Chapter 115
I was sore as hell.
Between my legs, up my spine, deep in my thighs every inch of my body ached in ways that weren’t just physical. The sheets were tangled around me, still damp in places, the air heavy with the memory of what Dominic had done to me… and what I’d let him do.
The room was dim, only the soft amber glow of the wall sconce above the nightstand casting warmth across the space. I blinked, squinting at the unfamiliar calm. No shouting. No footsteps. No distant hum of engines or guards moving around the house.
Just silence.
I rolled slowly onto my side, hissing as my muscles protested. And then I saw him.
Dominic was sitting in the armchair across from the bed, shirtless, dark pants riding low on his hips. One hand cradled a glass of something expensive and amber. The other rested against his knee, fingers twitching slightly–restless. His gaze was on me, but it wasn’t his usual storm. There was no demand there. No command. Just… something else.
Wounded.
“Didn’t mean to wake you,” he said quietly, not moving. “You were out cold.”
“You fucked me unconscious,” I muttered, voice raw.
That earned the ghost of a smirk, but it didn’t stay long. He looked back down into the glass in his hand like it held something deeper than liquor.
I pulled the sheet up to my chest, more for comfort than modesty. “What time is it?”
“Late,” he said. “Early. Doesn’t matter.”
A long silence stretched between us. I waited for him to get up, to crawl back into bed, maybe drag me into another round of punishment disguised as passion. But he didn’t.
He just sat there. Thinking.
“I had a sister,” he said suddenly.
I blinked. “What?”
He didn’t look at me. “You asked once, a long time ago. About my family. I never answered.”
The air shifted. Tightened.
“She was younger than me. Nineteen when she died. Beautiful. Smarter than me, too. Way smarter.” He laughed, but it was bitter, dry. “I used to tell her she’d be running the whole operation by twenty–five.”
I sat up slowly, heart thudding for reasons I didn’t fully understand. “What happened?”
His eyes found mine, and they were darker than I’d ever seen them.
“She trusted someone she shouldn’t have. A man. One of ours. He… he made her feel safe.” Dominic’s throat bobbed, and I watched him drink slowly, eyes never leaving mine. “I didn’t see it. I didn’t want to see it. Thought she was just rebelling. She’d sneak out, lie, cover for him. The usual.”
He laughed again. It was even uglier this time.
“He killed her.”
The words hit like a slap.
My mouth opened, but nothing came out.
Dominic stood and walked toward the window, back to me now, shoulders rigid.
“Shot her in the chest. Said it was an accident. Said they were drunk. Said she had a gun. All bullshit. I knew it. But by the time I found out, he was gone.”
I swallowed hard. “I… I didn’t know.”
“You weren’t supposed to,” he muttered. “No one knows. Only Nico. I buried it. Along with her. Buried everything.”
Something hollow thudded in my chest.
Successfully unlocked!
He turned back to face me then, and the expresjon on his far they
I like I was seeing a ghost. He looked haunted. “That’s why I am the way I am,” he said, stepping closer. “Why I keep you locked away. Why I lose my mind when you leave
without telling me. I couldn’t protect her.”
My throat was tight. Too tight.
Chapter 115
“I’m not her,” I whispered.
“I know.”
He was at the edge of the bed now, but he didn’t sit. Just looked at me like I was some fragile, glass–edged thing he couldn‘ t decide whether to shatter or shelter.
“But every time you walk away, I see her. I see her turning her back, walking into something I can’t stop. I hear the gun. I feel the blood on my hands.”
I looked down at my lap. The sheet twisted in my fists. “Dominic…”
“I didn’t tell you this to make you feel sorry for me,” he said, voice tighter now. “I told you because you should know what kind of man you’re chained to.”
He took a breath. “One who’s failed the people he loved. One who’s still failing.”
I didn’t know what to say.
A part of me ached for him. For that boy who must have held his sister’s dying body. For the man who now carried that guilt like a loaded weapon.
But another part of me…
Wasn’t sure it was enough.
“I’m sorry,” I said softly. “But… that doesn’t undo the things you’ve done. To me.”
His eyes closed. Not in frustration. In something closer to defeat.
“I know,” he whispered.
I reached out before I could stop myself, my fingers brushing against his wrist. The muscles in his arm tensed beneath my touch–but he didn’t pull away.
“I want to trust you,” I said, voice cracking. “But I don’t know how.”
He sat then. Beside me. Close but not touching.
And for a long moment, there was just the quiet between us. The ghosts. The grief.
Then he turned to me.
His hand reached out slowly, fingers brushing against my cheek. Feather–light. Reverent.
“You’re the only one,” he said, voice almost broken, “who’s ever made me feel anything.”
I frowned. “Really? Not even Victoria touched your hard heart?”
He cocked his head, brow lifting slowly. “What do you
mean?”
I shifted beneath the sheets, still sore, still half–lost in the echo of the night we’d carved into each other. My voice was soft, but sharp around the edges. “You and Nico. You fought about her. I remember Carmen saying something… that you two used to clash over Victoria. That she was more than just one of your flings.”
Dominic’s expression didn’t change. But his eyes did.
There was a flicker. A brief, sharp cut of something across that stone façade.
“I mean…” I continued, eyes narrowing, “Did you love her?”
That earned a sound from him. Not quite a laugh. Not quite a scoff. Something drier, darker, like a man dragging a knife across his own history.
“No,” he said simply.
I blinked. “She told me you did.”
Dominic raised a brow.
“She told me you fought for her,” I said. “That you chased her. That before she married Mikael, it was you she wanted. And that you” I licked my lips, tasting bitterness, “-wanted her enough to go to war with Nico over her.”
He leaned back against the headboard, his bare chest rising slow and steady, the scar along his jaw catching in the low light. “That’s the thing with Victoria,” he murmured, voice colder now. “She always knew how to twist the story to make herself the center.”
I watched him closely. “So it’s not true?”
He looked at me then, really looked. The mask was still on, but the cracks were deeper now.
“Nico wanted her,” he said finally. “And she knew it. She played him. Flirted with me just to get under his skin. She was never mine. She just wanted to belong to someone powerful. And when I didn’t bite, she went for the next crown. Mikael’s.” There was no hurt in his voice. No jealousy. Just cold calculation. Like she was another chess piece that never made it
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across the board.
“I don’t love pawns,” he added.
I should’ve felt relief. But the knot in my stomach didn’t loosen.
Because even if he didn’t love her, Victoria had known how to get under his skin. She’d gotten close enough to know things about me, things she shouldn’t have. Close enough to make me question the man lying beside me.
Dominic must’ve seen the thoughts spinning behind my eyes, because he leaned closer, brushing a strand of hair from my cheek.
“She lied to hurt you,” he said. “That’s what she does. Don’t let her win now that she’s dead.”
“I don’t trust easily,” I said, breath catching. “And I’ve got more scars than skin left.”
“I know.”
His hand lingered against my face. Warm. Gentle. The same one that had once choked me against a wall.
The silence stretched, thick and heavy.
Then-
BZZZZT.
His phone lit up on the nightstand. Dominic grabbed it immediately.
“Sir,” the voice on the other end said, breathless, panicked. “You must come. We found a bomb-”
BOOM.
The blast rattled the windows. The power flickered. I screamed, instinctively diving toward Dominic as the shockwave rolled through the mansion like thunder.
Dust fell from the ceiling. Somewhere outside, alarms started screaming.
Dominic was already moving shoving out of bed, grabbing his weapon from the drawer, barking into the phone.
My heart slammed into my ribs.
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