by Lana Sky
I obey him solely on impulse, the need to breathe outweighing all else. My mouth is open, though, gulping at the air, despite the pressure on my nostrils. He’s holding them both shut, forcing my head back against his shoulder.
Frantically, my gaze darts around him, trying to discern the source of the substance still dripping down my face. Blood. So much blood. I’m covered in it, and droplets of red speckle the floor.
“Why the hell did you do that?” His voice echoes off the walls, losing its emotionless cadence. Rage and confusion add color to his tone, enhancing his mysterious accent and giving his baritone a threatening timbre it usually lacks. “You’ll be lucky if you didn’t break your fucking nose—”
“I hate you.” It feels important to say that despite everything else.
He has me on his lap, I think, his legs sprawled over the floor beneath me. One of his hands loops around me from behind so that he can hold the tissue to my nose, while the other has both of my wrists in an iron grip.
To stop me from slapping him.
“I hate you.”
“I know,” he says, monotone once more. His chest rumbles against my back as he speaks, his breath on my ear, his grip unwavering.
“I will never forgive you for this.” A sob edges my words. I sound like a child, wailing and desolate.
“You won’t,” he agrees, forcing my chin even higher.
My nose is the source of the bleeding; I can tell now. I must have hit it off the tub. It throbs, sending pain lancing through my skull with every beat of my heart. Is it broken?
How fitting if it is. He took my mother away, my family, my life.
Why not take my beauty, too? It’s the only thing of value I ever had, and it’s somehow managed to outlast the other bastions of my life as a Pavalos. What use am I without my father to control my every movement and my mother to lurk obliviously in the background, pretending that she doesn’t realize the hell we’re both living under?
“I hate you—”
“So hate me, then,” Domino commands, sounding in control once more. Still, he applies even more pressure to my nose, forcing me further against his chest. “Hate me all you want, Ada… I can allow you that much.”
More tears spill down my cheeks, mingling with the blood. This is his idea of mercy—doling out hate as though it’s a cherished gift. The only thing he can and will ever offer me.
Hate and pain.
And lies.
Chapter Ten
He goes away. I’m so numbed by exhaustion that I don’t even recall when or why. I’m still lying on the bathroom floor, facing the tub, surrounded by a graveyard of crumbled, blood-stained tissue.
It took several tries before the bleeding stopped completely. My nose feels like a swollen, painful lump that hurts to breathe through. I try running my finger along its bridge to assess the damage and wind up moaning, seeing stars that speckle my vision.
“You didn’t break it.”
I stiffen with the realization that Domino is still here, just somewhere beyond my line of sight, his voice effortlessly resonating throughout the entire room.
“You’ll live.”
It’s a mean choice of words, and I can’t help but laugh at them. However, the sound comes out resembling a sob more.
“You are nothing like Pia,” I tell him. Considering everything Pia Inglecias put me through, that isn’t a compliment. A teenage girl who used lies and manipulation to get her way, still possessed more tact and humanity than he has.
I think of them in comparison to each other, and I can’t even discern a physical resemblance. Except for their eyes, maybe. Both have that same, murky hue of hazel, though the green in Pia’s was more prominent.
She was so very beautiful. That beauty aided in her confidence and ability to win anyone over to her side. She had a way of making someone feel special, like the most important person in the world, just as long as they had her attention. She could be so sweet when she wanted to and so damn charming.
On the other hand, when the mood struck her, she could be so very mean.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Domino replies, and his voice alone reinforces the divide between him and my childhood friend. Pia spoke musically, her emotions evident in her tone. When she was happy, she almost sounded as though she were singing. When she was angry, her words became honed like a whip, lashing out at whatever had sparked her ire.
“I don’t think my father killed her,” I admit, though I don’t know if I’m speaking to myself more than Domino.
Why would he kill her? She was everything I could never be, a perfect missing key to his arsenal of manipulation and influence. He could have molded Pia under his wing, using her to do whatever he desired. Not just sexually, but politically.
She would have served him far better than I ever could.
Killing her would be messy. It would mean utilizing his precious resources and covering his tracks. Doable, but requiring far more effort than I think a schoolgirl with a crush would demand. Even if she went public about her relationship with my father, it would be her word against his.
And his word was law.
“But if he did,” I add, my voice scratching at the silence. “He would need a reason...”
Something more egregious than her simply stealing money from him. She would have needed evidence of something far more damaging. So damaging, in fact, that nothing plausible comes to mind. This isn’t some scripted crime drama. My father was a violent, egotistical, misogynistic man, but he wasn’t pure evil.
Though, I guess I should use present tense, considering that he’s still alive…
“I have reason to believe that Pia had something that would put his entire future into question,” Domino admits. “More than money. Something that would cast a shadow on him not just politically, but make him a walking target of his most powerful enemies.”
I frown, triggering a wave of pain that spreads from my nose and into my eye sockets. I let my eyelids lower and contemplate such a possibility in the darkness. If his reputation was on the line…
Well, that was something that Don Roy would kill to protect. He’d do anything to shield his image, no matter the cost.
Anything.
“What was it?” I ask.
Only silence comes in response. I start to question if he’s still here, but I can sense his presence, as vibrant as the blood. He must be behind me, lurking by the door, blocking my potential exit should I gather the nerve to stand.
I’m too tired to move at all, and I contemplate drifting off here and now. Let him wallow in his hate and self-pity. Let him go on a wild goose chase after rumors and a ghost.
And yet, I can’t deny a prickle of curiosity strong enough to make me peel my eyes open again.
“Do you even know?”
“I know,” he says with a certainty that irritates my already frazzled nerves. He’s not lying—and I hate that. It gives him some tiny semblance of a right to hate my family all this time. If my father really did kill Pia, he would deserve far worse than a car crash.
But what about me?
I’m guilty too, I decide, shying from those memories. Anything that happened to her would be squarely my fault.
“If he… She’ll be in Terra Rodea,” I say, voicing my fragile hunch.
“Damn it, that’s all you have?” He scoffs. “If that’s a guess, Ada, I would have expected something with more effort. Do you think if she were still in the city, she wouldn’t have been found by now within the past ten years? I would assume he’d dump her in a swamp, or a lake, or on one of your family’s vacation homes—”
“He’d keep her in Terra,” I insist. With what little strength I can muster, I roll onto my side, groaning at the pain. I’m panting when I finally turn to face him. As I suspected, he’s leaning against the closed door to the balcony, his arms crossed, eyes narrowed.
“So you were bullshitting me all along—”
“He would keep her in Terra,” I say over him, s
urer of that than ever. I may not have learned much in my life, but I know my father. I’ve gotten a taste of the way he thinks and how he moves. How he likes to gloat and lord himself over the things he believes he owns, be them places, objects, or even people. “Why do you think I stayed there?” I demand when Domino’s expression remains skeptical. “Why do you think he kept me in that house, by him always?”
It wasn’t out of the devotion of a caring father, though I think Domino knows that already. A grudging expression crosses over his face. I have his attention. For now.
And I don’t waste it.
“He would keep her somewhere close, but within plain view. A place he could always have access to but somewhere that couldn’t be directly traced to him. Not a vacation house or one of our properties, either. That would be too obvious.”
And I’m sure that there are no dead bodies buried on our property. My father could be cruel, but he was never sloppy.
“If I had to guess, I would narrow it down to a handful of places,” I add, though I rationalize even telling him this by reminding myself that I don’t believe it. Nothing—short of his own mortal soul—would be worth the risk. Pia wasn’t some political rival or a lawless cartel leader. She was a fifteen-year-old girl with a family, and people who loved her enough to mount a search.
I remember seeing the flyers. I remember hearing word of her mother’s anxious search. I remember that a broken heart was rumored to be the cause of death when Rosa Inglecias collapsed four months into her daughter’s disappearance.
“Where?” Domino demands, letting his hands fall to his sides. His fingers twitch impatiently, and I suspect it’s taking restraint on his part to keep from lunging at me and wringing out an answer. “If the bastard would be stupid enough to bury her in Terra, then where?”
“His office,” I say, naming one of three potential locations.
“Where would he bury her?” Domino counters. “Under the elevator?”
He’s right. I haven’t had time to consider the logistics in full. They’re just guesses of the places I know my father values and frequents.
“One of the parks he had dedicated around the city, then?”
“The earliest one wasn’t erected until two years after Pia went missing,” Domino says, proving that he’s considered these options already. He’s obsessed over them, I realize as he starts to pace, wearing a frown reminiscent of the one he’d sport all those nights when I’d watch him on my family’s property. “Where else? Tell me you have a better guess than that.”
The final one I’ve considered the least. It would be the most unlikely of all, I can admit that. And yet…
It would be the cruelest.
“The old Inglecias house,” I croak.
Domino stops mid-stride, his foot still hovering in the air. I can tell from how his eyes widen that he hasn’t considered that location for himself.
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “That would be fucking stupid. Why would he…”
“Because it would be so obvious,” I point out. A hollow laugh escapes me at the thought of how he would have gloated, were any of this true. “My father was… Is a selfish victor, Domino. Don’t tell me you haven’t realized that. He guards his prizes jealously.”
My mother.
Me.
He wouldn’t see Pia as a person, or even an innocent victim who got in his way. He would only see her as a prize to be won. Or conquered.
“He would keep her in Terra,” I decide, ignoring his skeptical frown. “Not that I believe he did it in the first place.”
I can’t tell if Domino agrees with me or not. He’s still pacing, raking his fingers viciously through his hair. He has to be hurting himself, ripping out stray strands with each frantic motion, but I don’t think he notices. Or cares. Wherever he is mentally is somewhere beyond pain or discomfort.
“Fuck,” he says finally, moving to brace his hands against the counter. He eyes himself in the mirror positioned above, and from this angle, I can see his expression clearly.
Angry. Bitter. Thoughtful.
As much as he may have challenged it, I think my hunch made sense.
Which sickens me to my very core.
“And this is the part where you laugh like a superhero villain,” I croak, too drained to put any real effort into the taunt. My head lolls, and I find myself staring at the shower instead of him. “Then you tell me that it was all a trick. You’ll leave me to die. I was an idiot to even think of trusting you—”
“I’ll uphold my end of our agreement,” he snarls, marching to cross my line of vision. “I’ll ‘trust.’ But can you?”
I blink, puzzled by his statement.
His expression shifts before my eyes, becoming musing again, reminding me more than ever of those nights I would spy on him. He’s thinking. Plotting. And this time, whatever he’s planning most definitely involves me.
“I’ll need to do this right,” he grumbles, stroking his chin, fixated on his own internal thoughts. He’s not speaking to me. And yet, as his eyes dart suspiciously around the room, I suspect that I’m not who he’s wary of, either. At least now. “Get up.”
He lowers his voice and inclines his head toward the shower stall.
But I don’t move.
“I said get up!” He storms toward me, his nostrils flaring. One look at me, however, and he seems to realize that my rebellion isn’t entirely out of a need to defy him.
I can’t move. My head is floating, my body like lead.
Without a word, he crouches, yanking me into his arms. I barely have the chance to marvel at the sensation of being held by him—carried—before I’m unceremoniously placed on one of the benches in the shower stall.
He exits long enough to get the water running, but this time the spray is heavy, pelting us with lukewarm water that ricochets off the walls in a deafening roar.
“Trust is what you want, is it?” Domino questions, his voice low as he returns to my side, bringing his mouth near my ear. “Keep your mouth shut, follow my lead, and I’ll do what I can to help you.”
Help me?
It takes every ounce of strength I have left to find the energy to lift my head and see his face. He’s leaning down, still wearing his shirt and slacks, and I realize that all of this is a way to disguise our conversation.
From who? Alexi?
But in comparison to him, even she no longer seems like my biggest enemy.
“You did this to me!” I’m on the verge of another sob, and he nods, tugging me from the bench and onto my feet. I sway, forced to submit to his strength just to stay upright. He hooks an arm around my waist, and I have no choice but to brace my hands against his chest for stability.
“I did this to you,” he murmurs. “But do you want to learn why? Or would you rather wallow in your role as the victim?”
I recoil at his harsh tone, pushing against him. Belatedly, I realize just what he said—learn. It’s the first time he’s even hinted at giving me more than taunts and mind games. God help me; I’d do anything for answers. Clarity. Something.
Even if it means humoring him a second longer.
“What do you mean?”
“This was always bigger than you,” he tells me. “Bigger than us. If you want any prayer of getting out of this alive, I’m the only shot you have. Do you understand that? Ines can’t help you. Not Alexi, not your father. No one but me.”
He’s still speaking softly. But that does nothing to diminish the seriousness in his tone.
“Then tell me why.”
He pulls back, forcing me to stand on my own. “I will,” he says, turning to brace his hands against the hard, granite before him. “But if I do, you will no longer have the luxury of doubting me. This isn’t a game, Ada-Maria. The stakes are higher than you could ever imagine.”
“You keep dancing around the truth,” I point out, approaching him only because I need the support of the wall just to stay upright. I lean against it, closing my eyes as the water c
ontinues to pelt us both. I can feel the steam rising, enclosing us in a false layer of privacy. We’re in our own twisted realm now, just him and I.
And I should be busy finding a way out. Not listening to him.
“Speak, or I swear to God, Domino, I’ll…”
“You have four more days.” He says it with such malice that I shrink inside myself, picturing what lurks at the end of that timeframe.
I’ll be sold to Jaguar, of course, and thrown into yet another hell.
But as the seconds pass, I realize that his statement wasn’t a threat. It was a reminder.
“You want to learn more? Then follow my lead for now. I need you blissfully ignorant, and I need you to put on a damn good show. Prance around naked if you want, throw your ass in the face of any man to pass by. Give me that time, and I promise you, I will do whatever it takes to keep you alive.”
“Alive and not sold,” I prod, mistrustful of any way he might play the semantics to his benefit. “Alive and not your captive. Alive and—”
“Alive and with far more freedom than you entered this mess having. Don’t pretend that you were living of your own free will before. You were already a prisoner before I took you.”
I flinch, blinking my eyes open to find him still glowering at the wall, his head lowered, knuckles white with how hard he has his hands pressed against the stone.
I’m startled by how drastically rage can transform him. Consume.
Though, in a way, it makes sense, reinforcing just how expertly he’s lived under his lies. I’m only seeing five years of the rage and hate he’s been suppressing all along.
And God, is it terrifying.
“Be a good girl, and you’ll have my balls in a vice, little Ada,” he adds gruffly. “That’s what you wanted from the start, isn’t it?”
It is. Only now, I want his literal balls and a real metal vice to crush them with.
Still, I’m not stupid enough to stick my nose up at the only shred of honesty he’s offered me. I’ll worry about the details and the morality of it later. For now, I’m desperate for some shred of hope.
