Chapter 5
Aoife
My lungs still burn. Not from training, not from sore muscles or fresh bruises.
From him.
His stare branded between my shoulder blades, sinking into my bones and dragging up something I don’t even have a name for. He watched me like prey, already caught, too dumb to notice.
What is this game we’re playing? How can one moment on the edge of a cliff have us trapped in this dance with danger?
Even thinking of his name sends a ripple through my chest, hot and sharp. I’d heard the stories. Everyone has, but stories don’t come with the smell of cigarettes and wood, shoulders which are strong and big or a jaw that tense when he looks at you like you’re already his.
The air shifted when he moved. Every time his foot hit the ground, it echoed in me. I could feel everything he was doing, even from the other side of the room.
And I hate that. Hate how I felt it. It made me clench the blade tighter in my hand because I wanted him to say something, even if it was cruel. Just to break the silence between us.
I’m meant to hate him. Fuck, he’s meant to despise me and where I’m from.
I reach my hallway and find Conor posted at my door like a sentry, posture sharp, eyes narrow, jaw locked. Cousin. Shadow. Uncle Liam and my father made sure he knew to keep an eye on me while I’m here. Why send me here at all, when I’m already promised to an old man I don’t want?
“What the fuck was that?” His voice cuts.
I stop. “What?”
“Don’t play dumb. He was watching you. Matteo Messina.” He spits the name like poison, as if he wants to hurt him for just being born.
Heat crawls up my neck. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You don’t? Because the rest of the Circle sure as hell did.”
“What the hell are you talking about? I didn’t even see him.” I almost yell at him. I try to shove past him, but he grabs my arm, not hard, but hard enough to stop me.
“You might not have looked at him, but he sure as hell was looking at you. You’re engaged,” he growls. “To a man with power. With history. That ring isn’t just for show, Aoife. It means something.”
“Yeah. It means I’m property.”
His grip tightens, but the words stay brutal.
I meet his eyes. “Go ahead, tell Uncle Liam I said that.”
He lets go, stepping back like my words sting, and I have to laugh because they don’t. I was born only to be sold to whomever they feel like selling me to.
“I’m not your enemy. But he is. Stay the hell away from him.”
I don’t answer. I don’t nod. I go inside, and the worst part is, I know Conor’s right.
But still, I can’t stop thinking about the way Matteo looked under the lights.
His shirt clung to every ridge of muscle like it was part of his skin.
His neck was damp with sweat. His fists, bruised and bleeding, and beside him, that girl, long legs, fierce eyes.
Someone who probably belongs in his world.
Unlike me.
I strip off my clothes and step into the shower, the water too hot, steam filling the room. The burn doesn’t scrub him off me and he hasn’t even touched me. My fingers curl into fists, pressing against the cold tile.
Why him? Why now? How does one look feel like something I’ll never recover from?
Now I’ll have every Irish student's eyes on me, and Conor will be next to me every time he gets the chance. No freedom, anywhere.
Conor went to Ireland and came back different—but truth is, he changed long before that. When he started learning about family work and what’s needed to be done to get ahead in life. Why he now doesn’t care about who I have to marry, it’s for the family.
Getting dressed in leggings and a hoodie, hair damp, I sneak out.
The student food wing is still open for the night trainees, basic food, but warm.
And it gives me something to do rather than sitting in my room thinking about him.
Thinking about how he would feel against my body, or how his lips would destroy every kiss for me after him.
I take the side corridor, the one that curves beneath the west wing, dark, quiet and maybe being alone for a moment will be good for me.
Then I’m slammed into stone. One step walking, the next pinned. My back to the cold wall, my wrists locked above my head by a hand bigger than both of them combined.
A chest presses into mine, hard, unrelenting. Heat pours off him like fire.
Matteo.
His mouth hits my ear before I can speak. “You’re shit with a blade.” His voice is a low snarl, rough and dangerous and far too close. “It was painful to watch,” he continues, his words curling against my skin like smoke.
I try to shove him off me, but he doesn't move. Not even an inch. His strength is terrifying. His presence even more so. He has the energy around him which is full of rage.
“Let me go.”
“Why? So you can go back to pretending you don’t see me? Or worse, pretending I don’t see you?” His eyes are on mine now. Brown and burning. His jaw clenched, his lip curled like he’s trying to hold back something darker than a smile.
“You don’t know me,” I whisper. Because he doesn’t. All he knows about me is, I’m an O’Brien, that’s it.
“Oh, I know enough,” he says, his voice full of venom.
His hand still locked around my wrists. “I know you’re not supposed to want this.
I know I’m the last person you should be near.
I know that ring on your finger is an insult to your fire.
” He leans in closer. “And I know when I look at you, something in me wants to break every rule my family ever gave me.”
His other hand drags down to my waist, then up, slowly, daring me to stop him.
But I don’t.
He grips my throat with no pressure, only control. My pulse kicks under his thumb, wild and trapped.
“Why are you doing this?” I manage to ask.
“Because I can’t stop,” he says, his tone flat as if I’m boring him. “And neither can you.”
His hand slides to my jaw, fingers curling against my skin, tilting my face to his.
Then his mouth crashes onto mine. There’s no warning. No tenderness. Just heat, hunger and rage.
It’s not a kiss. It’s a war, right against wrong.
His teeth scrape. His lips bruise. My knees go weak. I can’t breathe, not because of the hand on my throat, but because of the way he tastes.
Like fire and fury.
I don’t kiss him back, but I don’t stop him.
I hate him.
And god, I want him.
When he pulls back, I’m breathless. Dizzy. My back is still to the wall, chest heaving, fingers numb.
“That’s why you’re dangerous.” The words come out in a warning, but I’m not sure if it’s for me or him.
Then he steps away, just like that, leaving me standing there, heart pounding, mouth swollen, hands shaking.
He walks away like he didn’t just shatter my world in a breath. I look around, making sure no one saw, because if they did, every lie I’ve told about not knowing him dies right here.
I don’t sleep. I lie in bed with my limbs burning, my throat bruised from his touch, my lips raw from the kiss I never asked for. I should have stopped him. Should have pushed him away.
Every time I close my eyes, I see his. That look, like he was about to devour me or destroy me. Maybe both. The worst part is, I’d let him. My body didn’t fight. My mouth stayed shut. Somewhere inside me, I wanted it.
And that terrifies me.
The moonlight through the window casts a silver sheen across the ceiling. I trace it with my eyes until I can’t take it anymore. I sit up. The hoodie I slept in is clinging to my skin with heat and sweat. I strip it off and pace my room like a caged animal.
What is he doing to me?
Matteo Messina is the enemy. His bloodline is the reason my family can’t set foot in Bloodstone Hollow, the reason my uncle Liam’s hand shakes when he drinks whiskey, because he has a fucking drinking problem.
And yet he held me like I was something fragile and on fire at the same time.
I grab my ring from the nightstand and slide it onto my finger with more force than necessary. The stone cuts into the base of my knuckle. Good. I want it to hurt. I need it to hurt.
It’s the only thing reminding me of what’s real. I’m not the kind of girl who gets flustered. I’m not the kind of girl who forgets her duty. And I sure as hell am not the kind of girl who lets a Messina get into her head.
Except I am.
Morning comes, and I’m thankful, because sleep didn’t and I couldn’t leave the room in the middle of the night.
The moment my eyes opened, he was still there, in my head, my mouth, my skin.
Nora and I get dressed and leave our dorm. We move through the halls quietly; if I keep my head down, no one will notice me. I hope.
Today is orientation for the rest of the students. The school is buzzing. Uniforms are back on. Order restored. Or so it seems.
I scan the room. Rich kids. Movie-star heirs. A smile tugs at my mouth; they have no idea what sleeps inside these walls. Trust-fund babies with dark secrets, but never as dark as this place. Even the mafia kids carry scars from home, which aren't as dark as this place.
At breakfast, I sit with the Irish because I won’t be able to sit anywhere else. Conor’s next to me, too close, protective.
He noticed what happened last night at training but doesn’t speak about it. His eyes track me across the room, when I reach for coffee, when I open my notebook, when my gaze slides across the cafeteria for just a second. He does it too.
Matteo sits at the far end of the Messina table. His brothers on either side. Rosa beside Marco, laughing softly, chewing on a toothpick, deadly in her own right.
Matteo never looks at me. Not once, but I feel him. I shut my eyes as memory crawls across my skin, the wall at my back, his hand on me, knees weak, throat locked.
The kiss, more than a kiss. A promise. A warning. A threat.
And I don’t know which part scares me most.
“You seen this?” Nora pulls me out of my thoughts. She brings the poster in front of me. “They’re putting them all around college.”
An announcement in bold gold lettering with a black background:
BLACKSTONE ACADEMY’S MASQUERADE BALL
All students are expected to attend. Dress code mandatory. Masks required.
I stare at it for too long. A ball. A party. A performance. Another layer of the game we all play.
Conor leans in closer, eyes scanning the same words.
“Everyone will be there. Everyone will be watching.” He hasn’t said it in so many words, but that was a warning for me. Not sure what they will be watching at this stupid ball. What the fuck will I do wrong there?
“I know,” I reply without turning to him.
He leans in closer. “You need to remember who you are. What you are. You don’t get to forget that, not even for a minute.”
“I said I know,” I snap, more harshly than I meant to. “You don’t have to keep reminding me. I’m not stupid.”
He hesitates but backs off.
I finally look away from the poster, just in time to catch a quick glance of Matteo across the hallway.
He’s standing with Milo and Marco, and he’s laughing, head thrown back, a devilish smile carved into his face like sin. For the briefest second, his eyes flick up and catch mine.
No smile. No reaction. Just a look.
And the spark that says this masquerade won’t just be about masks.
It’ll be about the war neither of us can escape.