I brace for the accusations. For Luca to explode, for Alessandro to list every family member who died, for them to catalogue my sins in excruciating detail. My shoulders pull up involuntarily, muscles tensing for the blow.
Instead, Dante crosses the room and does something unexpected. He crouches in front of my chair, putting himself below my eye level, making himself smaller. Non-threatening. It's what you do with frightened animals or traumatized children. His cologne, that expensive one Ana buys him, wraps around me.
"I need to tell you something," he signs slowly, making sure I'm watching. "And you're not going to like it."
My chest tightens, ribs feeling like they might crack. What could be worse than what I've already confessed?
His hands move with careful deliberation, the whisper of skin through air almost musical. "I've known about your promise to Mikhail for years."
The room goes completely still. Even Luca stops pacing, frozen mid-step. The words don't make sense. Can't make sense.
"After Papa died, I searched your room," Dante continues, his dark eyes never leaving mine. "Found a letter from Mikhail hidden in your desk. It detailed everything. The massacre plan, his warning to you, the promise he made you give not to tell anyone."
"There was no letter," I whisper, my voice cracking from disuse, throat raw. "I would have—"
"I destroyed it," he signs.
The admission rocks me back in my chair, the leather creaking, cold sweat breaking across my skin.
"To protect you," he signs quickly, seeing my face. "You'd already blocked everything out. Your mind was protecting you from the trauma. If you'd found that letter, learned the truth while you were still so fragile…"
"You KNEW?" The words tear from my throat, raw and bleeding. "All this time, you knew?"
"Yes."
"And you never told me?"
He doesn't flinch from my accusation. "You didn't remember. Your mind protected you the only way it could. I thought—" He stops, starts again, hands moving more slowly. "I thought if you never remembered, you'd never have to carry it."
"I've been trying to remember for eleven years!" I'm on my feet now, the chair falling backward with a crash that echoes. "Since I was fourteen, I've been struggling with fragments, with nightmares, with guilt I couldn't name or understand. And you KNEW?"
My whole body shakes, muscles trembling with rage and betrayal and something that feels like drowning.
Luca makes a sound, low and dangerous. "You knew she betrayed us and you said nothing?"
Dante stands slowly, facing Luca now but still signing so I can see. "I knew she was a fifteen-year-old girl who made an impossible choice."
"She let Papa die!" Luca's voice rises, his famous control cracking like ice under pressure.
"She was a child." Dante's hands move sharply now, angry, cutting through the air with violent precision. "A child in love who was asked to choose between her father and a boy who would die if she spoke. What would you have done?"
"I would have chosen family!"
"Even if it was Faith?" Dante signs, and Luca stops mid-stride. "We both know you would have chosen Faith over anyone. Besides, Mikhail also promised her he would stop the massacre."
"Which he failed to do," Alessandro says.
Dante turns back to me, his expression softer now. "I forgave you years ago, Sofia. Before you even knew there was something to forgive."
"How can you—" The words catch in my throat, salt from tears burning my lips.
"Because you were fifteen. Because a boy you loved begged you to trust him, to give him time to find another way. Because if you'd known Papa would actually die, if you'd known there was no other way, you might have chosen differently." He pauses, hands still for a moment. "Or maybe not. But you were a CHILD."
"Scores of people died," I whisper, the words barely audible past the constriction in my throat.
"Yes. And you've been dying slowly ever since. Isn't that punishment enough?"
The silence that follows feels heavy enough to crush bones. Then Luca explodes.
