The silence in the penthouse was absolute, thick enough to suffocate in.
I stared at the ruin of Dante's chest, my mind struggling to process the visual proof of a violence I had never known he endured. The scar was brutal. It was a massive, puckered crater just above his heart, a testament to a wound that should have, by all medical logic, killed him instantly.
I let you go so I could take the bullets meant for you.
His words echoed in the massive, empty room, ringing with a profound, devastating truth.
Five years. Five years of harboring a bitter, icy resentment. Five years of telling myself I was discarded, useless, a fragile civilian he couldn't wait to shed so he could claim his bloody throne. I had built a new life on the foundation of that anger, using Leo as a pathetic shield a
