But blood is a funny thing.
It follows you.
Not through your veins, but through your choices. Through your instincts. Through the split-second decisions you make when you’re cornered. Through the things you do when you’re scared and desperate and convinced you’re out of options.
James was violent. Caroline was manipulative. Cold and calculating in ways that still make my skin crawl. I spent my whole life looking at them and promising myself, swearing on everything I held sacred, that I would never be either one of them. I told myself I was different. Better. Kinder. More self-aware.
I told myself I had broken the cycle.
Then life started making demands.
And every time I was forced to choose between right and survival, between morality and making it through another day, I chose survival.
Just like James.
Just like Caroline.
Every single time.
Maybe that’s why I was always so obsessed with DNA. Why I kept talking about destiny and bloodlines and curses. Because it was easier, so much easier, to believe I was born this way than admit I became this way one decision at a time. One compromise after another. One rationalization stacked on top of the last until I couldn’t see the person I used to be anymore.
Maybe I never had a choice.
Or maybe I had thousands of choices and made the wrong one every single time, always picking the path that led me further into darkness.
I don’t know.
I don’t think I ever will.
What I do know is that every road in my life seemed to lead me back to the same place. Back to fear. Back to lies. Back to protecting myself by hurting other people. Back to becoming exactly what I swore I never would. The universe kept offering me exits, chances to turn around, and I kept walking deeper into the maze.
I look at James and Caroline now, with the clarity that only distance and time can provide, and I realize something that terrifies me more than anything else I’ve discovered about myself.
We weren’t different.
Not really.
Not in any way that actually mattered.
We all told ourselves stories. We all built elaborate justifications for the terrible things we did.
James told himself violence was necessary. A tool, nothing more. Something that had to be used to maintain order and protect what was his. Caroline told herself manipulation was survival. That reading people and using their weaknesses against them was simply smart business. I told myself sacrifice made me noble. That carrying the weight alone, making the hard choices in secret, somehow elevated me above them.
But in the end, all three of us hurt the people we loved. All three of us left wreckage behind. All three of us believed, with absolute conviction, that we were justified. That our reasons were good enough. That the people we damaged would understand someday.
That’s the Dougal legacy.
Not violence.
Not crime.
Not clubs or territory or blood feuds.
The certainty that the ends justify the means. The bone-deep belief that if you’re protecting something you love, then any choice becomes acceptable. Any lie becomes forgivable. Any betrayal becomes necessary.
I spent my whole life fighting that truth. Pushing against it with everything I had.
And I lost.
