Salem is plunged into shock when a romance stops being messy and starts being criminal-adjacent.

One minute it’s heartbreak, jealousy, and misread signals — the next it’s a desperate request that drags everyone into danger: Leo doesn’t just want Javi back… he wants Dimitri gone.

Not “leave town.” Not “stay away.” Gone.

And in Salem, when someone says that out loud, it’s not drama anymore — it’s a threat to everyone’s future.

Javi is the one taking the emotional gut-punch. He’s already raw from feeling played, from watching the truth get twisted until he can’t even trust his own instincts. Dimitri’s narrative has been loud, strategic, humiliating — the kind that makes Javi feel like the fool in a story he never agreed to star in. Then the alarming news hits, and it doesn’t matter what it is — health, family, danger — because the timing is cruel enough to make it feel like the universe is punishing him for hoping. His identity collapse is quiet but brutal: the man who wanted love, now forced back into survival mode.

And Leo? Leo spirals into desperation like it’s oxygen. He can’t stand losing Javi, and he can’t stand Dimitri holding the power to poison the story. So he runs to Gwen — because Gwen has history with Dimitri, and history in Salem is basically a weapon. Leo corners her with a “favour” that isn’t a favour at all. It’s a trap with Gwen’s name already stamped on the evidence. If Dimitri disappears again, the suspicion doesn’t float — it lands. Right on Gwen. Hard. And Leo knows it. That’s the part that makes it ugly.