ONE SIXTY SEVEN
Her lip curled back from her teeth as she said it, like she was seconds away from tearing him apart with her bare hands if we hadn’t been standing between them. She didn’t shake. She didn’t even blink. The gun was gone, but the weapon was still very much in her, pulsing through her blood, radiating off her like a second skin. Gael didn’t say a damn word. He just stood there breathing heavily, his fists curling and uncurling like he couldn’t decide whether he was going to lunge or bolt. And for a split second, with the broken kitchen behind us and the bleeding morning creeping in through the windows, I didn’t know which one of them was going to snap first.
Tina stood there a beat longer, breathing hard, staring Gael down like she was daring him to move. And then, without a word, she turned. Her limp was swift and pronounced, her body favoring the side where the wound must have throbbed and burned with every step. I watched, heart hammering painfully against my ribs, as she staggered toward the doorway. Each step she took left a small, dark print behind her—a trail of blood smeared onto the tile floor, vivid against the broken glass and the wreckage of the kitchen. She didn’t even flinch. She didn’t cry. She didn’t look back.
I clutched the gun tighter in my hand, frozen there for a second, not sure what to do, not sure who I was supposed to run after—Tina, bleeding and furious—or Dominic, who was still standing stiff and silent between me and Gael, like he didn’t dare move either.
And when I finally lifted my head, when I dragged my eyes away from the trail Tina had left behind, I saw Isabella.
She was just there, standing silently at the mouth of the hallway like some kind of ghost. Her robe hung open at the collar, her curls messy under the bonnet, her bare feet curling slightly against the cold floor. But it was her face that wrecked me the most. No fear. No confusion. Just… disappointment. Raw and plain, like she’d expected better, like Gael’s violence hadn’t surprised her—it had let her down. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. The weight of her gaze said it all.
And for a long, terrible second, none of us moved. The early morning light bled pale and cold through the broken kitchen window, illuminating every shard of glass, every drop of blood, every shattered thing.
And that was how the morning truly began.
****
I pressed myself tighter against the doorframe, wrapping my arms around my chest so hard it felt like I might crack a rib. The room was hot, reeking of sweat and blood as Dominic had refused the windows were open to avoid Gael trying anything stupid.
Dominic stood rigid by the bed, the gun in his hand a dark extension of his will, pressed hard into Gael’s side. His whole body was a live wire, his shoulders locked, his jaw clenched so tight I thought I could hear his teeth grinding from across the room. He didn’t blink. He didn’t breathe. He just watched Gael like a man daring him to make the wrong move, just once.
Gael knelt beside Tina, hands shaking so badly I thought he might drop the scissors he clutched. Every tremor, every jolt of his muscles, made my stomach twist tighter. He was trying so hard not to show it, but he was terrified, not of Tina’s wounds, not of the blood soaking into the sheets, but of the man holding a loaded gun against his ribs without a flicker of hesitation.
Tina let out a strangled, broken curse as Gael peeled back the soaked bandages. I watched the way her hands clawed at the pillow under her, gripping it so fiercely her knuckles turned bone white. Her blonde hair clung to her forehead in wet strands. Sweat streamed down her temples. Every few seconds, a shudder racked through her frail body, and a muffled moan broke from her lips as she bit down hard, drawing blood.
I wanted to move. I wanted to help. But my legs were rooted to the floor.
If I moved, if I even breathed wrong, I might set something off—some hidden tripwire strung through the air that would make Dominic pull the trigger, or Gael panic, or Tina tear herself apart with the pain.
The only sound in the room was the sticky wet peel of the bandage lifting from her wound, the rasp of Gael’s breath, the soft whimper that Tina tried and failed to choke back.
"Dominic," Gael said suddenly, voice cracked and desperate, like a man begging for his life. "I need both hands steady for this. Can you—" His eyes darted down at the barrel pressed into his ribs. "Just ease up a little?"
Dominic didn’t even twitch. He didn’t have to say anything.
The pressure on the gun increased.
I saw Gael flinch visibly, his mouth snapping shut.
"You think I'm stupid?" Dominic's voice was colder than I'd ever heard it. No mercy. No negotiation. Just a lethal promise wrapped in a few words. "You move one fucking inch wrong, I’ll paint the goddamn wall with your guts. Now focus."
The silence after that wasn’t really silence at all. It was heavy. Loud with all the things none of us dared say.
Gael’s hands resumed their work, trembling harder now. His face was slick with sweat, a bead rolling down his nose, but he didn’t dare lift a hand to wipe it. I watched as he slowly, painstakingly snipped away the ruined shirt from Tina’s body, inch by miserable inch for better access to the wound and the bandages. The scissors shook as he worked, and every time the blade slid too close to her skin, I caught my breath and squeezed my arms tighter around myself.
Tina grunted, jerking slightly when the fabric shifted and tugged on the wound. Her face twisted in agony, another harsh curse slipping past her lips.
"Sorry," Gael muttered under his breath, his voice hoarse, broken. "Sorry, Tina."
I don’t know if she heard him. Maybe she didn’t care. Pain had swallowed her whole. He had brought the pain on her, whether he liked it or not, she was in even more pain because of the punch he had sent into her gut.
When the shirt finally came away, I saw the wound beneath it, and my stomach flipped over violently.
It was worse than I imagined. Raw, angry, the skin inflamed and swollen around the spot where the knife had torn into her. Blood oozed sluggishly from the broken flesh, a dark, sticky red that stained the sheets and her skin. It had been cleaned before, yesterday and dressed properly but now with the punch Gael had droven into her gut, the wound had opened up angrily, the blood oozing in endless gush and the skin torn and stretched further like a piece of clothe torn into two direction.
Only this was gory, and there was loose skin, and blood, lots and lots of blood.
Gael didn’t waste time staring. He grabbed a clean cloth from the kit and started cleaning around it, dabbing lightly, murmuring apologies with every wince that racked Tina’s body. His hands moved quickly now, desperate to be done, desperate to stop being the center of Dominic’s cold, lethal attention. I wondered if he was truly sorry, or was just feigning concern because Dominic seemed to not mind putting the fucking bullet into his rib if he as much as even blinked wrongly. Or blinked too much.
Dominic hadn't moved an inch.
The gun was still there. His finger was still steady on the trigger. His face was unreadable.
I could barely stand to look at him. I could barely stand to look away. I saw what this was doing to him. I saw the way he locked it all down inside, how every fiber of him was screaming to just put a bullet in Gael’s head and be done with it. But he didn’t. He held it together because Tina needed fixing more than Gael needed punishing.
Because he cared.
When Gael finished wrapping the wound in fresh bandages, his shoulders sagged. He leaned back on his heels, looking like he might throw up from relief.
“She’s gonna need real care,” he rasped. His voice was barely more than a whisper. “This won’t hold forever.”
Dominic finally pulled the gun back, just a fraction, but it felt like the whole room exhaled with him.
“We’ll worry about that later,” Dominic said. His voice was cold, final. "Right now, you’re breathing because she’s breathing."
Gael didn’t say a word. He didn’t dare.
He just bowed his head and stayed kneeling by the bed, breathing in shallow, careful gulps.
I stayed frozen by the door, my hands digging so hard into my own arms I was sure I’d leave bruises.
Everything could still go to hell in a heartbeat. One wrong breath, one wrong word, and this fragile, blood-soaked peace would shatter.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were all standing at the edge of a cliff, and the ground was already starting to crumble beneath us.
And Dominic… Dominic was the only thing keeping us from falling.
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