“Dominik found out about the attack earlier than any of us. He stopped most of the attackers before we even knew something was off. Dominik must’ve known we weren’t the target. He went to our parents' house, but Mom didn’t make it. Dad was slightly injured,” he says and I hold him as if he could just disappear. I hold onto him and see Rian move inside another building.
“Who killed mom?” I ask Josh, he seems uncomfortable. He sits me inside his car and circles it to get to the driver’s seat. He locks the doors, I watch Damian and Marcus go after Rian. “What are they doing?”
“Giving Dominik a chance to bail,” Josh says his hazel eyes fixated on someone by Damian’s side, Maya and Sammy. I try to open the car door but Josh doesn’t let me.
“Let me out,” I order but Josh doesn’t let anyone boss him around, never did, never will.
“Dominik killed our mother, Love. He needs to get the hell out of here before dad is conscious,” he killed my mother?
“Was it an accident?” I ask Josh and he shrugs.
“Does it matter?” he’s right, our father will never forgive him, accident or not. “I’m never seeing him again am I?”
“If you want him to live, you'd better pray you don’t,” the end of an era I refuse to believe. Mom is dead. Dad is injured. Dominik is gone. Or needs to be. For his own well-being, I hope he does.
Chapter 16
Dominik
I need to get back to Cilinm. But Vance Kane has put a target on my head. Everyone is ordered to shoot me at first sight. Shoot me to kill.
I tried saving them both. Vance and Marie. I didn’t calculate that the table I sent Marie flying out to was made of glass. And I wasn’t really expecting it to slit her neck when it got broken. I was ostracised if I wanted to live. Josh was the one who gave me the opportunity. I’ve been texting Love but she doesn’t reply. I look at the messages and want to scream I didn’t mean for things to end up this way. Josh probably blocked all my messages. I still read the one reply I got on the night of the incident.
Vie: Run. Far. Stay there and don’t ever come back. Please.
I can’t give her that. I can’t run away. I’m not one to give up at the first struggle.
It’s not the first struggle.
My brain keeps wanting me dead. And I nearly let him drown me in a bathtub. I resurfaced for air with the simple thought of seeing Love again. Ever again. No matter when. I open our chat and reread the latest messages.
Me: Today I really wanted to go back home to you. Your father would’ve killed me but seeing you would’ve been worth it.
Me: Don’t even think about replacing me, ma Vie. I’m coming back. You know I didn’t do it on purpose, don’t you?
Me: And yet your father tried to kill me again. Tell him to stop sending his lackeys on a suicide mission; he’ll never succeed if I don’t want him to.
This last message was from yesterday. Vance has been going out of his way to kill me. My phone buzzes.
Karl: Vance is allying with Mitkus against you. Go to this address, XXXXX-XX. Be careful. They’re not expecting you, but they’re with Mitkus.
Right, how did Love call them, barbarians? Doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Me: Get our team the nearest you can without drawing attention to yourselves and be ready to help me out of there if anything goes south.
Karl: Got it. Don’t kill her father Dominik, you’ll lose her.
I know Karl.
I think and get my gear before hopping in the car and driving to the street next to the address. I enter thebuilding in front of the address and assess how many people are inside and what kind of conference this is.
I’m at twenty guards when I spot a familiar face with his arm around my girl. The audacity.
I almost shoot him but that would ruin both my undercover mission, and anything Love still feels for me. The memories of that night keep coming to my mind, I keep thinking what I could’ve done differently. There was nothing else I could’ve done. If I didn’t push her away she would be dead. If I pushed less hard she might’ve been alive, if the bullet didn’t hit her. That’s what her father blames me for, yet there were no other circumstances she was getting out of that bullet’s way. She’d always get hit.
I gave her a chance. What I didn’t expect was for my chance to be taken with her life. I tried to clamp her carotid with my fingers until Damian arrived, but it was too fucking late when he did, she had bled out. Josh knocked his father out so he wouldn’t kill me and sent me away. He thought his father would stop once I was out of their city, their territory. He didn’t, he wants me dead.
A life for a life.
