First Blood
Sofia's POV
The explosion shook the whole house.
I fell off the bed as books crashed down from the shelves. The lights went out, and emergency red lights started flashing. Somewhere in the distance, an alarm was screaming.
My door burst open. Rafe stood there with a big gun in his hands, his face hard and scary.
"We need to move. Now."
"What's happening?" I asked, scrambling to my feet.
"The Moretti family found us," he said, grabbing my arm. "They brought friends."
More explosions shook the house. Through the thick walls, I could hear men shouting and glass breaking.
Rafe pulled me into the hallway. Cassian was there too, talking fast into a phone while holding two different guns.
"How many?" Rafe asked him.
"At least thirty," Cassian said. "Maybe more. They came prepared."
"Where are Luca and Nikos?"
"Fighting on the first floor. We need to get Sofia to the safe room."
"What safe room?" I asked, but they were already pulling me down the hall.
We ran down some stairs I'd never seen before. The sound of gunshots was getting louder. Real gunshots. Not like in movies where they sound cool. These were sharp and loud and made my ears hurt.
"In here," Cassian said, pushing open a heavy door.
But before we could get inside, men in black clothes came around the corner. They had masks on their faces and guns in their hands.
"There she is!" one of them shouted.
Rafe pushed me behind him. "Stay down!"
Then everything happened really fast.
Rafe and Cassian started shooting. The men in black shot back. I crouched on the floor with my hands over my ears, trying not to scream.
The hallway filled with smoke that smelled like fire and metal. Someone was yelling in a language I didn't understand. Glass was breaking everywhere.
One of the bad men got too close to me. Rafe turned around and hit him so hard with his gun that the man fell down and didn't get back up. There was blood on Rafe's knuckles.
"This way!" Cassian yelled.
We ran back up the stairs. More men were coming from the other direction. These ones had different masks, but they all wanted the same thing.
Me.
"Sofia Martinez!" one of them called out. "Come with us and nobody else has to die!"
"Like hell," Rafe growled.
A bullet hit the wall right next to my head. I could feel the heat from it.
That's when I saw Luca fighting three men at once. He moved like a dancer, but a dangerous one. Every time he hit someone, they stayed down.
Nikos was further down the hall. He wasn't moving as much as the others, but every time he pointed his gun, someone fell down.
"How are there so many of them?" I shouted over the noise.
"The Moretti family has money," Cassian yelled back. "They can buy a lot of help."
"Why do they want me so bad?"
"Because you're worth more than you know!"
Before I could ask what that meant, more bad men came through the front door. These ones looked different. Meaner.
"That's the Chen Syndicate," Rafe said, his face getting pale. "This just got worse."
"How much worse?" I asked.
My answer came when one of the new men threw something small and round down the hallway. Cassian's eyes got really wide.
"Grenade! Everyone down!"
The explosion was so loud I thought my head was going to break. The floor shook like an earthquake. Pieces of the ceiling fell down on us.
When the smoke cleared, I couldn't see Cassian anywhere.
"Cassian!" Rafe shouted.
"I'm okay!" came his voice from somewhere behind a pile of broken wall. "But I'm trapped!"
Now it was just me and Rafe against all these bad men. Luca and Nikos were fighting their own battles and couldn't help us.
Rafe was running out of bullets. I could tell because he kept checking his gun and looking worried.
"Sofia," he said, "I need you to listen to me very carefully."
"Okay."
"There's a door at the end of this hallway. If something happens to me, you run to that door and you don't look back."
"What's going to happen to you?"
"Nothing if I can help it," he said, but his voice didn't sound sure.
Three more men came around the corner. Big men with big guns. Rafe shot at them, but his gun made a clicking sound instead of a bang.
Empty.
The biggest man smiled. "Looks like you're all out of tricks."
Rafe dropped his gun and pulled out a knife instead. A really big knife.
"I don't need bullets to protect her," he said.
The men laughed. "You think you can fight all three of us with a knife?"
"I think I can try."
They rushed at him all at once.
Rafe fought like a wild animal. He was fast and angry and dangerous. But there were three of them and only one of him.
One man grabbed Rafe from behind. Another one hit him in the stomach. The third one was reaching for me.
That's when something weird happened.
Instead of being scared, I got mad. Really, really mad.
These men had broken into the house. They were trying to hurt Rafe, who had been nothing but kind to me. They wanted to take me away to do terrible things to me.
And I was tired of being helpless.
I saw a heavy book on the floor. Before I could think about it, I picked it up and hit the man reaching for me as hard as I could.
He fell down.
"Sofia!" Rafe yelled. He sounded surprised but also proud.
The man holding Rafe let go to come after me. That gave Rafe the chance he needed. He spun around and stabbed the man with his knife.
But the third man shot Rafe in the shoulder.
Rafe fell down hard, blood spreading across his shirt.
"No!" I screamed.
The man pointed his gun at Rafe's head. "Say goodbye to your protector, little girl."
I don't know what came over me. I jumped on the man's back like a crazy person, hitting him and clawing at his face.
He tried to shake me off, but I held on tight. His gun went flying across the floor.
Rafe, even though he was hurt, managed to grab the gun. He shot the man before he could hurt me.
Then everything got quiet except for the alarms still going off.
I slid off the man's back and ran to Rafe. He was lying on the floor, bleeding from his shoulder.
"Are you okay?" I asked, kneeling next to him.
"I should be asking you that," he said with a weak smile. "You just saved my life."
"You saved mine first."
I tried to stop the bleeding with my hands, but there was so much blood. Rafe's face was getting pale.
"I need to get you help," I said.
"Sofia," he said quietly, "look at me."
I looked into his eyes. They were getting unfocused, but they were looking at me like I was the most important thing in the world.
"You're not just some innocent girl," he said. "You're brave. You're strong. You're..."
He didn't finish the sentence because his eyes closed.
"Rafe!" I shook him gently. "Stay awake!"
That's when I heard footsteps behind me. Heavy boots on broken glass.
I turned around and saw a man I didn't recognize. He was older than the others, with gray hair and expensive clothes. He didn't look like the other attackers.
"Hello, Sofia," he said in a calm voice. "My name is Vincent Moretti. I believe you have something that belongs to my family."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
He smiled, but it wasn't a nice smile. "Your father stole more than just files, my dear. He stole my granddaughter."
The world stopped spinning.
"What?"
"Didn't they tell you?" Vincent asked, walking closer. "You're not Sofia Martinez. You're Sofia Moretti. And you're coming home with me."
Behind him, I could see more men with guns. Luca and Nikos were nowhere to be seen. Cassian was still trapped under the broken wall.
Rafe was unconscious and bleeding next to me.
And this man was saying I was his granddaughter.
"That's impossible," I whispered.
"Is it?" Vincent asked. "Think about it, Sofia. Have you ever wondered why you don't look like Vincent Martinez? Why you have no baby pictures? Why you can't remember anything before age five?"
I stared at him in shock. He was right. I had wondered about all those things.
"You see," Vincent continued, "your real parents died in a car accident twenty years ago. Vincent Martinez found you at the scene and decided to keep you instead of calling the police. He raised you as his own daughter, never telling you the truth."
"You're lying."
"Am I?" He pulled out a photograph and showed it to me. It was a picture of a little girl who looked exactly like me, standing next to a woman who had my face but older.
"This is your mother," Vincent said. "My daughter. She died protecting you."
I couldn't breathe. Everything I thought I knew about my life was wrong.
"Why should I believe you?"
"Because," Vincent said with that cold smile, "you just fought three trained killers to save someone you barely know. That's not normal behavior for a bookstore owner. That's the behavior of someone born into this world."
He was right. Normal people don't jump on armed men. Normal people don't feel excited during gun fights.
But I had felt excited. Under all the fear, there had been something else. Something that felt like coming alive.
"What do you want from me?" I asked.
"I want you to come home," Vincent said. "I want you to take your rightful place in the family business."
"And if I say no?"
Vincent looked down at Rafe, who was still bleeding on the floor.
"Then your friend dies," he said simply. "Along with the other three. I'll burn this whole house down with them in it."
I looked at Rafe's pale face. He had risked his life to protect me. They all had.
And now this man was saying he was my grandfather. That everything I knew about myself was a lie.
"I need proof," I said. "Real proof, not just a photograph."
Vincent smiled wider. "Smart girl. Just like your mother." He pulled out a piece of paper. "This is a DNA test. Your blood from the hospital when you had your appendix out last year, compared to mine."
He handed me the paper. The numbers and letters didn't mean much to me, but at the bottom it said: "99.7% probability of biological relationship."
My hands started shaking.
"So what's it going to be, granddaughter?" Vincent asked. "Are you going to come home and save your friends? Or are you going to let them die for a lie?"
I looked down at Rafe one more time. His breathing was getting shallow.
If I went with Vincent, maybe I could save them. But if I went with him, I might never see them again.
And if what he was saying was true, then my whole life had been built on lies.
"I'll come with you," I said quietly.
"Excellent choice."
Vincent motioned to his men. They started moving toward me.
But just as they reached me, the lights went out completely. Emergency power died. Everything went black.
In the darkness, I heard Vincent curse.
Then I heard something that made my heart stop.
A woman's voice, speaking from somewhere in the shadows.
"Hello, father," the voice said. "Looking for something that belongs to me?"