Can I Hug You?

Can I Hug You?
Third Person’s Pov

Outside, the melody continued—faint, but persistent. It slipped through the cold corridors of the DEVescori mansion like smoke from a forgotten candle, soft yet powerful, impossible to ignore.

The sweet melody made Tiberio’s thoughts flicker to Alice.

He finally recognized it. After all, her voice was an unexpected intrusion in his world of blood and death.

The melody rose gently, each note climbing higher than the last like a fragile staircase to someplace holy.

A place once filled with whispers of violence, with history buried beneath marble and blood now held its breath. Even the haunting souls—if they truly existed—seemed to stop and listen.

Tiberio didn’t need to look at Silas to know the sound had reached him.

His brother—his cursed, broken brother had stopped moving. His lips no longer whispered to the figures only he could see. 

His trembling hands now hung still by his sides, his chest rising in slow, uneven breaths. 

For the first time in hours, maybe days, the wildness in his eyes—the storm that usually raged without pause—began to fade.

Alice’s voice wrapped around him like a spell. 

The effect of Alice on Silas made Tiberio uneasy.

Then Silas whispered—his voice thin, like glass.

“Alice.”

Tiberio’s eyes snapped to him.

His hand curled into a fist before he even noticed. 

Rage warred with something deeper. A need he didn’t want to name. But he reminded himself, bitterly, why she was still here, and alive.

It was for Silas. His broken, brilliant brother—chained to something only Alice’s voice seemed able to reach.

Her voice was a tool to quiet Silas’s demons—yes—but not to stir his own.

Tiberio refused to think deeper than that.

He stared at his brother, who now looked up with more clarity in his eyes than Tiberio had seen in months. Perhaps years.

Silas turned to him, a haunted plea shadowing his face.

“Take me to her,” Silas breathed. A plea from a man who had never begged for anything. 

Tiberio hesitated, heart twisting with something he didn’t dare name. He gave a curt nod, jaw still tight, and signaled to Reid.

As they turned toward the west wing, he muttered under his breath, more to himself than anyone listening.

“Let’s see if the angel still sings when the devil comes to listen.”

As Alice sang her final note, the room seemed to exhale with her. The last vibration of her voice lingered in the air, and then—she heard it.

Footsteps. Heavy, and purposeful.

One set she knew too well—Tiberio’s. 

The commanding weight of a man who walked like he owned not just land, but people. She stayed facing the piano, eyes closed, back straight, like a doll waiting to be rewound. 

Tiberio’s scent arrived before he did—dark spices and cold steel. The room no longer felt like her sanctuary. It felt like the mouth of a lion, and she was back between its teeth.

But she didn’t turn around. She didn’t flinch.

“Let me guess,” she said, her voice dry with defiance. “Coming here without permission is another offense added to the list?”

No answer.

Odd. Tiberio was never one to let sarcasm go unpunished. If anything, he’d usually match venom with venom, his voice sharp enough to bleed her dignity.

Her brows furrowed. Cautiously, she turned her head—expecting the beast.

But it wasn’t him.

It was Silas.

He stood in the middle of the room, framed by moonlight and silence. His frame looked smaller somehow, weighed down by something invisible but suffocating. 

His once-menacing expression was now hollow, a canvas of torment with no brush of arrogance. For the first time since Alice met him, Silas didn’t seem dangerous. He seemed human.

“Silas?” Her voice cracked, soft and unsure as she slowly rose from the piano bench.

Their eyes locked, and for a moment it felt like they were staring across a battlefield. Not as enemies, but as two people quietly drowning in different wars.

Then, he broke the silence with a sentence that split the room in two.

“I want to hug you, Alice.”

It wasn’t a question.

He didn’t ask.

It was a statement. A command. Even in his brokenness, the DeVescori blood ran hot through his veins. 

He was a man born to take. And now he was taking her—gently, but with the same certainty as a king claiming land.

Alice’s jaw parted in disbelief, her breath catching in her throat. Her gaze darted to the doorway.

Tiberio.

He stood still, carved from shadow and fury. His jaw was clenched so tightly she could see the muscle ticking. 

The moonlight carved his features in stone—those haunting, mismatched eyes looked like they were battling two very different wars: rage… and something more dangerous. Possession.

She couldn’t hold his gaze for long. It was too raw, too revealing… too dangerous.

Her eyes drifted back to Silas, whose own gaze was entirely different—haunted, frayed at the edges, barely stitched together by whatever thread of sanity he still clung to.

She didn’t understand why, but the idea of granting his request felt like betrayal. Not to herself, but to Tiberio. 

Maybe it was because, somewhere along the twisted path of her captivity, she had grown used to being his—his prisoner, his burden, his obsession. And now, the idea of answering to another felt disloyal. Even wrong.

She parted her lips to speak, to gently decline or perhaps stall… 

But Silas moved faster.

He stepped forward and pulled her against him, his arms wrapping around her waist. His body collapsed into hers, heavy and trembling, as if her presence was the only thing tethering him to reality.

And slowly—almost instantly—his entire frame began to relax.

Alice stood frozen, her arms still by her sides. Not returning the hug, just receiving it.

And across the room, she could feel Tiberio’s fury. She could almost hear his thoughts screaming. Yet somehow… she didn’t move, didn’t push Silas away.

Because in that moment, something terrifying and strange slipped into her heart.