Chapter 39

Dante merely twisted the right corner of his mouth upward, laughing low. Hollow, broken laughter slipped out of his throat in short, bitter bursts.

“Dante,” Rhys called him again when Dante remained silent.

It was the gentlest, most vulnerable tone Dante had heard from him in the past twenty-four hours. After enduring nothing but the freezing, razor-sharp force of Rhys’s anger all day, hearing that soft voice made a fresh wave of hurt slam into his chest. If he opened his mouth, he knew he would patheticly ask how Rhys could do this to him. Dante forced rigidity into his smiling lips. He refused to look weak in front of this crowd—and especially not in front of Rhys’s upper-class lover. He already felt miserable enough to die.

“…Dante, what on earth are you doing here?” Rhys asked, his brow furrowing.

The moment the question left Rhys’s lips, whatever remaining threads of Dante’s sanity existed finally snapped.

“Anywhere else, fine,” Dante snarled, stepping forward. “But not the fountain.”

“…What?” Rhys blinked, his expression blank, as though he genuinely couldn’t comprehend the accusation.

At that display of innocence, the unnatural heat inside Dante roared into a wildfire. He had foolishly thought he could never be angry with Rhys, but he was wrong. What was he doing here? What about Rhys? Why here, of all places?

“If you have a new man, you could have gone literally anywhere else,” Dante spat, his voice ragged as his breathing turned shallow. “How could you come here? You said we should stop by this exact fountain on our fourth-anniversary trip. You said you wanted to throw two coins together. Wasn’t that a promise you made with me? Or were you thinking of this person instead of me even back then, when you said you wanted to throw them?”

The stranger, listening to the furious accusations spilling out of the large, trembling man, looked at Rhys with sudden alarm, realizing something had gone horribly off-script. Of course he did. Getting caught red-handed by the ex-boyfriend clearly hadn’t been part of the itinerary.

Yet, even after being caught at the scene of the crime, Rhys did not look flustered. Instead, he rose slowly to his feet, studying Dante’s flushed face and unsteady posture with an intense, scanning gaze.

“You… you’re drunk, aren’t you?” Rhys whispered low.

Dante didn’t know how the hell his ex had deduced it so quickly, but that was entirely irrelevant right now.

“I’m the absolute idiot who threw coins into that water without knowing a damn thing,” Dante shouted, gesturing wildly toward the pool. “I’m such a fucking idiot. No… wait. I can just cancel the wish, can’t I? Right. I’ll do exactly that. Addio, my wish!”

After shouting the bitter Italian farewell that signified a permanent goodbye, Dante planted one heavy sneaker firmly onto the stone edge of the fountain. In a reckless, aggressive posture that suggested he was about to dive into the historic waters headfirst, he peered down into the illuminated pool. As he remembered it, he had thrown his coins somewhere right around this section. If he searched the floor thoroughly, his precious two cents would come back to him.

Just as Dante bent forward to plunge his hands into the water, the stranger beside Rhys panicked. Striding forward, he wrapped his arms around Dante’s torso to haul him back.

“Um, Mr. Dante? You are Mr. Dante, right?” the man shouted, struggling against Dante’s sheer mass. “I think there’s been some kind of massive misunderstanding, so let’s just calm down for a second! You can’t go into the fountain. You’ll get arrested and fined!”

As the man shouted, gripping Dante tightly around the waist, Rhys immediately stepped into the fray. He caught Dante firmly by the shoulder, pulling him back from the ledge. Then, turning a lethal, terrifying gaze onto his companion, Rhys commanded in a voice dripping with absolute venom:

“Let go of him, Blake.”

“I’ll let go when he backs away from the fountain!” Blake hissed, quickly burying his face behind the high collar of his coat. “At this rate, we’re going to end up as a viral social media short. Look over there. They’re already filming…!”

“I said let go,” Rhys repeated, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous whisper. “I’ve got him.”

Blake cast a skeptical glance between them. “Can you actually handle him? Your boyfriend seems to have completely lost his mind.”

It would have been nice if Dante had been sober enough to process the word boyfriend, but Blake wasn’t wrong—Dante was entirely out of his mind. Right now, his head was consumed by a single, stubborn fixation: he had to climb back into the water, pull out the coins, and retrieve his wish. Such was the reckless, heavy power of alcohol.

“I can, so just—”

Rhys’s voice cut off sharply as the constricting force around Dante’s waist vanished. Without Blake’s counterweight, Dante’s body pitched forward, losing balance. Just as he began to fall toward the stone rim, Rhys yanked him backward with sudden, violent force.

Following the abrupt change in direction, Dante’s tangled legs gave out completely. He collapsed, nearly cracking his skull against the cobblestones, but Rhys wrapped his entire body around him, absorbing the brunt of the impact as they went down together.

“Oof. That looked painful,” Blake said, slowly stepping into Dante’s field of vision.

Dante lay flat on his back, staring blankly up at the Roman sky, gasping for air. Blake stood over them, his smiling eyes bright with unvarnished amusement. The shock of the fall had cleared the alcoholic fog in Dante’s head a little, but it did nothing to soothe the raw hostility boiling in his chest. To Dante, the man standing over them was Rhys’s affair partner. Or perhaps, worse yet, Dante himself was the side piece.

Even watching the surge of naked hurt spread across Dante’s face, Blake kept right on smiling. The sight of him looking so relaxed—while Dante’s own insides were violently turning over—provoked a sudden burst of adrenaline. Dante tried to bolt upright, but Rhys, pinned flat beneath him, held him down.

Rhys wrapped both arms tightly around Dante’s waist, locking him in a fierce embrace. Despite the fury, the betrayal, and the audience, Dante’s heart fluttered. It had been so long since he had been held like this that he forgot, for a fleeting second, that he was supposed to be angry.

“Calm down, Dante,” Blake chimed in, leaning closer. “Or should I call you Devil Hunter? Rhys never showed me a picture, so I seriously wondered if you were a real person. But I see you do exist. Tell me, do you happen to own a red coat?”

While the heavy warmth of Rhys’s touch briefly quieted Dante, Blake’s bizarre rambling only stoked his temper. Under normal circumstances, Dante would have realized it was a joke about his name, but in his current state, every syllable out of Blake’s mouth felt like an executioner’s blade.

“How long have you been seeing Rhys?” Dante demanded, his voice thick but sharp. “Did you know Rhys had a lover? Dating someone who’s already taken is illegal. You can go to prison for that.”

Blake burst into a cheerful laugh. “Ahaha, really? I had no idea that law was passed. First I’ve heard of it.”

He was laughing. Dante felt as though the leftover heat in his veins might cause him to combust, and this man was standing under the streetlights laughing cheerfully.

Eyes wide with anger, Dante examined Blake’s face from top to bottom. The man was, admittedly, quite pretty. He wasn’t the striking, breathtaking blond that Rhys was, but he was bearable. With the corners of his mouth naturally lifted into a permanent smirk and lips a vibrant red, he undeniably suited the word beauty.

Perhaps noticing the intense scrutiny, Blake tilted his head. “Do you like my face? Your gaze is rather heated.”

At that irritating response, Dante renewed his struggle to rise, but Rhys pressed him down firmly. Still keeping his arms locked around Dante, Rhys shifted and sat up, dragging Dante with him until the two of them were seated together on the cold stones. The breath touching the sensitive nape of Dante’s neck was so vivid, so intimate, that it sent a strange shiver down his spine.

Then, Rhys whispered in a low, sunken voice right against his ear.

“…Where have you been?”

Dante felt Rhys’s arms go rigid around his waist, tightening hard enough to cause a faint ache. At the same time, the familiar, elegant scent Dante had longed for so desperately filled his senses. On the miserable journey to Rome, that fragrance had repeatedly deepened and scattered in his memories, but now it was real, and stronger than ever. The unpleasant, alcoholic heat boiling inside Dante began to transmute into something else. From every point where Rhys’s skin met his, a prickling warmth spread.

Breathing in the pleasant notes of Rhys’s perfume finally settled Dante’s explosive anger. Yet, the deep sense of betrayal still lingered.

Dante masked it with biting sarcasm. “What are you going to do if you know? We’re broken up.”

Rhys only held him tighter, his grip turning possessive. “I’m asking where you drank, and with whom, to come back stinking like this.”

At the word stinking, Dante’s pride flared. He turned his head slightly, burying his nose into his own shoulder to sniff his coat. There was a faint smell of restaurant food, sure, but it was hardly a stench. Rhys’s expensive floral fragrance was far more overpowering.

Dante couldn’t comprehend why he was the one being interrogated when Rhys was clearly the one caught red-handed. Just as Dante, feeling deeply wronged, opened his mouth to protest, Blake cut in.

“Rhys, let Mr. Devil Hunter go already. He’s been struggling with great vigor because he wants to come to me.”

Rhys snapped his head up, warning Blake in a voice saturated with pure killing intent. “Shut your mouth, Blake.”

The tone was so dangerously sharp that even Dante flinched in his arms. It was the first time he had ever heard Rhys use a voice like that. Even when Rhys had scolded him at the fountain that morning, he hadn’t sounded so utterly lethal.

Blake, however, merely grinned, as though this volatile dynamic was entirely familiar to him. “Ahaha, you’re seriously far gone. Mr. Devil Hunter here is your—”

“If you say one more word, I won’t do business with you.”

Blake, who hadn’t shown a single crack in his infuriating facade, immediately grimaced. The smile vanished. Dante didn’t know what kind of business they shared, but seeing the smugness wiped from that smirking face made him feel marginally better. Still, he wasn’t about to let the broader situation slide.

“Aah, how can our darling Rhys be so cold?” Blake sighed, targeting Dante once more. He clearly knew exactly where Dante’s triggers were. “Dante, did you know Rhys was this kind of man when you dated him? Because I dated him without knowing.”

Darling Rhys?

The words echoed in Dante’s head like a physical blow. Dante himself had never managed to use that pet name because he was always too embarrassed, and this stranger was tossing it around casually.

Watching Dante’s expression fracture in real time, Blake’s infuriating smile returned. Rhys glared at him, then hauled Dante up to his feet in one swift motion.

“Let’s go.”

“Let go of me, Rhys!” Dante protested, stumbling to keep up. “I have things to say to you, too, but first I have something to say to that man…!”

“That’s right, let him go,” Blake called out, waving a hand. “Mr. Dante says he wants to talk to me, doesn’t he? You go ahead.”

Rhys ignored Blake entirely, dragging Dante away by the wrist. Ordinarily, Dante might have allowed himself to be pulled along while pretending he had no choice, but the sheer injustice of it made him plant his feet. He resisted, pulling back against Rhys’s hold.

Then, Rhys slowly slid his fingers down, lacing them tightly between Dante’s.

The moment their fingers interlaced, Dante’s resolve wavered. Are we holding hands right now?

Startled by the familiar, firm grip—as though the trauma of the last few days had vanished and they had returned to the past—Dante looked up at him. Rhys seized that exact moment of hesitation, pulling him forcefully away from the square.

The heavy gazes of the onlookers clung to their retreating backs. Behind them, Blake’s voice drifted over the cobblestones one last time.

“See you again, Devil Hunter!”

It was a voice Dante desperately wanted to punch, but all his focus had narrowed down to the warmth of their joined hands. He couldn’t act on the urge.

Rhys strode forward, his pace furious, like a man trying to outrun the entire city of Rome. The further they walked, the tighter his grip became, until Dante felt as if the small bones in his hand might genuinely break. Rhys looked absolutely livid, and Dante couldn’t endure the oppressive silence for long.

“You do know I’m the one who should be angry right now, don’t you?” Dante demanded, struggling to keep stride. “Since when have you been seeing that man?”

Without breaking his stride or looking back, Rhys answered flatly. “We’re not like that.”

“Did you somehow miss him calling you darling just now? Because I heard it perfectly clear.”

At the word darling, Rhys paused. For a fraction of a second, his relentless forward momentum stopped, and he looked back over his shoulder. He searched Dante’s face, his expression unreadable, before turning forward and continuing his march. The hand crushing Dante’s didn’t relax in the slightest. The grip was tight enough to make Dante’s eyes water, but he refused to pull away.

“He does that on purpose,” Rhys said, his voice clipped. “He knows it annoys me.”

Whether Rhys was lying to cover his tracks or telling the absolute truth, it was obvious he knew Blake intimately. And of course he did. They had met all the way in Rome, after all.

“Did you come to Rome because of him?”

Rhys gave no answer.

When he refused to speak, a fresh surge of injustice and misery rose in Dante’s throat. “If you don’t answer, I have no choice but to think whatever I want. If you were going to get caught like this anyway, why did you get so defensive when I asked if you were cheating? It was true, wasn’t it? You were already in love with someone else.”

By the time Dante spat those words out, they had reached the front of the hotel. Rhys yanked him hard, spinning Dante around to face him. Pulling Dante flush against his side, Rhys warned him, his face an expressionless mask.

“Don’t say it like that.”

The low voice was deceptively calm, yet it radiated a suffocating pressure. Dante fell silent, intimidated by a tone that sounded genuinely dangerous, but he still stared back at Rhys with eyes full of wounded incomprehension.

Rhys swept a hand through his hair, exhaling a slow, controlled breath before continuing. “I never cheated. And… of all people, you’re not the one who gets to say that to me, are you? You flirted with every single woman you saw. Judging by everyday behavior, you looked far more suspicious. But did I ever accuse you? I found it unpleasant, but I trusted you, so I held my tongue. Listening to you now, it seems you’ve always lived in fear that I might betray you.”

When Rhys threw his own past behavior back in his face, Dante was momentarily rendered speechless. The hypocrisy of the defense stung, but the raw truth in Rhys’s voice left him frozen.

Rhys took immediate advantage of the opening, pressing his point home. “Blake isn’t someone I see often, and he isn’t my friend. We meet strictly for business, and our schedules simply happened to overlap in Rome. I’m the one who should be angry right now, Dante. Not you.”

Dante couldn’t accept that. Even if Blake wasn’t a lover, it didn’t change the fundamental lie.

“Even if you weren’t sleeping with him, the fact that you lied to me hasn’t changed,” Dante argued, his voice cracking slightly. “You told me you had no friends. But listening to the way Blake talks, that doesn’t seem true at all.”

Because Rhys stood with his back to the hotel entrance, the heavy shadow of the awning fell across his face, obscuring his features. All Dante could clearly see were those striking blue eyes, faintly luminous in the dark, watching him with an icy stillness.

After a long, agonizing pause, Rhys answered. His voice was lower now, calmer, and entirely detached.

“I wasn’t seeing anyone else while I was with you. As for everything apart from that… I don’t believe I have any obligation to explain my life to you now that we’ve broken up.”

It was a razor-sharp boundary, drawn cleanly between them. The clinical attitude hurt terribly, but Dante knew, brutally, that Rhys wasn’t wrong. Unless it was a case of infidelity during the relationship, no one owed their ex an explanation of their private affairs.

“Go inside and wash,” Rhys muttered, his voice dropping as he looked away. “I don’t want to have this conversation with someone who is drunk and out of his mind. Where on earth have you been to come back looking like…”

He trailed off, closing his mouth firmly as if he couldn’t bear to say another word. His gaze raked over Dante—who stood there looking completely shattered—before briefly settling on the bare skin of Dante’s neck. After staring intensely at that spot for several seconds, Rhys’s mouth twisted into a hard line.

He turned on his heel and headed into the hotel lobby.

Their hands, which had been clasped tightly all this time, slipped apart. Dante’s hand dropped weakly into the empty, cool night air.

For a long moment, Dante looked down at his palm, which still held nothing but a throbbing, aching echo of Rhys’s grip. Too many conflicting emotions tangled together in his chest, leaving his mind dizzy. The fact that Rhys—who had seemed utterly indifferent, as if he no longer possessed the capacity to even be angry with him—had suddenly become so visibly shaken bothered Dante to the point of madness.

Rhys had said everything was over. So why did he care if I was drunk? Why did his face go pale when I said he was in love with someone else?

Dante had spent days forcing himself to sever his lingering feelings, but the moment Rhys held his hand, all that discipline dissolved into nothing.

You said we would never see each other again. You said you were confident you could do it. You said you would love someone else.

Don’t say it like that.

If everything was truly over, then why was Rhys still acting as though it wasn’t?

***