Between Loyalty and You

Chapter 1 (Sofia's POV)

The rain was the first thing I noticed when the world came back.

It hammered against the shattered windshield like it was trying to get inside and finish what the impact had started. My head throbbed in a dull, insistent rhythm that matched the blink of the hazard lights still flashing somewhere in the wreckage. Everything smelled like burnt rubber, gasoline, and copper. Blood. Mine, I realized, when I tried to lift my hand and felt the sticky warmth coating my fingers.

I was still in the driver’s seat. The airbag had deployed and then sagged, deflated against my chest like a defeated animal. Glass glittered across the dashboard and my lap. The passenger side was crushed inward, metal twisted into shapes that didn’t belong in a car. If anyone had been sitting there, they would have been pulp.

No one had been. Just me. Alone on the rain-slicked road outside the city, coming back from a late dinner I hadn’t wanted to eat, driving too fast because the silence in the house without my father was starting to crawl under my skin.

I tried to move. Pain flared white-hot through my left side. Ribs, maybe. Shoulder. Something wet and warm was sliding down my temple. I blinked, and the world tilted.

Then the phone on the floorboard lit up. The screen was cracked, but I could still see the name.

**Dante.**

My heart did something stupid even through the pain.

I reached for it. My fingers shook so hard I almost dropped it twice before I managed to answer.

“Sofia.” His voice was low, controlled, the same voice that had ruled rooms and men since before I was old enough to understand what power smelled like. “Where are you?”

I opened my mouth. Only a wet, broken sound came out.

Silence on the other end. Then, softer, but no less dangerous: “Talk to me.”

“Accident,” I managed. The word tasted like blood. “I … I crashed. Road by the old mill. I—”

Something cracked in the background on his end—wood, maybe a chair. “Stay on the line. Do not move. Do you understand me?”

I wanted to tell him I wasn’t going anywhere even if I tried. The words wouldn’t form. My vision was tunneling. The last thing I heard before the dark took me again was his voice, sharp and absolute, giving orders to someone else in the room with him.

---

I woke up to the smell of him.

Not cologne. Not the expensive soap the staff used in his penthouse. Just *him*—gun oil, clean cotton, and that faint trace of tobacco he still allowed himself when no one was watching. My cheek was pressed against something soft and expensive. Silk sheets. The kind that cost more than most people’s monthly rent.

I opened my eyes.

The room was dim, lit only by a single lamp in the corner. Floor-to-ceiling windows showed the city glittering far below through the rain. I knew this room. I’d snuck into it once when I was sixteen, and he was out of town, just to lie on the bed and breathe in the ghost of him. I’d never told anyone.

Now I was in it for real.

Dante Moretti sat in the armchair across from the bed, elbows on his knees, head bowed. The sleeves of his black dress shirt were rolled to the forearms, exposing the ink that crawled up from his wrists—roses and knives and the Latin script that meant *loyalty above all*. His dark hair was damp, like he’d run his hands through it too many times. The gun was on the side table within easy reach, the way it always was.

He looked up the second I made a sound.

Those eyes. Cold gray, the color of a winter sky before a storm. They had always seen too much.

“Don’t try to sit up,” he said. Voice rough. “Three fractured ribs. Concussion. Lacerations. You’re lucky the car took most of it.”

I swallowed. My throat felt raw. “How long …?”

“Six hours. You were out cold when we got there. The doctors wanted you in the hospital. I disagreed.”

Of course, he did. Hospitals meant records. Records meant questions. And questions were something the Moretti name preferred not to answer.

I shifted carefully. Pain lanced through my side, but I ignored it. The sheet slipped, and I realized I was wearing one of his shirts—black, soft, sleeves too long. Nothing underneath but bandages and the barest scrape of medical tape over my hip.

Heat flooded my face. He’d seen me. Or someone had. The thought of his hands on me while I was unconscious made something tight and hungry twist low in my stomach.

“My father—”

“Doesn’t know yet.” Dante’s jaw flexed. “He’s still in Palermo dealing with the port contracts. I told him there was a minor incident and you were resting. He’ll be back in ten days. Until then, you’re here.”

Ten days.

Ten days under his roof. In his space. Breathing the same air.

I had been in love with this man since I was sixteen years old, and he walked into my father’s study after a hit that left blood on his cuffs. He’d looked at me like I was still a child. I’d looked at him like he was the only thing in the world that made sense.

I was twenty-two now. And I was done waiting for him to notice.

“You’re staring,” he said quietly.

“You’re hard not to stare at.”

Something flickered across his face—annoyance, maybe, or the thing he always tried to kill before it could grow. He stood, the movement fluid and controlled, and crossed to the side of the bed. Up close, he was even larger. Six-four of solid muscle and carefully leashed violence. The scar along his left eyebrow caught the light when he leaned down to check the bandage on my temple.

His fingers were careful. Too careful.

“You should have called someone else,” he murmured. “A driver. Anyone.”

“I wanted you.”

The words hung between us, heavier than they should have been.

His hand stilled against my hair. For a second—just one—his thumb brushed the edge of the bandage in a touch that felt like more than medical concern. Then he pulled back like I’d burned him.

“Sofia.” Warning and plea in the same breath. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” I kept my voice soft. The concussion made everything feel distant and sharp at the same time. “Don’t tell the truth? I’ve been saying it for years. You just refuse to hear it.”

He turned away, walking to the window. The city lights painted silver across the hard lines of his shoulders.

“Your father is the only man in this world I trust completely,” he said, back still to me. “He pulled me out of the gutter when I was seventeen. Gave me a name. A future. I will not repay that by touching his daughter.”

“I’m not a child anymore.”

“I know exactly how old you are.” The words were clipped. “I know every year. Every birthday you spend looking at me like I was something I can never be for you.”

I pushed up onto my elbows despite the protest in my ribs. The shirt slipped off one shoulder. I didn’t fix it.

“Then stop looking back.”

He turned. Slowly. The expression on his face was the one he wore when he ordered a man’s death—controlled, remote, and somehow still burning underneath.

“You think this is a game,” he said. “You think if you push hard enough I’ll forget who you are. Who *I* am.”

“I think you’re lonely.” My voice cracked. “I think you come home to this empty place every night and the only thing that keeps you human is the idea that someone still sees you as more than the don. And I do. I’ve always seen you.”

He crossed the room in three strides. One hand braced on the headboard beside my head, the other gripping the edge of the mattress. Close enough that I could feel the heat of him. Close enough that the faint scent of tobacco and steel filled my lungs.

“You were in a car that folded like paper,” he said, his voice low and lethal. “You could have died. Do you understand that? I held your head while they cut you out of the wreck. There was blood in your hair. Glass in your skin. And all I could think was that if you didn’t open your eyes I was going to burn the entire f*****g city down.”

The confession landed between us like a live grenade.

I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.

His gaze dropped to my mouth. Stayed there. The air thickened until it hurt to inhale.

Then he closed his eyes, exhaled through his nose, and pushed himself upright like it cost him something vital.

“Sleep,” he ordered. “I’ll be in the next room. There’s a nurse on call if the pain gets worse. Do not try to get out of this bed alone.”

He walked to the door.

I watched the line of his back, the way his fists stayed clenched at his sides.

“Dante.”

He stopped but didn’t turn.

“I’m not going to stop,” I said quietly. “Not this time. You can keep pretending loyalty is the only thing that matters. But I’m here. And I’m not a little girl anymore. Ten days is a long time.”

His hand tightened on the doorknob until the wood creaked.

“Get some rest, Sofia.”

The door shut behind him with a soft, final click.

I lay back against the pillows, heart hammering against bruised ribs, and stared at the ceiling.

The rain kept falling outside.

And for the first time in six years, I smiled through the pain.