Confrontation

Confrontation
Aria’s POV

I cannot make my body move.

My feet are frozen to the ground, like the earth itself has decided to hold me in place. My heart is beating too fast, too loud, like it is trying to escape my chest. Everything feels wrong. Too sharp. Too bright. Too real.

Dante takes a step toward me.

Just one.

My body reacts before my mind can catch up. I stumble back, breath tearing out of my lungs in a broken gasp. Matteo is there instantly. His hands grip my arms, solid and warm, keeping me upright.

“Aria,” he says firmly. “Breathe. Look at me. Breathe.”

I try. I really do. But my chest feels locked. My vision swims.

Dante says my name again, softer this time, like he is afraid to break me.

“I’m here,” he says. “I’m alive.”

The words feel violent.

“No,” I choke. “No, you’re not.”

Enzo shifts closer, his entire body tight, eyes never leaving Dante. Like he is ready for this to turn into something dangerous at any second.

Dante stops moving. He keeps his hands visible, palms open.

“I didn’t die,” he says slowly. “I couldn’t.”

My head shakes on its own. “I buried you.”

His jaw tightens. Pain flashes across his face, raw and unmistakable.

“I know.”

Matteo’s grip on me tightens slightly. “Keep breathing,” he murmurs. “Just breathe.”

Dante swallows. “The explosion was meant to look final. I escaped through the lower tunnels. Barely. Nathan escaped too.”

My stomach drops.

“Nathan,” I whisper.

Dante nods once. “I followed him. I couldn’t do it if anyone knew I was alive. Not you. Not my brothers. Everyone had to believe it.”

My head spins violently. The world tilts.

“I tracked him,” Dante continues. “I found him. And I ended it. Nathan is dead. He can’t hurt you again.”

Silence crashes down around us.

I turn slowly to Enzo. Then to Matteo.

Their faces tell me everything before they open their mouths.

“You knew,” I whisper.

Matteo exhales shakily. “We found out a while ago.”

A while ago.

Something inside me snaps.

“You knew,” I repeat, louder now. “You watched me grieve. You watched me break. You stood there while I buried him.”

“We were trying to protect you,” Enzo says urgently. “Aria, you were pregnant. We didn’t know how to tell you.”

I laugh, sharp and broken. “Protect me?”

My gaze flies back to Dante.

I cross the space between us and slap him.

The sound cracks through the air.

Dante does not move. He does not flinch. He only nods slowly.

“I deserve that,” he says quietly.

Tears burn my eyes, but they do not fall yet.

“You let me mourn you,” I scream. “You let me think my child would never know you. You let me stand at your grave.”

“I had no choice,” he says.

“You always have a choice,” I shout.

My chest heaves. My hands shake violently.

“I loved you,” I say, voice breaking. “I loved you all. And you all lied to me.”

“Aria,” Matteo says, stepping closer.

I turn away from them. From all of them.

“I can’t,” I say. “I can’t do this right now.”

I storm toward the house, my vision blurring, heart shattering with every step. I hear my name behind me. I do not stop.

The air feels too thin to hold all of this at once, like the truth is sucking the oxygen straight out of my lungs, and I realize my hands are trembling so badly that Matteo’s grip is the only thing keeping me upright. Dante’s voice keeps coming, steady and low, explaining things that should not exist, filling the space with words that clash violently against the grief I have been living inside for two months, and every sentence feels like it is tearing something open in me that never healed properly. My mind flashes through memories I did not know were waiting, standing at the grave while my knees nearly gave out, the cold stone under my fingertips, the way I whispered goodbye because there was nothing else left to say, the nights I cried silently so the baby would not feel the violence of my grief, the mornings I woke up already exhausted from missing someone who was apparently never gone. My stomach twists painfully, not from nausea but from the weight of realizing that my suffering had been allowed, calculated, justified in their minds as necessary, and the betrayal burns hotter than the shock. I look at Dante and I do not see a miracle, I see a ghost who watched me shatter from a distance. I look at Enzo and Matteo and I do not see protectors, I see men who stood close enough to feel my pain and chose silence anyway. My chest tightens until every breath feels like work, like effort, like I am fighting my own body to stay standing, and for one terrifying second I wonder if the baby can feel this too, if this anger and hurt is sinking into something that has never known anything but uncertainty. My vision blurs at the edges, not from tears yet but from the sheer force of everything colliding at once, love and rage and relief and resentment tangled so tightly that I cannot separate them, and the worst part is knowing that if Dante had stayed dead, this pain would have stayed simple. But he did not. He came back alive and dragged the grave with him.

Inside, the door closes hard.

My hands press against my stomach as I slide down the wall, breath coming in broken pieces.

Outside, I know they are standing there.

One alive.

Two guilty.

And nothing will ever be the same again.