Chapter 6 - The House Without Sophia
Nico remained hospitalized for eleven days.
Sophia did not return to the Romano estate.
Dante didn't ask again.
Instead, he rented her an apartment in Manhattan.
Sophia refused it.
He offered security.
She accepted one female guard—but insisted on paying part of the cost herself.
Dante argued.
Sophia won.
This became the pattern.
He began learning that loving Sophia was not about solving her problems.
Sometimes it meant respecting the solution she chose herself.
Sophia found work at a boutique hotel in Manhattan.
Not as a maid.
As assistant operations manager.
Mrs. Gable had secretly submitted her recommendation.
Within three weeks, Sophia reorganized staff schedules, negotiated a linen contract, and discovered that the hotel's purchasing director had been stealing nearly forty thousand dollars annually.
When Dante learned about the promotion, he sent flowers.
Sophia sent them back.
He sent a handwritten card instead.
Congratulations. You earned it.
She kept that.
Meanwhile, Dante's empire was changing.
The evidence from Pier Thirty-Eight fractured the Conti organization. Carlo faced kidnapping and weapons charges. Isabella's involvement became impossible for her family to dismiss.
But violence still threatened.
Dante made a decision his father would have considered weakness.
He refused retaliation.
Instead, he removed Romano operations from three contested illegal markets and redirected money toward legitimate logistics, construction, and hospitality holdings.
Some captains hated it.
One challenged him openly.
“You're becoming soft.”
Dante looked across the conference table.
“No. I'm becoming difficult to prosecute.”
Nobody argued after that.
But the greatest change occurred inside the mansion.
Dante walked through Sophia's old room one Sunday afternoon.
He had left it untouched.
Mrs. Gable appeared behind him.
“You know she won't return because you preserve this like a shrine.”
“I know.”
“Then why?”
Dante looked at the empty pillow.
“Because I don't know what to do with it.”
Mrs. Gable smiled sadly.
“Try giving it away.”
Three months later, the west wing reopened.
Not for Sophia.
For the staff.
Dante renovated six cramped basement quarters and moved every employee upstairs into private bedrooms with windows.
Sophia heard about it from Paulie.
She called Dante that evening.
“Was that because of me?”
“Partly.”
“You don't need to redesign your house to apologize.”
“I didn't.”
“What?”
“I redesigned it because the basement rooms were unacceptable.”
She went quiet.
“That sounds suspiciously healthy.”
“I hated every second.”
Sophia laughed.
He smiled into the phone.
It had been months since he heard her laugh without pain behind it.
“Dinner?” he asked.
Silence.
Then:
“One dinner.”
Dante stood.
Marco, sitting across the study, watched him.
“Thursday?”
“Thursday.”
“Seven?”
“Seven-thirty. I work until six.”
“I'll send—”
“No armored convoy.”
“One car?”
“Normal car.”
“Define normal.”
“Something that doesn't look capable of surviving a rocket launcher.”
Dante looked toward his fleet.
“This may be difficult.”
Sophia laughed again.
Thursday evening, Dante arrived in a borrowed gray sedan.
Sophia stared at it.
“Whose car is this?”
“Mrs. Gable's.”
“You borrowed your housekeeper's Toyota?”
“She seemed pleased.”
“She has probably called everyone she knows.”
“She has.”
They ate at a small Italian restaurant in Brooklyn where nobody knew his name.
Dante turned his phone off.
That alone shocked Sophia.
They talked.
Not about Isabella.
Not about the shooting.
Not about the mafia.
Sophia told him she wanted to run a hotel someday.
Dante told her he had once wanted to study architecture.
She stared.
“You?”
“Yes.”
“You threaten people over coffee.”
“I contain multitudes.”
She laughed so loudly the neighboring table looked over.
Walking outside afterward, Sophia slipped on wet pavement.
Dante caught her waist.
They froze.
Four months ago, he would have kissed her.
Now he released her.
“Sorry.”
Sophia studied him.
“You're asking permission now?”
“Yes.”
“That's new.”
“I've been informed I'm emotionally defective.”
“By whom?”
“Everyone.”
She smiled.
Then kissed his cheek.
“Good night, Dante.”
He stood on the sidewalk after she disappeared into her building.
He touched the place where her lips had been.
For the first time, waiting didn't feel like losing.
It felt like earning.
But across the street, inside a parked car, a camera lens lowered.
The photographer checked the image.
Sophia kissing Dante.
He sent it to an unknown number.
May you like
The reply arrived immediately.
NOW WE KNOW WHERE TO HURT HIM.
