ONE FIFTY NINE
The weight in the room thickened, the tension stretching tight like a wire, like if either of us moved the wrong way, it would snap. The dim light flickered, the faint hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen the only background noise breaking the stillness.
I wanted to ask. I wanted to press. I wanted to know how deep this betrayal cut him, how much of it was eating away at him, how much of it was making his blood burn beneath his skin. But more than that, I wanted to know if he had felt it. If it had hurt. If he had grieved the person he thought Alaric was.
But I didn’t ask.
Because I knew Dominic.
And I knew, even in the silence, even in the way his fingers traced idly over the barrel of his gun, even in the steady inhale and exhale of his breath, that he had.
That he had known something wasn’t right. Maybe not in the way that would have saved us from all of this—maybe not early enough to stop the blood from spilling, to keep the past from ripping through our lives like a hurricane. But he had known, in some deep, instinctual way, buried beneath everything else. Beneath the rage, the grief, the endless cycle of survival that had consumed us both.
And the truth was, so had I.
There had always been something about Alaric that felt off. Even though he was family, my uncle, my father’s younger brother. There had been something. Something I could never quite define, could never quite prove, but it had been there, lingering beneath the surface like an itch I couldn’t scratch. Even before the murders. Even before my life shattered into a thousand jagged pieces. He had been too present yet too distant, too aware yet too unwilling to act. It hadn’t made sense then, but it did now. If he had known where we were all along, if he had been watching from the shadows all these years, then he had to have known something. And if he had known something and stayed silent, then what the hell had been his endgame?
Silence stretched between us, thick and suffocating, wrapping itself around the dimly lit room like a living thing. Dominic kept spinning the gun in his hands, the soft metallic clicks filling the space in a slow, hypnotic rhythm. His fingers moved over the steel with ease, as if he wasn’t even aware he was doing it. I could see the tendons in his forearms flexing beneath his skin, the way his veins stood out against the dim glow of the single light above us. His breathing was even, too even, like he was trying to hold something back, something that was threatening to break free.
And then, he whispered.
"He was selling us out."
A chill ran down my spine.
"Must have been."
His voice was low, strained, the kind of quiet that felt more dangerous than shouting.
His grip on the gun tightened, his knuckles turning bone-white. His shoulders stiffened, his entire body locking up like a loaded weapon ready to go off. I saw the way his nostrils flared, the way his jaw clenched so hard that the muscles ticked violently beneath his skin. It was settling into him, sinking into his bones, the truth that had been staring us in the face all along. Alaric had betrayed us. He had given us up. He had been the reason the cabin had been found, the reason Vaughn had known exactly where to find me in New York.
I saw the moment it clicked—the second the weight of it all crashed down on him.
Dominic’s breathing shifted, sharp and uneven now, no longer the careful inhale and exhale from moments ago. His leg bounced slightly, his fingers flexing compulsively around the handle of the gun, his shoulders practically vibrating with restrained fury. He wasn’t just angry. He was livid. A slow-burning, dangerous kind of anger that didn’t explode—it imploded, swallowing everything in its path.
And I should have stayed where I was.
Should have let him sit in it, let him process it the way he needed to.
But my body had already made its decision before my brain had the chance to stop it.
Slowly, cautiously, I pushed myself up from the couch. The cool air of the room wrapped around me instantly, and I shuddered, my arms instinctively curling around myself. Every step I took toward him felt heavier than the last, like I was walking through something thick and invisible, something charged and suffocating.
Dominic didn’t move. Didn’t even acknowledge me.
The only thing that moved was the gun.
Spinning. Turning. Clicking.
The light from the lamp flickered slightly, casting shadows over his face, making the sharp lines of his cheekbones even more pronounced, his expression unreadable. I could barely see his eyes, but I didn’t need to. I could feel what was in them.
I hesitated just a foot away from him, close enough to feel the heat radiating off his body, close enough that if I reached out, I could touch him. But I didn’t. Because I wasn’t sure if I could.
Because I wanted to.
Because I needed to.
And that terrified me.
He was still breathing hard, his chest rising and falling with a quiet intensity, his hands gripping the gun like it was the only thing anchoring him. I watched the way the veins in his hands pulsed, how his fingers flexed over the metal like he was seconds away from snapping it in two.
I wanted to tell him to stop.
I wanted to tell him that we’d figure it out, that we’d survive this the way we had survived everything else, that I wasn’t going anywhere. But the words stuck in my throat, tangled with everything else I didn’t know how to say.
So I just stood there.
Watching him.
Waiting.
Wanting.
And then, finally, Dominic looked up at me.
And oh, how much I missed him.
Log in with Google Account
Chapters
Favorite
Settings
