ONE EIGHTY FIVE
The hallway stretched out before us, longer than it had any right to be, and every step we took felt like it was dragging us closer toward something we couldn’t undo.
Before we left, I stole away for just a second—to check on Isabella and Tina, to make sure they were all right, to make sure we weren’t walking away from chaos that could fall apart the second our backs were turned. But when I pushed open the door to the room, I found Isabella crouched low by the bed, her voice a quiet hum as she fastened the buttons on a fresh, soft shirt over Tina’s battered little frame. Tina sat there like a porcelain doll, dazed and fragile but no longer shaking violently the way she had before. Isabella's fingers moved deftly, her mouth set in that stubborn, fierce line she always wore when the world tried to beat her down. She didn’t even glance up at me, didn’t need to, because she knew exactly what she was doing. She had it under control. She always did.
And so, heart heavy and hands trembling slightly, I stepped away from the doorway, letting the door click shut behind me as quietly as I could, and found Dominic waiting just a few paces down the hall. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. His green eyes locked onto mine, and whatever he saw there must have been enough, because he only gave the slightest nod, turned, and started walking toward the room where Adam was still unconscious. I followed him silently, matching his long strides with shorter, more anxious ones of my own, the soles of my boots whispering against the worn floorboards.
And as we walked, it hit me—really hit me—that this might be it. This might be the last time we walked these halls together. The last time the world around us was still intact, still full of possibilities and maybes and fragile hopes. The thought was a slow, suffocating pressure against my lungs, stealing the breath from my body with every reluctant step forward.
I found myself tracing every detail of him as we moved—memorizing the stiff line of his shoulders, the set of his jaw, the way one hand flexed unconsciously at his side like he was already preparing for a fight he couldn’t afford to lose. I memorized it because I couldn’t bear the thought of forgetting. Because if something happened to him out there—if he walked into that chaos and didn’t come back—I would need something to hold onto, something real to anchor me when the rest of me inevitably drifted away.
A part of me, a stubborn and furious part, wanted to scream at him again, to throw myself in front of him and refuse to let him go. But a deeper part—a quieter, more broken part—knew that it wouldn’t change anything. Dominic was going because he had to. Because the boy we loved—the boy we’d risked everything to protect—was lying unconscious in a room just ahead of us, caught in the same web of violence and vengeance that had always stalked our steps.
Our son.
The words rang through my mind with a weight that nearly buckled my knees. He didn’t know. He had no idea that every choice he made now wasn’t just for himself, or for me, or for the people we were trying to save. He was making choices for a little boy who would one day either know the strength of his father’s arms—or only the hollow ache of his absence. And Dominic, damn him, still thought he could protect us best by pushing us away. By shielding us with distance, by sacrificing himself so that we could stay whole.
But he didn’t understand. He didn’t realize that if he left and didn’t come back, he wouldn’t just be tearing a hole through my heart—he would be leaving a wound that would never close inside our son. A boy who would grow up with questions no one could answer. A boy who would carry the invisible scars of a father he never truly got to know. A boy who might grow up to be hard in all the ways Dominic had fought so hard to stay soft for me.
The air around us felt heavier with every step, thick with the scent of old wood, stale air, and the bittersweet tang of fear. I wanted to scream, to grab him, to beg him again to let me come. To tell him that facing death side-by-side was still better than living in a world where he no longer existed. But the words stuck fast in my throat, trapped behind the lump of sorrow that had been growing there since the second he told me I wasn’t coming with him.
And somewhere, deep inside me, a cruel voice whispered that maybe this was our pattern. Maybe this was who we had always been—two people constantly pulled apart by forces bigger than our love, bigger than our promises, bigger than our dreams. Maybe fate had decided long ago that Dominic and Eleanor were a tragedy in the making, and no matter how hard we fought, we were always meant to end here. Him walking into the fire. Me standing in the ashes.
The thought made my fingers curl into tight fists at my sides, nails biting into my palms. I wouldn’t accept it. I couldn’t. We had already lost too much. I wouldn’t lose him too.
We reached the door to Adam’s room, and Dominic paused, his hand hovering over the handle, shoulders tight and rigid with a tension that mirrored my own. I stared at the back of his head, at the mess of dark blond hair I loved running my fingers through when the world wasn’t falling apart. I imagined him turning back to me, offering a small, brave smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes, telling me he’d be fine, that he’d come back, that I shouldn’t worry.
I imagined believing him.
But a deeper, more brutal part of me knew better.
Knew that promises like that were lies, no matter how much we wanted them to be true.
And so I stood there, just a few steps behind him, drowning in the silence between us. Every breath felt like it scraped my insides raw. Every beat of my heart sounded louder, more desperate. My mind raced with images of what could happen—gunshots in the dark, sirens wailing too late, Dominic bleeding out on a cold, unforgiving street while I sat here, waiting, hoping, breaking.
The world had already taken so much from us. It had already demanded sacrifices we hadn’t been ready to give. And here we were again, standing at the edge of a cliff we had no choice but to jump from.
I closed my eyes for a long moment, trying to gather the pieces of myself into something strong enough to endure whatever came next. But no matter how tightly I wrapped my arms around myself, no matter how hard I fought to breathe past the choking fear in my throat, one truth remained, sharp and brutal as a blade:
If Dominic didn’t come back to me, I wouldn’t survive this time.
I would fall apart completely. And there would be no putting me back together.
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