Chapter 148: Chapter 148
The suite door opened almost immediately, with the kind of impatient opening that spoke of violence behind it.
Dominic amd Amara laugh immediately died down, as they both turned their head towards the direction of the door.
Ronan walked in first. His shoulders were squared, and his tie dangled loose, with his inner white shirt ruined with streaks of blood.
His hair was tousled, and damp with sweat, as if he had run through a storm and dragged it inside with him. He looked agitated, and a bit too terrible, compared to his usual look.
Rodger stood behind him. He looked hesitant, and his face shadowed. "He needed to see you in here." He explained, before Dominic would fix a questioning glare on him.
"Yes, I won’t have my brother coming down to the lobby to see me." Ronan’s voice came out sharp. A bit too sharp and too loud for the hush of Celeste’s ward.
The monitor continued beeping in silence, a hush reminder of Celeste’s presence.
The calm in Dominic snapped back to the dark void in his eyes. His eyes found the blood on Ronan’s shirt before flicking back to his face.
"What is it now, Ronan?" His voice was low, and dangerous, but restrained. If someone else had walked in here this way, he would have had the person hanged with their head facing downwards.
Then, when the person is partly dead, he cut the rope, and watch their heads smatch the floor. However, he couldn’t. Ronan surely uses his brother privileges so well.
Ronan stepped forward, still trembling with the kind of adrenaline that shows a man shaking in rage rather than fear.
"I got an Italian breaking into my house, saying he’s gonna kill my fucking brother. So what do we do now, Dom? Do we apologise, or do we compromise?" He yanked his suit jacket back, showing the dried smears on his shirt. "I had to kill him with a cord. A cord. Now I’m bloody, and on my fucking suit." He slammed his fist down on the table at the corner, and a hollow thud echoed across the suite. "I had to come see you this way, so you remember what I said about Carlos not stopping."
Amara jumped. Her gaze darted between them, and her fingers gripped the tulip stem she still held. At the momemt, her sharp side seem to have disappeared, as she clinged on, like a child clinging to an anchor in a storm.
Dominic’s eyes hardened. "While this is going on, I want peace in Celeste’s ward." He said it calmly, but it was a command, not a plea.
His eyes flicked to her bed, and he eatcged the stillness of her chest rising and falling in a fragile rhythm, before locking back on Ronan.
"Peace?" Ronan scoffed, voice jagged with disbelief. "The only way to guarantee peace is by making the prospect of war seem hopeless. Don’t you get it?" He dragged a hand through his hair, leaving streaks of blood near his temple. His chest heaved, and his nostrils flared. "You contacted Jim. You fucking contacted Jim? What for? Have you lost your mind, Dom?"
Dominic’s jaw ticked. "I have a plan."
"Shut the fuck up, Dom." Ronan’s voice cracked like a whip. He spat. "You always have a plan. Your plan from years ago is what’s biting you in the ass years later."
"Careful, Ronan." Dominic inhaled slowly. Even his breath was measured, as if he could swallow down his brother’s rage with his own. "We’re not starting a war. Only if we have to. However, we would never apologise."
Ronan laughed bitterly. The sound of his laugh was edged with despair. He looked like a man trying not to break his own bones with the force of holding himself together.
Amara blinked. The tulip trembled in her hand, as she watched them. Her eyes went to Celeste again, and back to them.
She tried to make sense of the words that passed between them. A war? Her mind spun. Did they hear themselves? What kind of brothers sat beside a woman’s hospital bed and spoke of war like it was weather?
"If you’re soft on rebellion, it will grow." Ronan spat the words like they tasted of iron. For a moment, Dominic thought hed rush towards him. But he didn’t.
Rather, his hand trembled as he tugged his jacket closer to his chest. "I’ll take two of Carlos’s bars tonight. Because I fucking can. I can, and I will."
Dominic just stared at him. His stare cut through him, cold, silent, amd unmovable. His eyes were dead, but he remained silent.
Amara looked at both of them, bewildered. "Bars? War? What are you even talking about? This is a hospital, not—"
Neither of them looked at her. She took that as a cue to cut herself off.
"We need leverage," Ronan pressed on, his voice ragged. "They already got Celeste. If we lift our heels off their neck, they’ll come for us. These bastards want you and me dead. They want us dead, Dominic. And you—" His voice broke, then rose again, like a broken glass. He sounded pained, and disappointed. "You’re getting soft, brother. Soft and weak."
Silence fell in the room. The same way dust settles down after an explosion.
Dominic did not move. His eyes did not blink. His shadow stretched across Celeste’s bed, towering over the fragile girl who lay unconscious between them. The weight of his stillness was heavier than Ronan’s outburst.
Ronan’s chest heaved. His bloody shirt stuck to his ribs. His eyes were bloodshot and wild, but beneath all the fury there was fear. He had a large amount of fear in him that he would never say out loud.
Amara shifted uneasily, her voice thin in the silence. "Maybe you should... lower your voices. She—she needs quiet."
However, the brothers weren’t looking at her. Not even Dominic spared her a glance. His eyes remained on Ronan, and so did Ronan.
They were looking at each other. One was ready to burn everything down, and the other a fortress of silence.
The tulip slipped from Amara’s hand and landed soundlessly on the floor.