Dante
The images stared back at me like they'd been waiting. Grainy at first, shadowy figures, firelight flickering, smoke curling against the lens, but now enhanced, sharpened, focused. Every pixel screamed the one thing I didn't want to admit.
The tattoo was clear. A jagged brand, inked in dark iron lines just beneath the man's underarm, half-visible as he raised his arm to strike.
Rafael's tattoo. Marco had one too. Not a replica, not something similar. The same. My stomach twisted. I wasn't ready for this.
I clicked through the frames again. Alessia's father stumbles. A scuffle. A fire sparking off the walls. The camera wasn't still, whoever had been holding it must've been shaking, terrified, or too involved to care. The whole thing had the ugly intimacy of a crime that was never meant to be seen. That was the part that got under my skin. Not just the violence. The familiarity. The confidence. Like the men in that room knew nobody would ever connect them to the flames.
