Silent Scars

CHAPTER 72

ARIANA HASTINGS

I don't even remember the last time I truly slept.

Sleep had always been a battleground, shadows and screams waiting just beneath the surface. The smallest sound could yank me from it, heart pounding, lungs burning, body bracing for a hit that never came but always felt too close.

But here, in this unfamiliar, too-white hospital room, wrapped in too many blankets and surrounded by soft beeping....

I slept.

And for the first time in what felt like forever, I didn't wake up screaming, I didn't wake up gasping for air, trying to survive a nightmare that never really ended.

I don't know why.

Maybe because they were here.

Maybe because my brothers, these strangers who somehow felt like the safest thing I'd ever known, never left me alone.

Maybe it was their presence that wrapped around me tighter than any blanket ever could.

I could finally sleep because they were here.

But somewhere inside that strange warmth of sleep, a voice reached me.

"I'm sorry... I failed you."

At first, I thought it was another nightmare, another whisper from the dark meant to cut me open again.

But this voice.....it wasn't cold.

It wasn't cruel.

It trembled, like someone was trying to hold themselves together and failing.

And it stabbed.

It reached someplace deep in me, somewhere I thought was long dead.

I hated the way those words made me feel.

Because no one had ever apologized to me before.

No one had ever said "I'm sorry" when I got hurt.

No one had looked at my bruises and said it wasn't my fault.

No one had cared.

When I bled, the only thing I heard was that I deserved it.

My mother made sure I knew it: I deserved it.

I deserved every scar, every slap, every cruel word carved into my bones.

I deserved worse.

That's what I was taught to believe.

So hearing this, that voice saying "I failed you", it didn't make sense.

It didn't fit into the world I knew.

It hurt in a way I couldn't explain, like it was tearing through the lies I'd been forced to swallow for years.

I blinked my eyes open slowly, breathing shallow as the hospital ceiling came into focus. The room was dim, the machines still humming around me.

But then I saw him.

Leonardo.

He was turning away, shoulders hunched in a way I had never seen before. His head was bowed, hands clenched, his entire frame shaking so subtly I almost missed it.

He looked... broken.

And in that moment, I realized something I hadn't let myself believe before.

He didn't hate me.

He never had.

I saw it in his face, no mask, no cold stare, no carefully measured expression. Just raw, open pain.