I sink to the floor, paper trembling in my hands.
I wasn’t promised to a husband. I was traded to a murderer.
But maybe the real war is outside the trials.
And it started with my last name.
My phone vibrates in my hand, which makes me jump as the room is so silent and fucking creepy.
Unknown
Look into your future husband, 20th July, ten years ago…
I look around to see if someone is down here with me, seeing what I’m doing, but there is no one here, and I made sure no one was following me.
Ten years ago? Why is that date so important?
If I search under my name, the system will flag it. My father will know.
Whoever’s texting me knows that too. They want me to dig—but not get caught.
So how do I do both?
Aoife
If I look into this online, my family will know what I’m doing. I have a feeling you don’t want that either.
I don’t knowwho this is, but one thing I do know, they want to help me find out the truth, maybe they can help me get what I want. Quickly putting everything away, I grab my bag off the floor and exit the archives room. I look down at my phone but find no reply from my unknown person.
No one can know what I’m chasing. Not Matteo. Not Conor.
If I fall, it’ll be in the dark and alone.
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.
