Chapter 34
Matteo
The smoke coils slow around my head. My cigarette burns to the filter, but I don’t feel the heat getting close to me. I don’t think anything can make me feel at the moment.
Footsteps sound behind me. Light, but trained ears hear everything. I don’t know whose feet they are.
My father stands in front of me, he doesn’t speak. He watches.
Not cold. Not angry.
Worse, he’s blank.
“You think I’m weak,” I murmur, my voice low. “You think I let the O’Briens into this house, into my head, into my bed.” The silence stretches, I inhale slowly. “If I were standing where you are, I’d be angry, I’d be shouting too.”
His eyes narrow, but he doesn’t move.
“I’ve had blood on my hands since I was fifteen,” I say.
“I know what this family is. What it takes. I’ve buried things.
Done things you ordered without flinching.
I’ve stood beside you. Always. And I will.
But this—” I pause. “This isn’t about her.
It’s about me. Something in me changed when I saw her standing on that edge. I can’t turn it off.”
His fingers drum once against the armrest.
Not approval. Not acknowledgment.
I lean forward, elbows on my knees. “I tried to walk away. I wanted to. I fought it. But you raised us to protect what’s ours, and she’s mine now.
Whether you believe it or not, I’d burn for her.
Bleed for her. I almost did.” His jaw tightens.
“She’s not asking for protection. All she wants is me and I’m giving her both, because she deserves better than what those bastards give her.
The man they want her to marry is older than you. That family made her want to die.”
Finally, my father shifts. It’s subtle, but a shift nonetheless. I watch the way his throat moves when he swallows.
"I'm sorry I let you down, Father,” I say, but I get no reply from Father, just silence again.
"She tried to kill herself. The first night I saw her she was up at Hollow Hills, she was dancing with the edge, fighting whether to jump or not jump.
The moment I saw her, I knew if things got worse for her, she would jump just to get out of hell.
" My father finally looks at me again, but nothing in his eyes to tell me what he's thinking.
"But it was also the moment that hit me hard in the chest, her eyes burned into me, she carved a part of herself in me.
Then I saw her at school, and no matter how much I tried, no matter how much I knew this was wrong, she's the enemy, her family killed mine, I couldn't stop myself, and for that I am sorry.
" I take a drag of my smoke as my father just stares at me again.
"I know she's not like them, Father, deep in my core, I know she hates them—"
"Why?"
"Because whatever her family is doing to her, she jumped off the school roof, and if I didn't get to her—” I stop for a moment not even wanting to say the word. "Father, she's not them." No more words from Father, and I don't know what to say to him.
I can beg, I can plead with him, but I know my father, only he knows what he’s thinking.
“She’s the enemy,” he finally says, his voice sandpaper. “And everything you just told me, it doesn’t erase that fact.”
I sit back, nodding. “I know.”
“You bring her into this house,” he says slowly. “Into this bloodline, and what do you think happens, Matteo? You think the O’Briens will just walk away from that? You think this ends with a quiet little fucking romance?”
“No,” I reply, my tone just as low. “I think it will end in a war.”
“And you still want her?”
“Yes.” No hesitation. “I want her in a way that makes no fucking sense to me, but it’s real, and I’m not backing down.”
Another silence. He stares through me now. Into me.
“You’d choose her over your brothers?”
“No.” That answer is fast, because I don’t have to think about it. “But they’d stand beside me. You know that, and they do.”
His eyes flash. “You’d choose her over this family?”
I hesitate. Just long enough for the weight of the answer to land between us. “No,” I say. “But I’ll fight to make her part of it.”
His breath leaves him in a slow hiss. “You’d better be sure,” he says. “Because once I put our name behind that girl, I can’t take it back. You fuck this up, it won’t just be your blood spilled. It’ll be hers, and I won’t save her.”
My heart beats once, hard.
“I’m sure.”
He stands. Steps forward. For a second, I brace for another hi, but instead, his hand drops to my shoulder. Heavy. Final.
“Then make sure she’s worth it.”
Then he’s gone. The echo of his boots fades down the hall.
The morning air is thick with a kind of stillness that always follows chaos. I step outside with Marco and Milo, their usual smug grins plastered across their faces.
“Your jaw’s seen better days,” Marco says, nodding toward the swelling bruise on my face from Father’s punch.
Milo chuckles and flicks the butt of his cigarette into the garden.
I take a long drag from mine, the smoke curling in my lungs before I let it go slowly. “Yeah, well… could’ve been worse.”
“Have you spoken to him?” Milo asks, serious now.
I nod. “Last night.”
“And?” They both ask in sync.
“I don’t know,” I mutter, my voice low. “He listened. But he didn’t say yes. Didn’t say no either.”
Inside, Mother’s voice carries over the clatter of pans. The smell of garlic and eggs drifts through the open door. Breakfast means family is here.
Grandfather called them, he wouldn’t move without everyone knowing what this means.
I look back at the house. Grandmother’s blood runs through all of them. Her sons. Her brothers. Her loyalty.
“How do you think they’ll take it?” Marco asks, watching me carefully.
I shrug. “No fucking clue.”
Aoife’s still asleep upstairs, but not for long. Soon she’ll face all of them, every bloodline that built this empire.
Marco and Milo joke around, trying to keep things light, then Rosa steps outside, calm as smoke.
“They’re here,” she says. “Probably in the family room already. You’ve been summoned.”
Milo grins. “Sounds ominous.”
Aoife’s footsteps echo on the stairs. She moves slowly, still waking, then she sees me, and freezes on the spot, my face must say everything I can’t put into words.
“You okay?” I ask.
She nods, but her eyes give her away. “How bad will it be?”
“They’re loud. Brutal. But they’re family.”
“Yours,” she whispers.
“Ours, if you want it.”
She doesn’t answer, but she doesn’t pull away either.
Marco, Milo, and Rosa walk into the house and I stand with Aoife ready to face the family.
“No turning back now little lamb,” I whisper, and I look behind her looking into the family room. I draw in a deep breath and take her hand in mine, and together, we walk into the lion’s den.
The family room is already full.
The sun isn’t even up, and they’re ready to talk war over coffee.
Every head turns when we walk in.
To me. To her.
To the enemy.
I scan the room. Uncle Sebastian stands next to Father like he always does. Aunt Camilla and her husband, Vescari, stand by the marble fireplace. Their boys Armani and Raf, slouched and amused near the window. This family controls Hollow Drive with a steel hand and silk smiles.
Then there’s Uncle Luca and his wife, Francesca. Their twins, Enzo and Vito, lean back on the leather couches, whispering to each other, dangerous smirks on their faces.
But it’s the other side of the room, the ones from Grandmother’s bloodline, that makes the hairs on the back of my neck rise.
Uncle Lorenzo, his brother Renzo, all eyes, all muscles.
They run Hollow Coast and everything that touches it is salt-blooded waters.
They were younger than Grandmother, and their kids all went to Blackstone too, Santino is the only one there now, but the rumors about the others, well fuck it’s enough to make me smile, and shiver at the same time.
Aoife squeezes my hand slightly; I glance down at her.
Thunder’s coming and we’re walking right into it.
The moment I step into the family room, it’s like stepping into a courtroom where I’m already guilty. Aoife is at my side, quiet, her presence igniting more than just suspicion, it’s fury. Every pair of eyes turn toward us. Judging. Calculating. Ready to attack.
Uncle Luca is the first to speak. “You’ve brought an O’Brien into this house?” His voice is sharp, slicing through the heavy silence like a blade.
“Not just an O’Brien,” spits Uncle Lorenzo, eyes blazing. “The O’Brien girl. The one promised to Rory.” Aunt Camilla’s husband rises to his feet, his knuckles whitening around the back of his chair.
I step forward, shielding Aoife slightly. “She’s not them,” I say, calm but loud enough. “She’s not her family.”
“Blood doesn’t lie!” someone snarls from the corner. It might be Santino, his dark eyes alight with disgust.
“She almost died because of them!” I shout back. “They don’t treat her like family. They treat her like currency.”
Grandmother’s family from the Coast side raises a finger. “You’ve seen what her name has done to our men. Our blood on docks. Our boys in graves. My sister…” The words stop, and her eyes burn into me.
“And still,” I say through gritted teeth. “She’s the only one I couldn’t walk away from.”
“You shame your father,” Camilla hisses. “You bring the enemy into our sacred home and expect us to smile?”
“She’s innocent,” Marco barks suddenly, standing beside me. “You all talk about loyalty, but not one of you asked what she’s endured.”
“Loyalty?” Joseph sneers. “You’ve confused dick-hunger with loyalty.”
Milo’s voice booms. “Say that again and I’ll rearrange your teeth, you're my cousin, and I’d bleed for you, but watch what you say about my brother.”
A few more things are thrown, comments about how Aoife shouldn’t be in the house, and we should be sending her back with a warning or something.
“ENOUGH!” Grandfather bellows. The room falls instantly silent. His voice carries weight, death, and devotion in equal measure. He looks around the room, then settles on me. “You’re sure about her?”
“Yes.”
“Then we speak like family.”
Stillness. A long breath. Then his nod.
But not everyone relaxes.
Aoife, still silent, just watches it all unravel, like she’s waiting for the moment someone finally says what she fears most.
The room doesn’t calm, it only simmers, like water about to boil again. My grandfather stands slowly, the weight of generations in his spine. Silence falls. Even my father, still furious, says nothing. Everyone listens when the old man talks.
“My son is sure about her,” Father says, voice slow, deliberate.
“And like my father did with me, I have to trust my son. I don’t like it, but this family was built on blood and loyalty and if Matteo is risking both, I believe he has reason.
” He turns his gaze to the room. “I’ll walk shoulder to shoulder with him in this war, but if anyone here doesn’t want a part of this, if any of you want to stand back, then say it now. ”
A long tense silence, then Uncle Lorenzo speaks first, his voice cold. “She’s an O’Brien. I don’t give a shit what kind of hell she’s crawled through. She has Irish blood, and that blood is poison.”
Next to him, Aunt Camilla’s voice is calmer. “But if we cut off our own for loving the wrong person, what’s left of our honor?”
“She’s not blood,” Lorenzo snaps. “That’s the whole point.”
“Then walk,” Grandfather says simply, looking right at him.
“But if you do, the Irish will know you opposed this. You’ll be marked as the branch that split.
Think before you make a choice like that.
” I know Grandfather doesn’t want to lose Grandmother’s family, he still speaks to them every day, works with them, but right now he’s picking me.
Uncle Luca grunts, nodding once. “I don’t like it, but… if Matteo’s willing to burn for her, then we should be willing to bleed beside him.”
The twins Enzo and Vito exchange a glance. “We’re in,” they say in unison. I think it’s cute, they’re still in high school, but they want everyone to know they are ready for this life.
I watch, barely breathing, as opinions pass like knives through the air. No one moves lightly in this family. Every word is warpaint.
“This won’t be short,” Grandfather warns them. “Or clean, but the decision is made. She’s ours now, and that means the fight is ours too.”
A storm of emotions tightens in my chest, but for the first time since I brought her through that gate, I feel the tide turning my way.
“If we are all on the same page, then we will be going to the Irish telling them their daughter has chosen our son. When I chose Maria, even though she is not Irish, they came for blood, who knows what they will do when it is one of their own, we need to be ready for what they have coming for us,” Father tells everyone, and again there is silence.
“Ladies, will you please leave,” Grandfather tells them all, this means we are talking blood now.
I turn to Aoife, and glance over at Rosa before looking at Aoife again.
“Stay with Rosa, but I promise no one will hurt you here. Go back to my room if that makes you feel better.” She nods and Rosa stands next to me, and takes Aoife’s hand in hers, and once the door closes, everyone listens to Grandfather and Father for what we think can happen.
This might take a while, but they won’t make the mistake of underestimating the Irish again.