I grab the doorframe because my knees are buckling, because the room is spinning, because the words don't make sense. They're arranged in the right order but my brain refuses to process them into meaning.
Lorenzo is dead.
Sophia's legs give out. Nico catches her, lowering them both to the ground with a controlled descent that tells me he's been holding her up for a while. She crumples against him, still hitting his chest with weakening fists. Slower now, each blow carrying less force, as if her body is running out of fuel even though her grief has barely started.
And underneath the shock, underneath the disbelief and the horror, a different thought pushes through. Cold and sharp and selfish and I hate myself for thinking it but I can't stop:
Where is Dante?
He kissed my forehead like a man saying goodbye.
Is he dead too?
Is he lying somewhere right now while I stand here frozen in a doorway?
The thought nearly sends me to the floor beside Sophia. My vision narrows. My chest constricts. For three horrible seconds, I can't breathe at all.
Then I shove it down. Lock it in a box. Slam the lid shut.
But Nico would’ve said if he was dead too. Right?
Not now. You can fall apart later. Right now, she needs you.
I drop to my knees beside Sophia. I reach for her, pulling her away from Nico and into my arms, and she comes.
"Sophia." I press my mouth against her hair. "I'm here. I'm right here."
She collapses into me. Her fingers dig into my shoulders hard. Her body shakes with sobs so violent I can barely hold her.
"He promised." The words come out mangled, soaked in tears and pressed against my collarbone. "He promised he'd come back. He always comes back. He always?—"
Her voice dissolves into a wail that I feel in my bones.
I hold her tighter. Press my cheek against the top of her head. Close my eyes.
I don't say it's okay because it's not okay. I don't say I'm sorry because the word is too small for this. I don't say anything at all. I just hold her the way she held me when I woke up in that hospital bed two years ago — fiercely, desperately, like I could absorb her pain through contact alone if I just squeezed hard enough.
"Move. Move aside."
Giulia's voice cuts through the chaos with the practiced authority of a woman who has weathered decades of this family's disasters. She appears in the doorway with a glass of water in one hand and a small pill bottle in the other, her face pale but composed in the way that only comes from having buried people before.
"Get her on the bed," Giulia says. "Now. Before she hurts herself?—"
She stops mid-sentence.
"Just get her on the bed," she finishes quietly.
Nico nods and reaches for Sophia, but the moment his hands touch her she erupts again.
"No!" The scream tears through the room, sending a physical jolt through everyone present. "I have to go to him! I have to see him! Let me GO!"
"Sophia, you can't." Nico's composure finally breaks all the way. His voice cracks on her name, and I see his hands trembling as he tries to hold her without hurting her. "There's nothing — you can't?—"
"Don't tell me what I can't do!" She shoves against his chest with a strength that shouldn't be possible from a woman her size. "That's my HUSBAND! That's my?—"
The fight goes out of her mid-sentence, like a candle flame snuffed by wind. She folds in on herself, her screams collapsing into sobs that are somehow worse. Quiet and broken and hopeless.
I grab her face. Force her to look at me. Her skin is hot under my palms. Wet with tears.
