Chapter 419: Loud Si

Chapter 419: Loud Silence

When Athena came back into the sitting room, the stillness hit her harder than the cool night air she’d just left behind. The lamps threw a soft glow across the walls, yet the room felt dim, muffled, as if it had been holding its breath since she’d stepped outside.

Antonio’s words still clung to her ears, sharp as glass: It’s not a relationship then. She tried to shake them off, but her chest was still tight. He had been unhinged in a way she had never seen before, and she couldn’t help circling back to the question: was Ewan really enough reason for Antonio to unravel like that? To lose the restraint he always wore like a suit?

Or was this picture the real Antonio? In those few years they had spent staying together on most occasions, did she really see him, know him?

Her hand twitched against her side, and she straightened her shoulders. She couldn’t let her family see it—the turmoil, the sting of what had just happened. She had to be stone, at least in here. Still, she knew her absence had been too long. Their eyes would follow her, their questions unspoken but heavy in the air.

She crossed the room with deliberate calm, her face smoothed into neutrality, though inside, her pulse still stumbled.

Ewan sat on the couch, a stubborn set to his jaw, his thigh wrapped in a bandage already darkening with fresh blood. The sight of it made her throat close.

She lowered herself beside him, close enough that their knees almost touched. "Is he alive?" Her voice came out quieter than she meant, nearly fragile. "Zane?"

Ewan’s eyes met hers, steady. "Alive," he said simply.

Relief swept through her, though it didn’t erase the unease curling in her stomach. Alive wasn’t safe. Alive wasn’t whole. Did he lose any body part?

Her gaze dropped to his thigh, the crude binding, the sluggish seep of red. She didn’t touch, but her fingers hovered like they wanted to. "Tell me everything," she said, the softness gone now, replaced with steel.

Ewan studied her for a moment, then exhaled, slow, resigned. And he told her.

By the time he finished, Athena was sitting stiffly back in her seat, her hands clamped together so tightly her knuckles burned. The silence stretched again, filled with the weight of what he had just given her.

then looked at him. "The hospital. The one they took

a pause. "Safer than here. We couldn’t risk bringing him in. If his father catches wind..." He trailed off, shaking


the unease twisting her gut. It was the right

lifting her chin. "Hasn’t he asked

crashing with me

she gave a small, incredulous smile.

the only thing that

joy in it. "What happens

improvise again," Ewan said. His eyes softened just a

to his leg again. "And

his head.

betraying the

than it feels," he said.

her eyes, but he met her stare, calm, steady. "You should

had been unusually quiet, his posture upright


carefully. "How does he feel

shoulder in a shrug, though his mouth stayed flat. "Thinks

pressed, watching him closely. "How

she saw it, again—the flicker in his eyes, the

when she had met him on the porch. The worry. She realised now that it was more for his own

wasn’t

frustration. "We didn’t catch them. The doctors—they slipped through our fingers. All

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