Alarm shoots through me as panic sets in for him. As I go to speak my objection, he beats me to it. “Don’t send a single bird to me. She’s all that matters, Dom. Do you hear me? I don’t matter. Find her!”
My anger abates a little because I feel just as fucking helpless right now. My brother is begging me to help save the woman we both love. It’s right up there with the other worst few seconds of my life—when we were told we were both all we had left. That was the case up until Cecelia Horner.
The pain thrums, and it’s then I know. No matter how this ends, everything has already changed, and we can never go back.
“Tell Denny to unpack,” Tobias shouts in order. “Everything. Every fucking thing we have, do you hear me?”
Sean nods, having heard it as I take the phone off speaker. Pulling out my keys, I hold them out to him as I do my best to cut through the slow-motion haze I’m stuck in. “I’ve got two spares in my trunk,” I tell Sean. “Get mine going and have Denny grab everything we lifted from the warehouse.”
Sean turns without a word, his expression mixed. Taking the passenger side of Tyler’s truck as my brother shouts in order and plea, I watch Sean retreat and briefly close my eyes at what he must be feeling. He dedicated his life to helping us avenge our parents’ murders and gave up the love of his life to help us see the quest through.
And now he knows it was all an accident. So does Tyler.
Staring after Sean as he pops my trunk, I have to believe he’ll forgive us and reason that the ink still means something. That the purpose we spun from where it stemmed is enough to hold him—not to regret his ink any more than he does right now.
That he’ll forgive us both for our ignorance and pointless vendetta.
Along with the fact that he could have loved her freely, without guilt—and so could I.
It’s that blow that nearly does me in, but the fear for her and what she’s been put through—for our parent’s fucking mistakes—has me tensing at Tyler’s side with my request. “Take me to Delphine’s.”
Without a word, he nods and tears out of King’s as I lift the phone to my ear.
“。 . . have to find her! Dom!? Brother . . . please.” The terror in my brother’s voice has me sobering considerably as we speed out of the parking lot.
“I’m here. Start from the beginning.”
“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”—Le Petit Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Intuition isn’t something I’ve been granted the same way others have. A gift that sparks up at certain times for guidance. It’s never been that way for me. For the entirety of my life, it’s been my daily fuel and has never failed me. Not once.
The thing that’s kept me exactly where I need to be. In the right places, at the right times.
So how did I get here?
How in the fuck did I get here?
By ignoring my intuition long before I allowed myself to fall.
By blurring the sand streaming through the hourglass to multiply it, make it last, even as I saw it slipping away.
By playing deaf to every whispered sign and, instead, reveling in the fire she ignited inside my heart.
By ignoring the roar of warning that told me to hand her the gun, tossing it instead, if only to dim some of the fear in her eyes. A look I feared all along. A look that comes with the knowledge of what I’m truly capable of.
A look that told me she was finally convinced that I was the bad guy I told her I was.
A look of terror that ate me alive as she cowered from me when I entered her bedroom. In mere seconds I recognized the realizations I had failed to protect her from. The truth that this was never a game, and we hadn’t exaggerated the stakes—but underplayed them. A look that told me she thought I would be the one to deliver those consequences.
A look that annihilated me enough to toss my gun too far out of my reach.
It was when her eyes cleared, and she truly saw me as she had all those months ago, that I was gifted those few precious seconds of exchange. A collection of minutes where I was able to confess my fears, apologize for my deceit, and finally deliver my ill-timed declaration wholeheartedly.
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, I’ve been in love.”
A declaration I fucking refused to hold inside another second, knowing it was too late. A confession that gave me a bittersweet sort of peace, along with the notion that one day, I might be a worthy man deserving of the love I selfishly took.
And now?
Now I’m standing front row and dead center to the consequence of feigning ignorance to those instincts.
But in doing so, I was rewarded with a piece of paradise, a minute more with my ignorant bliss.
And I took it.
That’s how I got here.
Even if my gun now resides in enemy hands.
“What brings you here, Matteo? It’s a little late for company.”
I spike my tone enough that if Tobias is anywhere in the near vicinity, he’ll come. But I feel the intuition I’ve overlooked one time too many kicking in as my entire being erupts in awareness.
It’s too late.
Intent on keeping Matteo a safe distance from her, I engage in pointless back and forth while maintaining the focus of the monster in front of me. The threat in his eyes and posture looming mere feet away from the one thing I refuse to be robbed of.
I’ve lost enough to life’s hand. It doesn’t get to have her.
Feeling it when Cecelia emerges from her bedroom, I calmly tell her to step back. I don’t want her seeing the depravity radiating from this motherfucker. Though alike in some ways, this sick fuck considers spilling blood a pleasure.
We’re entirely different in that respect.
At least I have that. Even if I can identify with him in a few ways, I won’t lose sleep over spilling his blood.
For her, I’ll become the goddamn boogeyman. Matteo reads as much in my eyes, of that I’m sure, even as he threatens her in an attempt to rattle me.
Before I can take another step, Tobias sounds up behind me.
“What’s good, brother?”
“Got this handled,” I relay before asking Matteo about his brother’s whereabouts—my confidence in Tobias. Refusing to think about the half-dozen ways this has already gone wrong, I’m reassured when I hear Tobias address Cecelia to come to him. Just as relief briefly filters in, Andre’s voice sounds. The three of them go back and forth in meaningless exchange as Tobias tries to reason with me to wait. But I voice my objection because of what I know and see—no longer ignoring my instincts. It’s so fucking clear in Matteo’s eyes that he’s salivating for this.
That makes two of us, motherfucker.
Knowing I can take this piece of shit out through sheer will alone—whether he has the advantage or not—I assure Tobias I can. It’s the threat behind the front door that I’m wary of. It’s going to take time, even at top speed, for our birds to get here.
When Tobias snaps at Andre to back off, I take another step down, separating the monster from her. With each one, I feel the chains that have bound me start to strain and break, one by one. Cecelia is at the forefront of my mind. The noise surrounds me, the collective screams of the other innocents I’ve sworn to avenge propelling me forward. Getting lost in the void of the eyes staring back at me, adrenaline starts to take over.