“For what?”
“For believing me. For protecting us. For…” She hesitated. “For not turning me away.”
“I owed you my life,” I said. “This is the least I could do.”
She shook her head.
“You didn’t owe me anything. You could have let them take me. You could have stayed out of it.”
“No,” I said. “I couldn’t.”
She looked at me for a long moment, and something passed between us that I couldn’t name.
Then Elena burst into the room, her hair wild and her cheeks flushed.
“Mama! Lorenzo! The puppies are here!”
Sofia laughed and stood, reaching for her daughter’s hand.
“Puppies?”
“The Doberman had them last night,” I explained. “Carlo’s been keeping them in the stables.”
Elena tugged on my hand.
“Can we go see them? Please?”
I looked at Sofia, and she nodded.
“Lead the way,” I said.
We walked through the rain-soaked gardens, Elena running ahead and Sofia laughing as she tried to keep up.
When we reached the stables, Carlo was kneeling beside a pile of blankets, gently stroking the mother dog’s head.
Five tiny puppies squirmed and whimpered in the nest beside her.
Elena gasped and dropped to her knees.
“They’re so small,” she whispered.
“Would you like to hold one?” Carlo asked.
She nodded eagerly.
He lifted a black-and-tan puppy and placed it carefully in her arms.
Elena’s face lit up like the sun.
Sofia stood beside me, watching her daughter with an expression of such profound tenderness that I felt something crack open inside my chest.
“She’s happy,” Sofia said softly.
“So are you,” I said.
She looked up at me, and for the first time since I’d found her again, she wasn’t afraid.
“Yes,” she said. “I am.”
Three months later, Sofia told me the truth about Elena’s father.
We were sitting on the terrace after dinner, watching the sun set over the hills.
Elena was inside with Carlo, learning to play chess.
“His name was Viktor,” Sofia said quietly. “He was one of the men who ambushed your father. After I saved you, they found me. Took me. Kept me locked in a basement for eight months.”
Her voice was steady, but her hands were clenched in her lap.
“When I found out I was pregnant, I knew I had to get out. So I waited. I planned. And when Viktor came down one night, drunk and careless, I killed him.”
She looked at me.
“I used a piece of broken glass. I cut his throat. And then I ran.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I’ve never told anyone that,” she continued. “Not even Elena. She thinks her father died in an accident.”
“She doesn’t need to know,” I said.
Sofia nodded slowly.
“I thought you should know. Because you’ve given us everything. And I didn’t want there to be secrets between us.”
I reached over and took her hand.
“You did what you had to do to survive,” I said. “There’s no shame in that.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“I was so scared you’d hate me.”
“I could never hate you.”
She let out a shaky breath and squeezed my hand.
We sat there in silence as the sky turned gold, then pink, then deep violet.
