayals—isn’t gentle or safe. It’s wild and messy and fights back with everything it has.
And tonight, it fights for him, for us, for whatever impossible future we might still have if I can just get there in time.
