Second chance

Chapter5

Chapter 5: The Girl Before

Sofia closed her eyes.

The Castellano living room faded. The movie credits rolled silently. Aria's head was heavy on her shoulder, her breathing soft and even.

Sofia let herself fall backward in time.

She was eight.

---

The apartment smelled like damp and boiled potatoes.

"Papa?" Sofia stood at the door with her shoes on the wrong feet. "You said we'd go to the park."

Her father didn't look at her. He was zipping a duffel bag. His hands were fast, angry.

"Ask your mother," he said.

Lena stood in the kitchen doorway, her face pale. "Please. Not in front of her."

"She should know what a failure looks like," he snapped. Then he looked at Sofia, and for a second his face broke. "Be good for Mama."

The door slammed.

Sofia ran to the window. She watched him walk down the street without looking back.

"Mama, is Papa coming back?"

Lena knelt and pulled her close. Her hands smelled like soap.

"He loves you," Lena whispered. "He's just tired."

Sofia believed her for three years. Then she stopped asking.

When Sofia was ten, Lena brought home Marco.

He was huge, with a laugh that filled the tiny apartment. He brought a bag of oranges. He fixed the dripping tap with his own tools.

"So this is the little scholar," he said, ruffling Sofia's hair. "Your mama talks about you every day."

For two weeks, Sofia thought maybe this was what fathers were supposed to be.

Then Marco's son came to live with them. Dario. Fourteen, with cold eyes.

And then Marco lost his job at the warehouse.

The change was slow, then all at once.

"Where's the money, Lena?"

It was a Friday night. Sofia was supposed to be asleep. She sat with her knees pulled to her chest behind her bedroom door, listening through the c***k.

"I bought medicine for Sofia, she has a fever—"

"You stupid b***h!"

The sound was sharp. A slap. Then Lena crying, trying to be quiet.

"Please, Marco. Please don't—"

"Don't tell me what to do in my house!"

Sofia pressed her hands over her ears. Her whole body shook.

Later, Lena came into her room. Her cheek was red and swelling.

"Mama—"

"Shh, baby." Lena sat on the edge of the bed and stroked Sofia's hair. "It's okay. He didn't mean it. He's stressed."

Sofia stared at the bruise forming. "Does love hurt like that?"

Lena's eyes filled. "No, baby. Real love doesn't."

But she stayed.

Dario found his own ways to hurt.

Sofia was twelve. She came home from school starving. There was a pot of stew on the stove. She reached for a bowl.

Dario grabbed her wrist. Hard.

"Did I say you could eat?"

"I'm hungry," Sofia whispered.

"You're always hungry. Little rat." He ladled himself a huge portion, then deliberately tipped her bowl so half spilled on the counter. "Oops."

He ate slowly, watching her pick up the spilled pieces with shaking hands.

Marco saw. Marco said nothing. He just poured another drink.

Some nights, Lena would wait until both men were asleep. She would tap Sofia's shoulder.

"Come."

In the dark kitchen, she would split her own small portion in half.

"Eat, baby. Don't tell."

"Mama, you need it more."

"I'm old. You're growing." Lena smiled, but her eyes were bruised purple underneath. "Promise me you'll study. Promise me you'll get out."

Sofia chewed and cried at the same time. "I promise."

At sixteen, Sofia got a job washing dishes at a roadside restaurant. The owner paid her under the table.

She bought a tin box with a rusty lock. Every night she counted coins and folded bills and hid it under her mattress.

Dario found it while she was at school.

When she came home, coins were scattered across the floor. Dario was sitting on her bed, tossing her notebook in the air.

"Look at this," he sneered, reading aloud. "'One day I will take Mama away from here.' How sweet."

"Give it back!" Sofia lunged.

He shoved her. She hit the wall.

"You think you're better than us?" He emptied the box into his pocket. "This is rent for living in my father's house, rat."

Sofia sat on the floor among the empty coins and didn't make a sound. If she cried, Mama would hear. If Mama tried to defend her, Marco would hit her again.

That night she wrote in the notebook with a shaking hand: _I hate them. I hate them._

Then she crossed it out and wrote: _I will survive them._

Lena collapsed on a Tuesday in October.

Sofia found her on the kitchen floor, one hand clutching her chest, her breath coming in short gasps.

"Mama! Mama, look at me!"

Lena's lips were blue. "Sofia—"

"Someone help!" Sofia screamed. "Please!"

Dario stood in the doorway, eating an apple. "Dramatic."

"Call an ambulance!" Sofia shrieked.

At the clinic, the doctor didn't sugarcoat it.

"Her heart is failing. She needs surgery within weeks. Without it—" He shook his head.

"How much?" Sofia whispered.

He wrote a number on a piece of paper and slid it across.

Sofia stared at it. It was more money than she had ever seen. More than ten years of dishwashing.

"I'll find it," she said.

The doctor looked at her with pity. "Child—"

"I'll find it."

She begged Marco. She knelt on their dirty floor.

"Please. She's your wife."

Marco laughed, beer on his breath. "You think I have that kind of money? Let her die. One less mouth to feed."

Dario leaned against the wall. "I told you. You could make money fast if you stopped acting so pure, little rat."

Sofia walked out. She walked for hours, past closed shops, past barking dogs, until she reached the old docks.

A black car was parked there. A man leaned against it, smoking.

Victor Kane.

Everyone in town knew his name and feared it. He owned shipping routes. He owned men. He hated Leonardo Castellano the way fire hates water.

"Sofia Marchetti," he said. "Sixteen. Top of her class. Mother dying."

Sofia froze. "How do you know—"

"I know when someone is desperate enough to be useful," Victor said. He dropped his cigarette and crushed it. "I will pay for everything. Best surgeon. Best hospital. Your mother lives."

Sofia's heart pounded so loud she was sure he could hear it. "What do you want?"

Victor smiled. It didn't reach his eyes.

"Leonardo Castellano has a daughter. Aria. Nineteen soon. Spoiled. Loved. She will attend Westbridge College next fall."

"I don't—"

"You will too," Victor interrupted. "I will arrange a full scholarship. You will become her friend. Her sister. You will live in her world. You will learn their routines, their business, their weaknesses."

Sofia shook her head, stepping back. "No. I won't spy—"

"Your mother has three months," Victor said quietly. "Maybe less."

Sofia stopped.

"If you say no, she dies on that clinic floor," he continued. "If you say yes and then betray me, if you tell Aria, if you try to run—" He leaned close. "I will kill Lena myself. Slowly. And then I will kill you."

He held out a thick envelope.

"First installment. Take it to the hospital tonight."

Sofia stared at the envelope. Her hands shook so badly she could barely lift them.

She thought of Lena splitting her bread in the dark. Of the bruise on her cheek. Of _promise me you'll get out._

She took the envelope.

Victor's smile widened. "Good girl. On the train to Westbridge, remember this: get close. Make them trust you. Take it all."

The surgery worked.

Sofia sat in the hospital hallway for nine hours, her uniform still smelling like dishwater. When the surgeon came out and said, "She made it," Sofia collapsed to the floor and sobbed.

Lena woke up the next day, pale and weak.

"My brilliant girl," she whispered, touching Sofia's face. "You saved me."

Sofia held her mother's hand and felt like she was drowning.

_If you knew what I traded,_ she thought.

The scholarship letter arrived two weeks later. Full ride. Housing. Books. Westbridge College.

Lena cried with joy. "See? I told you studying would save us."

The night before Sofia left, Lena pressed her worn notebook into her hands.

"Write your dreams," Lena said. "Don't let this town keep them."

On the train, alone, Sofia opened to a blank page. Victor's words echoed.

Her pen hovered. Then she wrote:

_Get close. Make them trust me. Take it all._

A tear hit the ink and blurred it.

---

"Sofi?"

Sofia opened her eyes with a gasp.

Aria was looking at her, awake now, worried. Her hand was on Sofia's cheek.

"You were crying in your sleep," Aria whispered. "And shaking."

The living room was quiet. The movie was over. Elena and Leonardo had gone to bed, leaving a blanket over the two girls.

Sofia sat up, wiping her face quickly. "Sorry. Bad dream."

"What was it about?" Aria asked softly.

Sofia looked at her best friend. At her pure, open face. At the star bracelet on her wrist.

_You,_ Sofia thought. _It was about losing you before I even get to keep you._

"Just old stuff," Sofia said. "Home."

Aria didn't push. She just pulled Sofia back down and wrapped both arms around her.

"Then don't go back there alone," Aria murmured into her hair. "Take me with you next time."

Sofia closed her eyes again, but she didn't sleep.

She lay there listening to Aria breathe, feeling the weight of the envelope she had taken three years ago, feeling Victor's voice in her bones.

_Don't get comfortable._

She held Aria tighter, as if she could hold off the future.