His focus was pulled away from Lucius when he heard beside him, "What the fuck is going on between you two?"

"No, no," Raphael laughed incredulously, rapidly shaking his head before he snarled, "that is not what were talking about right now." He pointed towards the door and added, "In what part of your brain did you think doing that to Tess was a good idea?"

"It worked," he widened his arms aggressively. "Jules was talking!"

"That's your fucking sister Dante!"

There was no way he would admit to being out of line, definitely not to Raphael who continuously pestered him about his wrongdoings. Raphael had his curled blond hair into a bun and was wearing a suit, as if he had been headed to an important meeting that had been sidetracked by Dante's manic episode.

His shoulders were broadened as he reached for Dante's chin, aggressively turning it for their gazes to meet, only to have his arm smacked away by Dante. "Don't fucking touch me." Raphael was taken aback by his menacing tone, his eyebrows lifted in shock. "You ruined everything, he was going to tell us where Nate was—"

"You were torturing Tess!"

Dante threw his arms in the air. "I wasn't going to let her die!"

"No you were just going to carve a whole word across her fucking face with a burning needle, how demented are you?!" When Dante rolled his eyes, he spat, "This is what you're showing to your brothers?"

"They've all been doing this for years already."

Raphael couldn't take this stubbornness, glancing around the room and meeting the frightened green eyes of Molly who attempted to look away, acting as if he hadn't been listening even though they all knew he had been. He inhaled a sharp breath when Raphael's fingers gripped his collar, squeezing a bit too tight before pulling him closer and forcing Dante to meet his gaze. "Look at him Dante! He's fucking fifteen! Fifteen! You're letting him practice this sort of shit, really?!"

"That's our lifestyle!"

"He's too young for this!"

"He's done this since he was five!"

"Because your dad asked him to!" He shoved Molly away and pointed a finger in Dante's face. "You hate your dad but yet, you act exactly like him—"

"Don't you dare fucking say that."

"Matter of fact," Raphael stepped closer to him, the disappointment echoing from his tone as he hissed sharply, "you're worst than him." He knew these words would hurt Dante to the core, which they did.

The worst of all was that Dante had nothing to say. There was nothing he could say to defend himself, to prove Raphael wrong. That was why he stepped past Raphael, nudging him by the shoulder when he did and began storming towards the exit when he felt a hand reach for his wrist and pull him back.

"No, I'm not done yet." Raphael shoved him backwards and gripped his chin to force their gazes to meet. "I haven't said everything I wanted to say so you're not leaving until I fucking do—"

"You couldn't have waited a couple minutes before meddling in my business?" he yelled at the top of his lungs, using his entire diaphragm as he practically spat in Raphael's face. Regardless of how Raphael felt about him, he had botched their plan that was seconds from successful. "Jules was about to tell us where they took Nate but you messed that up!"

When he noticed Raphael shake his head, as if he was attempting to express something that wasn't being understood on Dante's end, Dante leaned forward closer to him. He couldn't suppress the boiling anger in the pits of his stomach, showing by the veins becoming visible across his neck as his face flared a bold blood red. "You know what, maybe I am like my father! But that doesn't mean Nate doesn't need to be saved just because you—"

"Stop using people as an excuse for your shit." He laughed, violently motioning around the room. "This isn't all about Nate." The confusion that crossed Dante's face was of no surprise and Raphael's hands fell to his sides before he exhaled a sharp breath. "This is you needing to satisfy your cruel side. This time, you're using Nate as an excuse."

That merely confused him even more. "What the fuck are you talking about?"

"You're a sociopath, Dante." His tone had sharpened but lowered into a deeper rhythm. "You care about yourself and only yourself. You have these destructive cravings that you can't control and find any way to release them."

Dante swallowed hard, pausing for a moment; he had never thought of it that way and for a second, he considered if it could potentially be true. Although he replied, "That's not true," his voice did not sound as confident.

Which made Raphael nod his head slowly. "You love seeing people suffer, you enjoy it. You could let your sister be tortured in front of your eyes, why? Because you have no empathy, none whatsoever. To you, it's just another person curling in fear and that turns you on."

Dante snorted as if it was the dumbest conclusion he had ever heard about himself. "You have no idea what you're saying."

"That's why you need people like Nate to tease you." He chuckled incredulously, tilting his head and widening his arms. "Because you want to feel that fear, you want to put yourself in the victim role to feel what they do when you ruin them and make them suffocate."

That caused the smug smile from Dante's lips to instantly fall. "You shut up!" he bellowed, attempting to shove Raphael backwards but Raphael did not budge.

Raphael laughed, his eyes expanding unusually. "Why do you think I ended our relationship?"

That was a truth Dante had been waiting to hear, but not in this way. It was true; they had decided to start dating after a year of knowing one another, and out of the blue, Raphael randomly decided that he no longer loved him enough to continue their romance. At first, Dante begged for the reason which was never given, but he never expected Raphael to admit it, not like this at least.

"You have these tendencies of hurting everyone around you who loves you in the most cruel way possible." He slammed his finger into Dante's chest. "That's why I broke it off with you; because I knew you would destroy me and that I would never be able to overcome it."

He had never seen Raphael with this much emotions. Raphael always kept his composure, cool and collected, keeping his thoughts to himself and never even letting his face curl at anything, not revealing any of his sentiments. But this Raphael was different, this one had enough. He had gone through countless terrors under Dante's command, had undergone enough maltreatment that he could no longer retain his anger after seeing what was happening in this room.

Dante felt as if the earth had stopped spinning for a moment, as if the whole world had paused and it was just him and Raphael stuck in time.

Raphael gripped his own shirt, such raw rage and pain evoked from his eyes as he cried, "I still stayed by your side because I fucking loved you but you found every way to ridicule me and mock me. And when I decided to finally be free from you, you couldn't even apologize." He waved his hand across the entire room. "But you did all this for someone that you have known for less than a month?"

He paused for a second when he realized his composure had been completely broken and he could feel tears rise in his eyes. He took a deep breath, glancing elsewhere for a second and shaking his head. "You were ready to kill a person and traumatize your sister over a dude that you like? That you had sex with a couple times?" He pointed a finger in Dante's face and hissed in a low whisper, "And that's how I know that this has nothing to do with Nate and everything to do with the fact that you're a heartless and malicious sadist."

That was the last straw for Dante who reached at his waistband, brandishing the pistol with the muzzle pressed directly against Raphael's forehead. He had done it terribly fast between the time Raphael could even blink, and when he felt the metallic lethal weapon against his flesh, the only thing that it did was lengthen his smile. Dante was exhaling sharply through his nose, no longer able to withhold his composure and feeling his chest tighten with every inhale.

At that very moment, all he wanted was for Raphael to die.

"Do it." Dante observed as Raphael pressed his forehead tighter against the muzzle followed by a chuckle. "I dare you to do it." Dante felt as if his sweaty palms could barely hold the gun, and Raphael who felt it quiver, reached for it and stabilized it against him. "Here, a clean shot. Why are you hesitating?"

Dante couldn't say anything; he felt as if the room had grown way too hot that he was suffocating on air. His arm suddenly felt unusually heavy, practically fighting to keep it straight.

"Come on, what are you so afraid of?" Raphael antagonized, tapping him on the shoulder. "If I'm so wrong, why can't you just shut me up?"

"Ralphy, I don't think—"

"Stay back," he ordered nastily, not turning to face Molly who froze on the spot by his sudden authoritative tone. His focus returned to Dante and his delirious eyes widened even more. "What's the matter? You need a little push or something? Here, let me help you."

In an instant, there was a pistol aimed also on the side of Dante's forehead, which halted his breath. "Let's see who can shoot who first."

"I can't fucking shoot you, you know that," Dante murmured through gritted teeth. He could barely breathe, confused between his feelings of rage but the sudden sadness that overwhelmed his heart. "I can't believe you'd say all these things to me."

"After all you've said to me, that's nothing."

Raphael noticed Dante's eyes begin to glint, slowly filling with tears as he spat, "You know I was begging for an answer for the longest time—this is how you decide to tell me? That you broke up with me because you thought I was crazy?"

"A psychopath," Raphael corrected, nodding his head.

Dante glanced elsewhere, biting his bottom lip for a moment before he screamed, "I trusted you to be there for me!"

"I trusted you to be there for me too, Dante!"

"That wasn't my fucking job!" he yelled louder, waving his free hand. "You were paid to be there for me, not the other way around!"

"Then you just proved to me that I was right." He raised his eyebrows, slowly nodding his head. "You feel nothing, because someone that says they loved me, would never say that." Before Dante could respond, Raphael added confidently, "I'm counting to five and at five, I'm taking the shot."

"Don't fucking do that."

"So it's either I die or you do, but regardless, one of us is." There was a wicked smile that pulled his lips further before he started his count. "One."

"That's not fair, that's so not fair."

"Two."

"You have no right to come here and ruin everything and then yell at me as if I made a mistake for following through with what we do."

Raphael shrugged his shoulders. "Three."

"And you knew I was waiting for answer when everything between us stopped; that's how you decide to tell?!"

With a smirk, Raphael hissed, "Four—"

Suddenly, Raphael felt a violent pull drag him backwards, causing him to stumble before he was caught by a hand. As for Dante, one minute his fingers were clenching his pistol aimed at Raphael's brain, the next he had been dismantled, a figure standing in front of him and blocking the view from Raphael.

"What the fuck do you both think you're doing?" Bronsted screamed in Dante's face. "We can hear your screaming from outside; you're on the same fucking team." All of them were breathing heavily, uncertain how this tension had reached this peak but knowing how dangerous it was for the both of them. As much as Dante was known to be stubborn, Raphael had his moments as well, hence it was no surprise that he was not going to let his gun fall.

"No, we are not—"

"Calm down, now." Raphael's eyes stopped attempting to look past the figure, finally realizing that he had been grabbed by Lucius who stared back at him with such disappointment that his lips instantly sealed. It wasn't until Lucius murmured in a harsh tone, "You aimed a gun at my younger brother", that Raphael realized the severity of what he had done.