Chapter 17: The Price on her Head

Sofia's POV

I dove under the coffee table as the window exploded in a shower of glass.

"Sniper!" Rafe yelled, pulling out his gun. "Everyone get down!"

But I wasn't fast enough. A red dot appeared on my chest, dancing around like a deadly firefly. I could see the laser sight moving, searching for the perfect shot.

Nikos tackled me sideways just as another bullet shattered the wall where my head had been.

"Safe room, now!" Cassian barked.

The four men surrounded me like a human shield as we ran down the hallway. More shots crashed through the cabin windows. Whoever was out there wasn't playing around.

We made it to a hidden door behind a bookshelf. Elena was already inside the small concrete room, typing frantically on a laptop.

"How many?" Cassian asked as he sealed the door behind us.

"At least six snipers," Elena replied. "And that's just the ones I can spot."

"Six?" I said weakly. "Why do they need six people to capture one girl?"

The men exchanged those looks again. The ones that meant they knew something I didn't.

"Sofia," Luca said carefully, "we need to tell you something."

"Tell me what?"

"About the bounty," Cassian said. "About why everyone wants you."

I sat down hard on the floor. The concrete was cold against my legs, but not as cold as the fear spreading through my chest.

"How much is it really?" I asked.

"Fifty million was just the starting bid," Nikos said quietly.

I stared at him. "Starting bid?"

"It's up to two hundred million now," Elena said without looking away from her computer screen.

I couldn't breathe. Two hundred million dollars. For me.

"Why?" I whispered. "What makes me worth that much money?"

"Because," Rafe said, sitting down beside me, "whoever controls you controls everything."

"I don't understand."

Cassian knelt in front of me, his face serious. "Sofia, your mother didn't just run a crime family. She controlled a network that connected every major criminal organization in North America."

"Like a phone company for criminals," Luca added, trying to make it simple.

"All the families paid Isabella for permission to do business in certain areas," Nikos explained. "She was like the queen, and everyone else were her subjects."

"And now that I'm her daughter..."

"Now you inherit all of that," Elena finished. "Every debt, every alliance, every territory. But also every enemy."

I felt dizzy. "So I'm not just worth money. I'm worth power."

"More power than any one person should have," Cassian said.

"Which is why everyone wants to either control you or kill you," Rafe added grimly.

I looked around the small concrete room. "And this is my life now? Hiding in bunkers while people hunt me?"

"For now," Elena said. "Until we figure out a permanent solution."

"What kind of permanent solution?"

Nobody answered, which scared me more than the snipers outside.

"You want to fake my death," I realized. "Make everyone think I'm gone so they'll stop looking for me."

"It's one option," Cassian said carefully.

"What are the other options?"

"You could take your mother's place," Nikos suggested. "Become what you were born to be."

"A crime queen at twenty-two years old?"

"Stranger things have happened," Luca said.

I stood up and started pacing in the tiny room. Two steps one way, turn around, two steps back. It was like being trapped in a cage.

"I hate this," I said suddenly.

"Hate what?" Rafe asked.

"Being helpless. Being protected all the time. Having decisions made for me."

"We're trying to keep you safe," Elena said.

"I know, and I'm grateful. But I feel like a princess locked in a tower, waiting for someone else to solve my problems."

The lights flickered, and Elena cursed at her computer.

"What's wrong?" Cassian asked.

"They're jamming our communications," she said. "And they've cut the power to the main house."

"How long can we stay in here?" I asked.

"The backup generator will last maybe six hours," Elena replied.

"And then?"

"Then we make a run for it."

I sat back down, feeling defeated. Six hours of hiding, then more running. And after that, more hiding in another safe house.

This wasn't living. This was just surviving.

"There has to be another way," I said.

"There is," a new voice said.

We all spun around. Isabella was standing in the doorway of the safe room. None of us had heard her come in.

"How did you get past the snipers?" Rafe demanded.

"I didn't get past them," Isabella said calmly. "I hired them."

Everyone went silent. I felt like I had been slapped.

"You hired people to shoot at me?" I asked.

"I hired people to make it look like they were shooting at you," Isabella corrected. "There's a difference."

"What difference? I'm still trapped in here!"

Isabella walked over and sat down next to me. "Sofia, do you know what the most dangerous thing in the world is?"

"A person with nothing to lose?"

"Close. A person who doesn't know their own strength."

I looked at her suspiciously. "What are you talking about?"

"You've been hiding and running and letting other people protect you," Isabella said. "But you're not a normal girl who needs protection. You're Isabella Moretti's daughter."

"So?"

"So it's time you learned what that really means."

Isabella pulled out her phone and showed me a video. It was security footage from the first house, the night we were attacked.

In the video, I watched myself moving through the chaos like I had been born for it. Throwing that glass shard at the attacker. Giving orders to the men. Looking calm and deadly.

"That wasn't luck," Isabella said. "That was instinct. The same instincts that made me the most feared woman in the criminal world."

"I was just scared and reacting."

"You were thinking clearly under pressure. Making tactical decisions. Leading."

I studied the video, trying to see what Isabella saw. The girl on the screen did look confident. In control.

But she also looked dangerous.

"I don't want to be like that," I said quietly.

"Why not?"

"Because dangerous people hurt innocent people."

Isabella paused the video and looked at me seriously. "Sofia, the world you're in now doesn't have innocent people. It has predators and prey. Right now, you're prey."

"And you want me to become a predator?"

"I want you to become a queen."

The difference felt important, but I wasn't sure I understood it.

"What does that mean exactly?" I asked.

"It means you stop running from your enemies and start making them run from you," Isabella explained.

"How?"

"By learning to use the power you inherited. By becoming someone so formidable that people would rather be your ally than your enemy."

I looked around the room at Cassian, Rafe, Luca, Nikos, and Elena. They were all watching me carefully, waiting to see what I would choose.

"And if I don't want to be a queen?"

"Then you'll spend the rest of your life in rooms like this one," Isabella said simply. "Hiding. Running. Never free."

I closed my eyes and tried to imagine my future. More safe houses. More disguises. More bodyguards and bulletproof cars and constant fear.

Or I could learn to fight back.

When I opened my eyes, something had changed inside me. I could feel it, like a switch had been flipped.

"What would I need to learn?" I asked Isabella.

She smiled, and it was proud and dangerous at the same time. "Everything."

"How to read people?"

"You're already good at that."

"How to make deals?"

"That too."

"How to fight?"

Isabella's smile got bigger. "Especially that."

I stood up and looked at each of the people who had become my world. "I'm tired of being protected."

"Sofia," Rafe started to say.

"No, listen to me," I interrupted. "I appreciate everything you've done for me. All of you. But I can't live like this anymore."

"What are you saying?" Cassian asked carefully.

"I'm saying I want to learn how to protect myself. I want to learn how to be strong enough that people think twice before threatening the people I love."

"Are you sure?" Luca asked.

I thought about the two hundred million dollar bounty on my head. About Vincent and Salvatore and all the other enemies who wanted to use me or kill me.

About the four men who had risked everything to keep me safe.

"I'm sure," I said firmly. "I want you to teach me everything. How to shoot, how to fight, how to think like a leader."

"And if it changes who you are?" Nikos asked quietly.

I looked at him, this man who understood me better than I understood myself sometimes.

"Maybe it's time for me to change," I said.

Isabella stood up and put her hand on my shoulder. "Then we start tomorrow."

"Start what tomorrow?"

"Your real education," Isabella said. "Learning to become Sofia Romano Moretti, the next Queen of Chicago."

The title sent chills through me. But for the first time since this all began, they weren't chills of fear.

They were chills of excitement.

"There's just one more thing you need to know," Isabella said.

"What?"

"The reason everyone wants you alive isn't just because of what you could become," she said carefully. "It's because of what you already are."

"I don't understand."

Isabella looked at Elena, who nodded grimly.

"Sofia," Isabella said, "you're not just my heir. You're also the key to a secret that could destroy or rebuild the entire criminal world."

"What secret?"

But before Isabella could answer, the lights went out completely.

And in the darkness, I heard something that made my blood run cold.

Vincent's voice, coming through the walls.

"Hello, little girl. Daddy's home."