PART 2: They Tortured Her in Front of the Mafia King — Until She Whispered the Name He Buried

The transition from the freezing warehouse to the back of the armored Cadillac Escalade was a blur of motion and pain.

The thick-necked man had unlocked the chains with an unceremonious jerk, letting Sophia collapse onto the concrete. She had expected Lorenzo to catch her, but he hadn't. He had simply turned his back, walking out into the rain while his personal security detail—two massive men in identical black suits—lifted her by her arms and carried her out to the waiting convoy.

Now, she lay across the leather seat of the vehicle, a thick wool blanket thrown over her shivering shoulders. The heater was blasting, but the warmth felt like needles against her bruised skin.

Lorenzo sat on the opposite bench seat, his long legs crossed. He had removed the bloody silk handkerchief, revealing a deep, jagged laceration across his palm where the glass had bitten deep. One of his men, a quiet driver named Marco, handed him a medical kit without a word.

Lorenzo didn't use the gauze. He poured straight rubbing alcohol over the open wound. His jaw tightened, the muscle pulsing beneath his sharp jawline, but he didn't make a sound.

"Enzo," Sophia whispered, the name cracking on her dry lips.

"Do not call me that," he said, his voice cutting through the hum of the engine like a blade. He didn't look at her. He began wrapping his hand in clean white sports tape, pulling it tight with his teeth. "That man is dead. He died the night he left your apartment."

"You... you saved me," she said, coughing as a trace of blood cleared her throat.

"I secured an asset," Lorenzo corrected coldly. He finished the knot on the tape and finally looked at her, his gray eyes devoid of the warmth she had spent months mourning. "You were foolish, Sophia. I told you to stay out of the dark. I told you my world would ruin you. Instead, you go looking into Meredith Rowe Capital? You think because you have a degree from Northwestern you can audit men who own the police department?"

"They were laundering money from human trafficking, Lorenzo," she said, her voice rising with a spark of the righteousness that had driven her to copy the files in the first place. "It wasn't just tax evasion. They were buying people. I couldn't just sit at my desk and balance the columns like nothing was happening."

"And look where your conscience got you," he snapped, leaning forward, his shadow engulfing her. "In a packing house with a pair of pliers an inch from your bone. If you hadn't used that name—if you hadn't spoken the name of my grandmother’s cottage—you would be at the bottom of the Chicago River by sunrise."

"How did you know about Mateo?" she asked, tears finally blurring her vision. "You told me it was just a place you visited when you were a boy."

"It was the place where my grandfather hid during the '74 purge," Lorenzo said, his expression hardening into stone. "It is the only place on this earth that doesn't belong to the De Luca syndicate. I gave you that name because I thought, if the worst ever happened, if someone tried to use you to get to me, you could use it to signal my private security. I didn't think you’d use it to save yourself from a mess you made on your own."

He leaned back, his gray eyes fixing on the rainy window as the vehicle tore down the Edens Expressway toward the northern suburbs.

"We are going to Lake Forest," Lorenzo said. "My medical staff will patch you up. You have forty-eight hours to recover, Sophia. After that, you will give me the password to that flash drive. I am paying fourteen million dollars for your life, and I expect a return on my investment."

Sophia pulled the wool blanket tighter around her chin, her heart aching more than her swollen eye. The man sitting across from her looked exactly like the man who had kissed her under the awning of the jazz club, but the soul inside him had been replaced by iron.