Chapter 20
Matteo
Forty-eight hours. Two days locked inside my own skull.
No fists. No guns. Only me.
No light. No sound. No time.
Breath scrapes my throat raw. My heartbeat slows until it might as well be gone. Somewhere in the dark a faint ticking bleeds through the silence, a needle in my brain. I tore the room apart with my hands, nails splitting. Nothing to find. The noise stayed.
All it showed me was how close I was to shattering.
I haven’t spoken since I walked out. Not to my brothers. Not to Rosa. Not to Leo. I passed them and kept moving. I needed distance from that room.
Throw me in a ring, break my bones. Fine, but that is one place I will never go to.
The garden smells like wet earth and cold metal. Crickets rasp in the grass, needling straight into my skull. Even out here, I hear the tick. It’s following me, stitched into my heartbeat.
I drive my fist into the tree. Bark splinters under my knuckles, rough enough to tear skin. Warm blood streaks across the trunk, dark against the wood like war paint.
The night air clings. My breath fogs out and the sound doesn’t stop. Crickets. The tick. The silence.
I hit the tree harder, because pain is the only thing that cuts through it.
Footsteps scrape against the gravel behind me. A voice cuts through the night.
“Matteo.” Marco’s tone is low, careful, like he’s approaching a stray dog who might bite. “It’s done. You’re out. You can breathe.”
I keep my forehead on the bark. My knuckles pulse, skin raw. Words crowd my throat but won’t move.
Milo’s voice drifts closer, sharper. “You’re bleeding all over Leo’s favorite tree. He’s gonna lose his shit,” he jokes, but I’m not finding it funny.
Another punch. Bark cracks under my hand.
“He’s still down there,” Milo mutters.
“Yeah,” Marco answers quietly. “Still hearing it.”
They edge closer, I sense them, the shift of their weight, their heat in the cold air. Marco crouches enough to catch my eyes.
“You want food? A fight? You can swing at me if it gets you back.”
“Matteo,” Milo tries again. “Talk to us. Say anything. Or punch me. Anything but this.”
The crickets won’t stop. The chirping sound is still hitting me, and it’s fucking annoying.
I lean my forehead against the bark again. The tree is rough and grounded. I dig my nails into it like it might anchor me.
My chest is tight, and the only voice I can hear through it all is hers. Aoife’s.
That’s the problem. In that box, forty-eight hours in my own mind, I had time to think.
About everything.
About my bloodline. About the names carved on gravestones because of the O’Briens. About the war starting again, because they spilled the first blood.
She wears that name like a silk glove. Aoife O’Brien. She breathes in a world that stole from mine and every time I look at her, part of me forgets.
That’s what scares me.
Because nothing good can come from her. Touching her. Needing her.
She is an O’Brien.
And that name bleeds my family dry.
So, I split my knuckles to feel something real. To silence everything else. To prove to myself I haven’t gone completely insane.
I slam my fist one more time, and finally Marco grabs my wrist.
“That’s enough.”
I still don’t speak. Not yet.
Not until I know how much of me has come back from that room and how much stayed locked in the dark.
“Give me a moment to get my head out of there,” I ask them both, and without a word I hear them walking away.
The night has teeth. The air bites at my skin, thick with damp earth and iron.
“You finished?” Rosa’s voice cuts through the quiet.
She drops onto the bench beside me, the wood groaning under her weight. Her shoulder brushes mine, warm, steady, grounding.
“You’ll break your hands before the tree gives,” she says.
“I’m not in the mood.” My voice comes out rough, like I’d swallowed gravel.
“You never are.”
For a moment, there’s only the sound of wind pushing through the hedges. Then she exhales. “You’re bleeding. Marco’s twitching again. You’re making him nervous.”
I huff a dry laugh. “He twitches at sunlight.”
Her laugh is quieter. Softer. A rare sound that doesn’t belong in this place.
“They’re worried, Matteo. We all are.”
“I’m fine.” The words taste false the second they leave me.
“You’re not.” Her eyes are on me now, steady.
I let it crack, enough to breathe.
“Forty-eight hours in a box, Rosa. No light. No time. Just the sound of my own breath. Have you ever heard your heartbeat slow down to the point you’re not sure if it’s stopped or if your brain’s just gone numb?”
She doesn’t answer.
“I thought I’d be fine,” I say. “Thought I’d use the time to plot. To focus. But all I did was think about the O’Briens. About the blood in our soil. About her.”
Rosa tilts her head. “Aoife?”
I nod. My voice is quieter now. “She doesn’t belong here, and yet… she’s everywhere in my fucking head. It’s messing with me.”
Rosa reaches out, gently touches my bruised hand. “You needed to say that.”
I pull it back. Not because of her, but because of me.
“I can’t afford to feel like this.”
“Then don’t,” she says, stepping back. “But don’t shut us out either. We’re your family. You fall, we catch you. I fall, you catch me. Just remember who the enemy is.”
I walk away before she can say anything else.
For the first time in days, I breathe.
Even kings talk to someone when the crown gets heavy.
I need a clear head. One thing stays true. Aoife won’t be my downfall.
The corridor hums low as I push open the dorm door.
Marco and Milo sit shoulder to shoulder on the floor, backs against the wall, settled like they have been there longer than they care to admit.
Neither says a word.
I stop a few feet away; the door shuts behind me with a soft click.
For a moment, no one breathes.
Then I hear my own voice, rough, scraped from the dark. “I’m not okay.”
Marco’s head lifts. His eyes flicker wide, then the grin slides in like armor. “Holy shit. The Rage speaks.”
Milo lets out a low laugh, not mocking, more relief than anything. “Took you long enough.”
I drop into the chair across from them. Elbows on my knees. Head down. My muscles twitch like they’ve forgotten how to stop fighting.
“That room,” I say. The words are thick, slow. “It got in my head.”
Marco flicks open his lighter and slides a cigarette toward me. “Leo said most crack in ten hours,” he mutters. “You made it forty-eight.”
I take the smoke but don’t light it. My hands still shake too much. “I didn’t make it. I came apart. I thought I could plan. Focus. But all I did was think about her.”
Milo goes still. “Aoife?”
I nod once. The name grates my throat raw. “She was everywhere. In the dark. In the quiet. I’d close my eyes and she’d still be there.”
Marco exhales, the smoke drifting between us. “That’s not nothing.” His tone’s careful now, like he’s handling a live wire.
“She’s an O’Brien,” I growl. “Her family buried our grandmother.”
“And yet you’re still thinking about her,” Milo says. His voice isn’t mocking, he sounds tired, almost sorry for me.
“I don’t want to,” I admit. My jaw aches from holding it tight. “But it’s like she’s under my skin. I can’t get her out.”
The silence that follows isn’t empty anymore. It presses in, heavy and shared, the kind that only brothers sit inside without breaking.
Marco breaks the silence first, voice low. “If Father had known what would come after choosing Mom… Grandfather would’ve made him think twice.”
He doesn’t need to finish. Father’s war began with a wedding. Mine might start the same way. The O’Briens already owe us blood.
I drag a hand down my face. “All I know is I need my head clear before the next trial. I can’t lose one.”
Milo leans forward. “And if she gets caught between us?”
I stare at the floor. “Then I figure it out when it happens. But I won’t lose myself again.”
The quiet that follows doesn’t suffocate this time. It fills the room, steady and alive, like the breath after a fight you’re still standing from.
I sink back in the chair, feel the sting in my knuckles with every pulse.
Aoife flashes across my thoughts. Eyes bright. Mouth stubborn. Voice sharp enough to cut the dark. She’s the noise I can’t silence. The fire I won’t stamp out.
I breathe in once, slowly. The smoke burns. The silence settles, I don’t flinch. This time, it feels like I can breathe in it. And maybe… just maybe, speak in it too.