Chapter 5

Aria POV:

I returned to my room to find them waiting for me: an ambush. My mother, my father, Lia, and Dante.

"You are so selfish," my mother's voice cut through the silence, sharp and laced with the old dialect. "You have driven her to this."

My father stepped forward, his voice devoid of warmth-the Consigliere addressing a problem, not a daughter. "For the good of the Family," he stated, "and for Serafina's fragile health, you will give the ceremony your blessing."

I looked past them, my eyes locking on Dante. "Is this your will?"

He wouldn't meet my gaze. "It's just a formality," he muttered, his words aimed at the floor. "To calm her. It won't be a real union. It means nothing."

A lie. He was the Don. Any union he presided over was binding.

I bowed my head, a mask of submission falling into place. "As you wish, Don."

Serafina swept into the room then, a portrait of fragile beauty. She rushed to my side, her eyes glistening with calculated sorrow. "Oh, Aria, I'm so sorry this is hurting you. I'll tell them to call it off."

As she spoke, her hand went to her own arm, her nails digging into her flesh, drawing beads of blood. It was a subtle, vicious performance.

Lia saw the blood and shrieked, her loyalty a blind, rabid thing. "See? See what you do to her? You're always the one causing pain, always tearing this Family apart!"

The accusation, so baseless, so predictable, didn't just sting-it severed the last thread of my restraint. A laugh escaped my lips, a cold, brittle sound in the suffocating room.

"You want my blessing?" I asked, my voice dangerously soft. I met each of their gazes in turn-my family, the man I was promised to. "Then kneel. All of you. Beg for it."

Dante's head snapped up, his eyes wide with shock. He looked at me, a desperate plea in his gaze, and I could read his silent appeal as clearly as if he'd shouted it. I owe her my life, Aria.

I stepped closer, my voice dropping to an icy whisper only he could hear. "It was me. I took the bullet for you, not her."

He recoiled as if I'd struck him. Disgust and disbelief warred in his eyes. He turned his face away, refusing to meet my gaze again.

And in that moment, the invisible thread of trust that had connected us since childhood, the one I had clung to even in the darkest hours of my cell, was finally, irrevocably severed. He had cut it himself.