The car ride back to the mansion was cloaked in silence, though the echo of gunfire still rang in Aria's ears. Her hands were clenched tightly in her lap, her body rigid, her chest rising and falling in shallow bursts as she replayed every second of the ambush. The moment when the bullet had nearly taken her life. The way Lorenzo had thrown himself into the line of fire without hesitation. And then—God help her—the kiss. It wasn't supposed to have meant anything, not from a man like him. Yet she couldn't forget the desperation in it, the fire, the taste of inevitability pressed against her lips. It had seared itself into her memory, a scar she knew she would carry long after the blood dried from tonight.
Lorenzo's silence was its own kind of storm. He drove with one hand, the other pressed against his side, where crimson had spread across his shirt, dark and heavy. He hadn't mentioned it, hadn't flinched when the fabric stuck wetly to his skin, but she could see the paleness creeping into his face, the slight tremor in his fingers when he thought she wasn't watching. The sight of him—this man who stood like iron before everyone else—swaying under the weight of blood loss unsettled her more than she wanted to admit. He wasn't invincible. He was flesh and bone and pain, and tonight, he was bleeding because of her.
By the time they reached the mansion, she couldn't contain herself. As soon as the door shut behind them, Aria turned to him, her voice breaking past the tightness in her throat. "You're hurt."
He brushed her off, his tone sharp, commanding, as though that alone could hide his weakness. "It's nothing."
But she saw the way his body sagged when he thought no one was looking, the way his knuckles whitened against the doorframe as they ascended the stairs. Something inside her rebelled against his stubborn pride, against the walls he always built between them. Without another word, she took his arm and half-dragged, half-guided him toward the bedroom. He didn't resist, though his silence spoke volumes, his jaw tight with some unspoken war inside him.
When they entered the room, the sight of the white sheets waiting on the bed made her chest ache. She couldn't bear the thought of them stained by his blood, and yet that was exactly what happened when he sat down, pulling off his jacket with deliberate, pained movements. The crimson spread across the fabric, bright against the pale linen, and Aria's stomach twisted.
"Let me," she said, her voice steady now, a thread of steel woven through it. She moved to the drawer where she had seen the servants keep first aid supplies, pulling them out with hands that trembled not from fear, but from the intensity of what she was about to do.
Lorenzo watched her with unreadable eyes, his silence louder than any refusal. He didn't stop her when she knelt before him, when her fingers gently brushed the edge of his torn shirt. She hesitated only a moment before pulling the fabric back, revealing the angry wound beneath. The sight made her breath hitch—it wasn't deep enough to kill him, but it was bad enough that ignoring it would.
"Stubborn fool," she muttered under her breath, but the words carried no venom.
She cleaned the wound carefully, her touch as gentle as she could make it despite his occasional winces. Each time he flinched, her chest tightened, her heart betraying her with every pang of empathy. She wasn't supposed to care. She was supposed to see him as the monster who had stolen her life, her freedom, her choices. And yet, as she dabbed away the blood, as she pressed the cloth against his skin, she couldn't deny the truth anymore: he was more than that.
He was a man. A man who bled, who fought, who shielded her with his own body.
Her hands lingered longer than they should have, her fingers brushing against the warmth of his skin, tracing the hard lines of his muscles where blood hadn't touched. The air between them grew heavy, charged, and when she finally lifted her eyes to meet his, the intensity there nearly undid her. His gaze was dark, unreadable, but there was no mockery in it, no cold detachment. For once, he looked at her like she was something more than debt.
Aria swallowed hard, forcing herself to speak through the storm inside her. "I don't… I don't see you the same way anymore."
His brow furrowed slightly, the faintest crack in his mask.
"I thought you were nothing but cruel. A monster," she continued, her voice trembling but steady. "But you bleed. You protect. You kiss me like the world is ending." She shook her head, a bitter laugh slipping past her lips. "You're not just what I thought you were."
Silence stretched between them, heavy and fragile all at once. He said nothing, only studied her as though he were weighing the truth in her words, as though he wanted to believe them but didn't dare. She finished bandaging him, her fingers tying the cloth with more care than she had ever intended to give him, and when she pulled back, her heart hammered in her chest.
It felt like a turning point, one neither of them had wanted but neither could avoid. The sheets beneath him were stained red, a reminder of the violence that followed them, but in that moment, all she could see was the man sitting before her, the man she had begun to understand in ways she wished she didn't.
She rose to her feet, ready to leave before she lost the fragile control she had over herself. But before she could take a step, there was a soft knock at the door. A servant entered, her eyes lowered, her hands trembling as she passed Aria a folded slip of paper.
"No one saw me give this to you," the girl whispered, before hurrying out as quickly as she had come.
Confused, Aria unfolded the note. Her blood ran cold as she read the words scrawled across the page, written in a careful, deliberate hand:
Betray Lorenzo, and you will live. Stay loyal, and you will die with him.
At the bottom, a single symbol marked the page—the crest of a rival family.
Aria's fingers clenched around the paper, her heart pounding in her chest. She looked back at Lorenzo, who was still seated on the bed, his eyes half-lidded from exhaustion, unaware of the choice that had just been laid at her feet.
And in that moment, staring at the blood on the white sheets, she realized the walls closing in around her weren't just his. They were hers. And now, she had to decide which would break first.