The night was far from over.
The sniper had been taken down, the perimeter sealed, the house swept twice over but the tension didn't leave the mansion. It hung like a storm caught under glass.
Aria sat on the edge of Dante's bed, hands folded tightly in her lap. The cracked bulletproof window had already been covered, but the sight of the shattered laminate still burned behind her eyes.
A bullet.
Through reinforced glass.
Meant for Dante.
But one that would have killed her first.
Her heart still hadn't settled.
The door opened softly, and Dante stepped inside. The air shifted cold, charged, powerful. But different now. Not just intimidating.
He looked… frayed.
His usually immaculate suit jacket was gone. His shirt sleeves rolled to the elbows, revealing the tattoos inked around his forearms, black, brutal lines that looked more like scars than art.
His silver eyes were darker than she'd ever seen them. Almost haunted.
He shut the door quietly behind him. Not the usual sharp slam. A quiet click.
She froze.
He didn't look like the devil she'd met the day she signed her life into a contract.
He looked like a man holding himself together by will alone.
Dante approached her slowly. No command in his steps. No dominance. Just a quiet, heavy presence.
"Are you hurt?" he asked, voice low.
She shook her head. "No."
He exhaled, a breath so soft she almost missed it.
"Good." He ran a hand through his hair. "Good."
A long silence followed.
He didn't sit beside her. He stood just in front of her, as if torn between distance and proximity. As if getting too close risked something neither of them could afford.
Aria swallowed, gathering courage. "Were you able to find out who sent the sniper?"
Dante's jaw clenched. "Not yet. But I will."
"Is it the same person who left the bullet at the gate?"
His silence was answer enough.
"Why is he targeting you?" she whispered.
Dante's gaze dropped, not in shame, not in fear, but in old, bone-deep pain.
"You want the truth?" he murmured.
"Yes."
His fingers flexed at his sides. Then he turned away from her and walked to the cracked window, placing a hand on the temporary steel plate covering the damage.
When he spoke, his voice was quiet. Dangerous only because of the emotion beneath it.
"My mother was murdered."
Aria's breath stilled.
"Murdered by a man who wanted control of the Moretti syndicate. A man my father trusted." Dante's hand curled into a fist. "When I was fourteen, I watched her bleed on the marble floor of our home. And I watched him walk away."
Her chest tightened.
"This is the world I was born into. Betrayal. Blood. Power stolen through pain." He turned slowly, silver eyes meeting hers. "And it's the world you're now tangled in because of me."
A tremor moved through her.
He wasn't telling her to scare her.
He wasn't using it as leverage.
He was giving her a piece of himself.
The first piece.
Aria stood from the bed, legs uncertain, and took a step toward him.
"You didn't choose this life," she said softly.
"No," he admitted. "But I embraced it. I became the weapon my father needed."
"Why?"
He blinked.
She hadn't meant to ask it so plainly, but it was already in the air between them. Heavy. Human.
Dante looked at her as if no one had ever asked him that question.
"Because I wanted to protect the people I love," he said quietly. "And because I never wanted anyone I care about to feel what I felt that night."
Her breath caught.
"That's why you pulled me down," she whispered. "Why you covered me."
A shadow of something, pain, vulnerability, passed through his expression.
"Yes."
A beat.
"You could have been shot," she said, voice trembling.
"I would kill a hundred men before I let that happen."
Silence stretched between them, fragile and thick.
His breathing shifted. Slow. Controlled. Strained.
He wasn't the monster people whispered about.
Wasn't the cold, emotionless devil she believed him to be.
He was a man.
A man carved by loss.
Wounded by loyalty.
Burned by betrayal.
And yet… he was trying. Trying to shield her from the darkness he lived in.
Aria stepped closer.
Almost reaching for him. Almost touching his arm. Almost bridging the distance he thought he needed to keep.
"Dante," she whispered, "you're not alone."
Something flickered in his eyes, fear. Hope. Disbelief.
He took a half-step toward her, as if drawn by a force he'd spent years resisting.
His voice was barely audible. "Aria…"
For the first time, she saw him not as the Devil of the Moretti syndicate. Not as the cold billionaire who had trapped her in a contract.
But as Dante.
As the boy who had watched his mother die.
As the man who had thrown himself in front of a bullet for her.
She reached out, slowly and her fingers brushed his hand.
Just a whisper of touch.
But Dante's breath hitched sharply.
His walls didn't crumble.
They cracked.
Then...
A knock on the door shattered the moment.
"Boss," Nico called. "We found something."
Dante's jaw tightened. He took a step back from her, the shift quick, almost painful to watch.
But his eyes lingered on hers for one heartbeat longer.
"We'll finish this later," he said softly.
Then he turned and opened the door, mask sliding back into place, but she had already seen beneath it.
As he left with Nico, the quiet truth settled over her:
Dante Moretti wasn't just a devil wrapped in power.
He was a man haunted by ghosts.
And tonight, she had seen his soul for the first time.