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.
Chapter 21
Matteo
Two days since the box.
My voice is back, but the quiet inside me still cuts sharper than anything I could say. The arena smells like sweat and iron, like old fights that never left.
Leo stands at the far side, arms folded, eyes measuring. He’s not watching everyone, he’s watching me. Checking if I’m still cracked.
Marco hammers the speed bag, Milo spins a knife in his palm, the blade flashing like silver prayers.
I drive my fists into the sand dummy until leather splits under my knuckles. I keep my back to her. If I see her face, I’ll forget the trial, forget everything.
Leo’s voice cuts through the noise. “Enough.”
Every fist stops midair. The echo of it bounces off stone and dies slow.
