Page 90 of Auctioned Innocence
A simple task, a basic function.
But my hands shake so violently I can’t even hold the coffee grounds container without spilling it everywhere.
That’s how Dante finds me—crouched on the floor, trying to clean up scattered coffee beans as tears of frustration stream down my face.
“Hey.” His voice is soft, careful, like he’s approaching a wounded animal. “Sofia, look at me.”
“I can’t even make fucking coffee,” I whisper, my voice breaking on the words. “I used to disable security systems, run complex cons, coordinate extractions. Now I can’t hold a fucking coffee container without?—”
“Without what?” He kneels beside me, his presence solid and grounding.
“Without feeling like I’m still there. Still trapped. Still helpless.” The admission tastes like failure in my mouth. “What if I never get it back? What if this is who I am now—someone who falls apart at the smallest thing?”
Dante is quiet for a long moment, studying my face with those perceptive gray eyes.
I can see him thinking, processing, the way he does when he’s analyzing a complex situation.
“You’re not falling apart,” he says finally. “You’re a fighter trying to reconcile with being forced into a victim’s role. Your body learned to survive by being still, by being compliant. Now it doesn’t know how to be powerful again.”
I look down at my trembling hands, at the coffee beans scattered across the wooden floor like dark tears. “So what do I do?”
“You need to move,” he says quietly, reaching out to still my shaking fingers with his own. “Your body needs to remember what it can do. Not just that you survived—but that you’re capable of so much more than survival.”
His thumb traces across my knuckles, warm and steady.
“You need to remember that you’re not the girl on that platform. You’re Sofia Renaldi. You’re the woman who got five other girls out alive.”
“I don’t feel like her anymore.” My voice is small voice, and I loathe how weak I sound.
“Then let’s find her again.”
He moves the furniture aside in the cabin’s main room, creating space on the worn wooden floors.
Not to teach me new skills—we both know I don’t need that—but to help me remember the ones I already have.
The familiar motions steady me.
My knife work is still excellent, my defensive moves still fluid. But there’s a hesitation now that wasn’t there before.
A split-second pause where I second-guess myself, where the auction house flashes behind my eyes.
“Trust your instincts,” Dante says when I froze mid-strike during our sparring. “They haven’t failed you yet.”
“They failed me when I got captured,” I shot back.
“No,” he says patiently. “They failed when someone with inside information sold out your location. Your instincts are what kept you alive after that.”
The handgun work goes better.
My draw is still quick, my accuracy still sharp. But my hands shake sometimes when I reload, when the metallic click echoes too much like the sound of a gun chambering a round.
“Breathe through it,” Dante coaches, standing behind me as I work through magazine changes. “Don’t fight the memory. Acknowledge it and move past it.”
Easier said than done.
But slowly, my confidence is returning.
My body is remembering what it’s capable of.
