The Mafia Boss’s Deadliest Bulldog Charged at a Little Girl — Then She Whispered Three Words That Froze Everyone
CHAPTER 2
Maria kept Sophia in the kitchen for the better part of an hour, filling her with biscotti and a steady current of chatter meant to erase the courtyard from the girl’s mind. It didn’t work. Sophia was polite, appreciative, and utterly unconvinced.
In the study, business moved along smoothly enough that Vincent stepped out onto the balcony to take a call. That was the gap Sophia needed.
She’d asked to use the bathroom. Maria pointed her down the correct hallway and trusted a seven-year-old’s good manners more than she should have. Sophia remembered a different door instead — the one near the windows, the one that looked out over stone paths and flowering shrubs and a dog who’d looked back at her like he recognized something.
The wood was heavier than she expected. She pushed it open with both hands and stepped into the afternoon light.
Diesel’s eyes snapped open the moment her foot touched the path. His whole body tensed, lips pulling back, a growl rolling up from somewhere so deep it seemed to move through the stones themselves.
Sophia didn’t run.
She’d heard that sound before — the nights her nonna lay dying, when the pain got too big for words and came out as something closer to an animal’s cry. It wasn’t rage. It never had been.
“You’re hurting,” she said.
The growl faltered.
By the time Maria discovered the empty bathroom and her scream tore through the mansion’s halls, Sophia had already taken three slow steps toward the most feared creature in the Romano household — and Diesel, ears lifting from their flattened warning, hadn’t moved to stop her.
