Chapter 43 #2
That one fucking sentence.
I falter, not in movement, but inside. The edge inside me turns jagged.
The next hit lands hard. My ribs scream. I stumble back. He’s grinning now, the bastard.
“She cry when you’re inside her? Or do you think about how we’ll take her back?”
Snap.
That’s the sound of a rib breaking.
He drives a knee into my gut, and I drop to one knee, coughing blood onto the sand. The world sways.
Cillian crouches low, grabbing my chin. “You want her that badly, Italian? Then crawl to her.” Then he headbutts me.
Crack.
My nose shatters. Blood gushes. My vision whites out at the edges.
Then something inside me goes quiet.
Not soft. Not scared. Cold.
Like the fire inside me was always meant to freeze before it burns.
I spit a mouthful of blood at his feet.
“She’s not my family. I might have to see if her pussy is really worth this fight.”
This brings out the rage into me to the point I don’t see anything but red and blood. No one fucking touches my girl, never.
“You’re talking an awful lot for someone about to fucking lose.”
My voice is low, feral, barely mine. My fists are coated in blood, and I can’t tell if it’s his or mine anymore. Probably both.
Cillian Reilly sways on the balls of his feet, split lip curled into a crooked grin. “You’ll lose everything for her, Messina. That’s the fucking joke.”
There’s no strategy. No clean footwork. Just violence.
I lunge, shoulder-first, slamming him into the cage with a metal-on-bone thud. The crowd roars, but all I hear is the ringing. My lungs are lava. My heartbeat is a fucking war drum.
But I don't stop.
He tries to duck, but I catch him with a right hook, bone against cheekbone, and feel the give of cartilage. He staggers. I follow. Fists. Elbows. My knee to his ribs until I hear something crack.
“Say her name again,” I growl.
He spits blood in my face.
That’s it.
I slam him down onto the mat and lose it. Not a fight. A goddamn unleashing. My fists are hammers. His face, the anvil. Every blow is rage I’ve swallowed for months. Every strike is for Aoife, for the roof, the jump, for the knife, for the poison, for every breath she begged not to take.
“You think this is about a girl?” My voice tears through the air like a blade. “This is about everything. Every fucking thing your family stole. Everything they burned. Everything they planned.”
He tries to guard his face. Too late.
I punch until I feel him break, not just his face but the fight in him.
Silence wraps the cage like smoke.
I straddle him, breathing fire, my knuckles bleeding. His hands fall limp. His mouth is slack, blood pooling from a split in his jaw.
And I still want to hit him.
I’m not sure when I stopped hearing the crowd.
Maybe when his nose shattered. Maybe when I finally stopped seeing red and started seeing her, Aoife burned into my memory like the only light I’ve got left.
But now it’s quiet.
Too quiet.
I can’t hear anything as I continue to punch him with everything I have left in me.
That’s when I feel the hands, Leo, Nico, Marco, pulling me back.
“That’s enough!” Leo’s voice cuts through the haze.
“No,” I snarl. “It’s not.”
But my body gives in. I collapse back, dragging blood with me, my chest heaving, and I stare up at the lights.
It’s done.
I won.
But I didn’t just win. I buried him, and everyone in the ring knows it.
My ribs are burning, I think he broke some of them, and my fucking nose. The fucker broke my nose.
Nico nods from the side, arms crossed. “Now you look like a man willing to go to war.” He helps me to stand, because there is no way I can stand on my own at the moment.
I wipe blood from my face with the back of my hand. “War’s already here.”
“Messina wins.”
It echoes.
No cheers.
No applause.
Just silence.
A silence heavier than blood.
Cillian lies there, chest rising shallowly, jaw slack. His team doesn’t even move. The Irish stare like the war was won here tonight and they weren’t the victors.
I don't move. I can't. My whole body is a scream held inside my skin. My arms are trembling, legs threatening to give. But I won't fall. Not until they know. Not until they all see.
Then… a slow, singular clap.
I turn to see my grandfather making sure his clapping is echoing off the walls, my father joins him both with a smile showing off how proud they are, the son they trained is now the one who’s on top and no one is bringing him down.
Marco steps forward, fire in his eyes, pride in every beat of his hands, then Milo, then Rosa. Then it spreads like a storm breaking. The room erupts.
Voices. Applause. Stomping. Screaming.
“Messina!”
“Matteo!”
“La bestia!”
I stagger forward, one foot dragging slightly, eyes scanning the sea of chaos, looking for only one thing, her.
And then I see her.
In the far edge of the crowd. Eyes full. Hands over her mouth. Her tears are not from fear anymore, but from something else.
Relief.
I raise my hand again, not for them, but for her. The roar grows louder. I should collapse. I should pass out.
But I don’t.
Not yet.
Not until I’m by her side.
Because I didn’t fight this hard just to win.
I fought to survive for her.
And the silence?
It belongs to them now.
They know what it means when a Messina doesn’t fall.
The air in my lungs is sharp glass, each breath rattling like broken teeth. I can still taste copper on the back of my tongue. The crowd roars around me, the Messina name burned into the arena floor like a brand of defiance.
But I don’t hear any of it.
I only see her.
Aoife.
Our eyes lock.
Relief. Fear. Something between prayer and pain flickers in her.
I step toward her.
One. Two.
My family all celebrating at my win, jumping around and laughing.
Aoife steps forward, eyes brimming. Mouth parting like she’s about to say my name.
Then—
I see the Irish crowding her, not just Conor, there are a few of them.
They close in like shadows too fast to outrun.
My voice is already raw, but I scream her name anyway. The family who was around her are too busy for celebrating to hear my shouts, the whole area is loud I don’t think anyone can hear me.
“Aoife!”
I lunge forward, but I’m too late.
A hand clamps over her arm , one of her uncles, I think. Maybe Rory. She doesn’t fight, not because she wants to go, but because she’s stunned. Because she didn’t expect them to move. Because none of us did.
We never thought they would do anything here, too many eyes on her, but we were fucking wrong.
I push through bodies, elbowing past my own blood, but by the time I hit the steps, she’s gone.
Gone like mist, swallowed into a tide of O’Briens in dark suits and colder eyes.
Silence hits harder than any scream.
I stand there, chest heaving, fists clenched at my sides.
I won the fucking ring. I bled for it. Killed for it. Trained until my ribs cracked and my knuckles split for it.
And I lost her.
“I won the ring. I lost the girl.”
No one hears the words I whisper to the sight of her last look over her shoulder. To the quiet left behind in her place.
But someone will hear me soon.
Because this isn’t over.
This storm isn’t ending. It’s still going.