Chapter 103 The curse of the crown
Carlino’s POV
When his hands reached his waist, I expected him to pull a gun, but he didn’t.
The sharp hiss of leather cut through the silence as he ripped his belt out. The silver buckle caught the dim light for a split second before it came flying at my face.
I moved.
My hand shot up, catching the belt inches before it struck. The force ran through my arm, steady and alive, connecting me directly to him. I didn’t pull away. I held it there, tight between us, my eyes locked onto his.
“Is this how it ends, Malder?” My voice came out low, rough. “Like this? After everything we bled for?”
His jaw tightened, but he didn’t answer. His silence said more than words ever could.
“Say something,” I pressed, my voice desperate, my grip tightening around the leather. “Or are you just going to swing and pretend it’s justice?” I have never been desperate, that wasn't a skill I was trained to acquire.
His lips curled slightly. “Justice?” he repeated, voice quiet. “You don’t even know what that word means anymore.”
Then he lunged.
The belt jerked, dragging me forward just enough for his knee to come up hard toward my ribs. I twisted, taking the impact against my hip, pain flaring, and shoved him back. He hit the ground, rolled, and got up almost instantly.
No pause. No hesitation.
The kick was messy.
Malder came at me like a storm with nothing left to lose, every strike heavy, reckless, fueled by something deeper than anger. I didn’t strike back, not yet. I couldn't. I blocked, deflected, absorbed. His fists, his elbows, his kicks, they kept coming.
“You hesitate,” he spat, circling me. “That’s new. The great Carlino… hesitating.”
“I’m thinking,” I shot back, ducking under a punch that cut through the air near my head. “Something you clearly stopped doing.”
A bitter laugh left him.
“Don’t twist this into something it’s not,” he snapped. “You chose this. You chose him.”
“I didn’t choose Silvio!” I fired back, sharper now. “I chose survival. I chose to stay alive long enough to fix what he broke!”
“Liar!”
He stepped in too close, his forehead crashing into my nose.
Pain exploded instantly. My vision flashed white, and I tasted blood before I even felt it running. I staggered back, but he didn’t give me space.
He never did.
Blow after blow landed, fast, relentless. A hit to my side stole the air from my lungs. Another followed before I could recover.
I took it.
I stood there and took it.
“We were supposed to do this together,” I forced out, my voice strained, breaking through each impact. “Not this. Not… each other.”
Another hit.
“Do you remember?” I pushed, even as my body screamed for me to hit back. “The orchard… the night we swore we’d never turn into them?”
His fist faltered for half a second.
Just one.
“We said no throne was worth blood between us,” I continued, stepping back as he came again. “We said we’d create a new cycle not become it the previous!”
For a moment, something shifted in his face. Something human, but it twisted into something colder.
“The name didn’t change you,” he said, voice cutting like a blade. “It exposed you.”
His eyes darkened. “It showed me who you really are.”
“I’m still your brother.”
“No,” he snapped instantly. “My brother died the moment you sat on that throne. The moment he accepted that our mother's death was justifiable.”
The words hit harder than his fists. He grabbed a rusted pipe nearby and swung.
I raised my arms just in time. The impact sent a jolt through my entire body, the vibration sinking deep into bone. Pain followed, sharp and immediate, but I held my ground.
“You think this is power?” he continued, advancing again. “Standing above everyone? Giving orders? Deciding who lives and who dies?”
“I didn’t want this!” I shot back, my voice rising for the first time. “You think I asked for it? You think I woke up one day and decided I wanted to become him?”
“You didn’t fight it hard enough!”
“I FOUGHT IT EVERY SECOND!” My voice cracked through the space. “Where were you, Malder? When I was drowning in it? When I had to make choices that would’ve broken you?”
“I would’ve never made them,” he growled.
“That’s the problem,” I said bitterly. “You never had to.”
“I would’ve found another way!”
“There was no other way!” I snapped. “Not anymore!”
“I’m trying to save you,” I added, quieter now, breath uneven, chest heaving.
His expression didn’t soften. Not even a little.
“I died already,” he shot back, eyes burning with something final. “There’s nothing left to save.”
And that was the truth of it. He wasn’t fighting to win. He was fighting to end something. To end me.
Every move he made was precise in its violence, aimed where it would do the most damage. My throat. My face. My chest. He wasn’t holding back, not even a little.
My vision blurred. One eye was swelling shut, blood slipping down from a cut above it. My breathing was hurting me, sharp, shallow.
But I kept watching him. Carefully observing.
“You hate me that much?” I asked, voice quieter now, almost lost beneath the sound of our breathing.
His expression didn’t change. “I don’t hate you,” he said.
A pause.
“I just don’t recognize you. My brother who would do anything for me was gone.”
That… hurt more than anything else. What I saw… wasn’t my brother. It was what had been left behind by that fire.
Something hollow. Something broken. Something filled with everything our father had ever put into us, everything we had tried to escape.
If I kept holding back, I would lose. Not just the fight. Everything. The realization didn’t come with anger. It came quietly. Settling deep inside me like something final.
“The brother you’re looking for…” I said under my breath, my gaze hardening.
“He’s gone.”
So I stopped defending.
Malder swung again, the pipe cutting through the air.
This time, I stepped into it.
The metal grazed my shoulder, pain shooting through me, but I didn’t stop. My hand drove forward into his chest, knocking the breath out of him.
He staggered.
I didn’t give him time.
My grip closed around his throat, and I slammed him back against the concrete pillar behind him. The dull sound echoed in the space.
“You want the King?” I said quietly. My voice didn’t shake this time. “Then look at him.”
His eyes burned into mine, defiant even now.
“Pathetic,” he rasped. “All that power… and you still look like a man begging for forgiveness.”
The punches came fast, controlled. Clean. No wasted movement. His head snapped with each hit, but he still fought back, hands clawing at my face, dragging across skin.
“You think this makes you strong?” he spat between blows. “This is exactly what he wanted. You became his legacy.”
“And you became his failure,” I shot back, landing another hit.
He laughed, broken, breathless. “At least I didn’t become him.”
He managed to knock us both off balance, and we hit the ground hard. The fight turned into something rougher, closer. A struggle. Hands grabbing, pushing, forcing.
He got his fingers into the cut near my eye, twisting.
A sound tore out of me before I could stop it.
“Still human after all,” he muttered.
I rolled him over, pinning him down, my knees locking his arms in place.
And then—
I hit him.
Again.
And again.
Each strike heavier than the last.
Each one carrying something I didn’t want to name.
“For everything…” I muttered, barely hearing my own voice.
“For what we were.”
“For what you made this into,” he coughed.
“For what we lost.”
“Then stop pretending you care,” he forced out, blood on his lips. “If you did… you wouldn’t still be here.”
“Stop…” he gasped.
My fist froze mid-air.
For a second—just a second—
I saw him again. Not this version. The real one. The boy who I stood beside in the orchard. The one who laughed like nothing could ever touch us.
“End it,” he said, his voice weaker now. “Do it… Rin.”
That name—
It shattered something in me. He wasn’t asking to live. He was asking me to finish it.
“To prove your point?” I asked hoarsely. “Or to ease your conscience?”
“To end yours,” he whispered.
I looked at him, blood dripping down my face onto his shirt.
“This is what you wanted?” I said quietly. “This is what all of this leads to?”
“It was always going to end like this,” he replied faintly. “You just took longer to see it.”
My hands moved to his throat.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
His lips moved slightly.
“I’m not.”
And then, I tightened my grip.
He struggled at first, weak but still there. His hands tried to pull mine away, his body fighting even as his strength began to fade.
“Still… trying to control everything…” he choked out.
“I’m trying to end it,” I said, my voice hollow.
“You’re just proving me right…”
His movements slowed. His grip weakened.
“Rin…”
I didn’t look away. I wanted to but I couldn’t. I watched it all, the anger, the pain… the last pieces of him slipping away.
Until there was nothing left.
The silence that followed felt heavier than the fight.
I stayed there longer than I should have, my hands still locked in place, my body refusing to move.
When I finally let go, everything felt… distant. My legs barely held me as I stood. I looked down at him. He looked different now.
Calm.
Like the boy I used to know. Like the one who used to laugh uncontrollably. I had won.
The threat was gone. The throne was still mine.
But standing there, in this empty space, it didn’t feel like victory.
It felt like loss.
Like everything that mattered had already been taken long before this moment.
I turned toward the exit slowly, the weight of it all pressing down on me.
The war was over.
The crown was mine.
And for the first time, it felt unbearably heavy.