Instead, she stops ten feet from her father. “Papa,” she says. Her voice carries. Everyone in the corridor hears.
Slade watches. The Kings don’t even breathe.
Aurelio drops his arms, steps forward.
“Piccolo. You look… like hell.”
She almost smiles, but her jaw clenches. “You did this?”
He looks at the dead on the ground, shrugs. “They made it necessary.”
Julian cuts in. “How very old school of you, Don Aurelio. Leave a path of bodies and call it diplomacy.”
Aurelio doesn’t even look at him. All his focus is on Lia. “I told you I would do anything to get you back,” he says. “I warned you.”
She shakes her head. “It’s over. I’m not coming home.”
He moves closer. The men behind him tense, hands on guns. Cai’s guys are getting nervous, too, fingers ready, wrapped around their guns. I hear the faint sound of Ophelia’s roars.
Aurelio stops two feet from his daughter.
“Is this the life you want?” he says, voice low. “Running with… animals? Getting shot at in hospitals? This is not the future I promised you.”
She steps back. “I didn’t want a future you promised. I wanted one I chose.”
He’s quiet for a long time. Then, finally, he turns to me.
The look he gives is pure poison. I can smell the hate. But he doesn’t snarl, doesn’t threaten. He just says, “You took her from me.”
I’m about to answer—some violence, some threat, the kind of line you put on a tombstone—but Dahlia speaks first.
“He saved me,” she says. “He didn’t steal me. I chose him…willingly.”
Aurelio’s mask slips. His face collapses. The men behind him shuffle, unsure if they’re supposed to look away or not.
He reaches for her. “Come home, piccola. Please.”
She stands her ground. “No.”
He doesn’t know what to do. He’s a man without a plan.
Julian steps in, closer now, and the whole corridor shifts as both sides tighten. “You got what you wanted,” he says. “She’s alive. You can leave now, before I lose my patience and introduce you to the bottom of the river.”
Aurelio ignores him. He looks at Dahlia, then at me, then at the guys guarding the door. He’s doing the calculus: how many dead before he loses his daughter forever.
Aurelio’s eyes scan her—up, down, taking inventory of every mark, every new scar, every bruise she got because of us. For a second, I think he’ll cave. Maybe hug her, forgive, forget, whatever real parents do.
But then he looks past her, straight at me, and the hate there is old and pure.
He drops his voice. “Come home, Dahlia, it is not a request.” He reaches for her hand. “Let me fix this. You don’t have to be with them. This boy—” his finger jabs the air at me, “—he’s nothing. Just a rabid dog waiting to be put down. You know it. I know it.”
My jaw cracks from how hard I’m clenching. Julian shifts beside us, lazy smile fixed on his lips, but his eyes are black and hungry.
Dahlia pulls her hand back. “Not here, Papa. Please. Not now, not when a child is being born down the hall.”
Her words cut him, but he doesn’t bleed easy. “You would rather stand with strangers and killers than your own blood?”
“I’d rather stand with people who see me,” she whispers.
