ONE SIXTY FIVE
There was another crash, something heavy, maybe a chair, slamming hard into the floor, and my stomach twisted painfully. I squeezed my eyes shut for half a second, willing myself not to break down, then tried again to wriggle past Dominic, clawing at his shirt like a child trying to get through a locked door.
“Dominic, please!” I rasped, my hands bunching into fists. “I need to help her! I need—”
He turned his head slightly then, just enough that I could see the wild panic flickering in his eyes. His jaw clenched so hard I could hear his teeth grind, and under his breath he muttered, “Not yet. I can’t risk you getting hurt.”
Inside the kitchen, I could hear Gael now too, his voice low and furious, slurred and ugly.
“She’s lying,” he snapped. “Fucking lying bitch! She set me up—she—”
“Enough!” Dominic thundered, loud enough that the walls seemed to tremble.
The metallic clink of the gun shifting, the shuffle of someone's feet across the tile sounded so loud I could barely hear my own heartbeat anymore.
Tears burned behind my eyes. I didn’t even realize I was crying until one slipped down my cheek, cold against my overheated skin. I pressed harder against Dominic’s arm, desperate for just a glimpse, just a second to see Tina’s face, to make sure she was still standing, still breathing.
Every instinct in me screamed to fight, to shove Dominic out of the way, to throw myself into the kitchen and pull Tina out if I had to. But he was a damn mountain. Solid. Immovable. And every breathless second that ticked by only fed the wildfire burning inside my chest. I clawed at his arm, tried to worm around him, my body practically vibrating with the need to see, to know, but he kept shoving me gently—too gently—back with one broad, bracing hand, his focus trained entirely on the chaos erupting inside the kitchen.
“Tina,” Dominic said, voice low and firm, like he was trying to coax a wild animal away from the edge of a cliff. “Tina, put the gun down, okay? Let's just talk. Just drop it. Nobody has to get hurt.”
I rose up on my toes, craning my neck desperately to look over his shoulder. It wasn’t enough. I could barely make out Tina's outline—messy hair, the hem of a T-shirt clinging to her thighs, one arm stretched out with trembling fury, aimed at Gael. Gael, who was backed against the fridge, his face bloodied and twisted in rage and panic, one hand up like it might somehow shield him if she pulled the trigger.
“Dominic, let me see!” I hissed, shoving at his ribs, clawing at his arm. I couldn’t stand not knowing. I needed to see her, to help, to do something. My breath ripped out of me in panicked gasps, and I felt like my body was going to combust if I stayed pinned here one second longer.
Dominic gritted his teeth, barely sparing me a glance as he leaned his weight harder into me, blocking the doorway with his entire body. “Stay back, Eleanor,” he snapped under his breath. “This shit’s volatile.”
But a bitter, almost hysterical laugh bubbled up in my chest, silent, strangled, lodged behind my ribs, because God, did he think I hadn’t seen worse?
He knew I had seen worse.
We had both seen worse.
In the past few days alone, I had seen blood spilled across tile floors, bodies broken beyond repair, I had seen men die with their eyes wide open and empty. I had heard the sick, wet sound of flesh meeting fist, the kind of noise that stuck to your skin and didn't wash off no matter how many showers you took.
I had already stood in the middle of hell, ankle-deep in it, breathing it in until it burned my lungs.
I had been in the ocean trying to escape from a cult of women killers.
And here he was, shielding me from this: a kitchen argument, a gun in Tina’s shaking hand, a man too pathetic to be half as dangerous as the ones we had fought off before. I understood Dominic, though. I understood him better than maybe he wanted me to. He wasn’t underestimating me. He wasn’t treating me like some porcelain doll he thought would shatter at the first crack of chaos.
No, rather, he was terrified, terrified in the way only someone who loved too hard and lost too much could be. He was shielding me not because he thought I couldn’t handle it, but because he was scared of losing me in a flash of bad luck, a single stray bullet, a mistake made too fast to undo. That was Dominic. Always carrying the weight of everyone else’s lives on his back, willing to be the shield, the wall, the thing that broke so the people behind him didn’t have to. And maybe in any other moment, any other lifetime, I would have let him do it. I would have tucked myself behind him and let him hold the line. But not now. Not when Tina was on the edge and Gael looked ready to snap and everything could spiral out of control in the space between heartbeats. I had seen too much. I had survived too much.
And I wasn’t going to let Tina get hurt, even though she was the one with the gun.
Inside the kitchen, Tina was practically vibrating with rage, her voice shaking but getting louder, shriller. “If I hadn't gotten out of bed, if I hadn’t needed water, this pezzo di merda—” the curse bit out loud and thick with her Italian accent—“he would have run! Run! He would have called the fucking cops on us!”
Dominic tried again, cautiously stepping forward like he was approaching a cornered animal. His palms were still raised. “Tina. How the hell did you get the gun, huh? You’re supposed to be resting, you can’t—your stitches—”
But Tina didn’t let him finish.
“I tackled him!” she screamed, and the words cracked open something ugly inside the room. Her body jerked forward, the gun bobbing dangerously with the motion. “I fucking tackled him when I caught him sneaking out! He punched my wound, Dominic!” Her voice broke over the words, searing and guttural, and I could hear the tears she was holding back. "Punched it!"
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