32. Chapter 29 | Dom
Five days after being released, Dom could lift her left arm maybe six inches before her shoulder screamed about it.
The sling itched, made her feel lopsided, unbalanced, like a fighter with one hand tied.
Her jaw ached constantly—the fracture healing but still tender, still making her wince when she talked too long or tried to eat anything harder than soup.
The bruising had gone from deep purple to that sick yellow-green, spreading down her neck, across her shoulder.
Thelma wrapped the sling tighter each morning, checking the swelling. No hospital. Hospitals meant questions, reports, cops.
They'd kept Dom alive this long. They'd keep going.
The press outside had thinned from thirty vultures to about a dozen camping on the corner with cameras.
Oretha had warned them Lewis might be coming—word traveled fast through the docks, and one of Papa Louie's union contacts had heard Lewis asking around, growing angrier.
Some reporters had gotten the tip too, showing up early hoping for a story.
Inside Papa Louie's bar, they'd circled the wagons—CJ in Dom's old room upstairs, Thelma in Dom's bed, everyone taking shifts.
Thelma was under house arrest while her California lawyer negotiated the fraud charges, which meant staying at Papa Louie's and checking in with a probation officer twice a week. It could've been worse. Jail.
Dom's face had started healing. Her left eye could open halfway now. The left side of her jaw was still swollen, the bone knitting back together wrong enough that she'd probably always feel it when it rained. But she could talk without wanting to die, could manage soft food without crying.
Papa Louie had been making her soup. Three times a day, different kinds. He took care.
Thelma had been on the phone for three days straight coordinating with CORE, deflecting the press, managing the story. It wouldn't die. NIGHTSHADE STAR RETURNS FROM DEAD TO BAIL OUT CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVISTS. Every paper was running it. Life Magazine wanted photos. Ed Sullivan's people called twice.
Dom watched Thelma become herself. Not Elle hiding. Not Nightshade performing. Real.
She was on the phone now, pacing, hair pinned up, voice sharp. "No, I'm not interested in a book deal. Try again next year." She hung up and then turned to Dom. "How's the shoulder?"
"Same as an hour ago."
"That's not an answer."
"Hurts like hell." Dom tried to smile. The motion pulled at her jaw, making her wince. "But I'm alive. Come here."
Thelma sat on the edge of the bed, careful of Dom's left side. Her hand found Dom's good one. Five days of stolen moments between phone calls and CJ's nightmares. Five days of wanting.
"Oretha called," Thelma said. "Lewis is definitely coming. His supervisor told him not to bother showing up for his next shift. Too many guys asking questions, making comments."
Dom's stomach dropped. "When?"
Pounding downstairs. Loud enough to shake the walls.
"I SAW THE NEWS! THAT'S MY DAUGHTER ON TV!"
Shit.
Dom forced herself up. Her shoulder protested, the sling catching. Thelma's hands steadied her. "I'll handle—"
"No." Dom's voice came out rough. Talking still hurt after a while. "We do this together."
Getting downstairs took forever. Each step was negotiated, her balance off with one arm pinned. CJ was already there, frozen, his face white. Papa Louie had put himself between the door and the kid. He caught Dom's eye and nodded once. I'm here if you need me.
Papa Louie had spent three days calling in favors. Union contacts, shipyard connections, forty years of network. He'd found the Galveston job. Made the calls. Set it up so all Lewis had to do was show up.
Now they'd see if it worked.
Dom opened the door.
Lewis stood on the threshold, rage coming off him like heat.
Behind him, the dozen reporters who had been waiting scrambled for position, cameras already up.
More cars were pulling up—someone must've called it in when Lewis's truck arrived.
Within a minute, there were twenty, twenty-five. Scenting blood.
Lewis saw Dom's face—the healing bruises, the sling, how she stood lopsided and broken. His expression went cold. Calculating. Then he saw Thelma behind Dom in her robe, unmistakably there.
"My daughter was on television," Lewis said, his voice tight. "Dressed like a boy. Getting arrested with criminals."
CJ stepped forward, his voice shaking but clear: "My name is CJ."
Lewis lunged. "GET IN THE TRUCK. NOW."
Dom blocked the doorway.
Her shoulder exploded—the sudden movement, bracing with her good side taking all the weight. Her jaw tightened and that hurt too, sharp and immediate.
She didn't move.
Lewis shoved. Hard.
Dom's body screamed. Her shoulder felt like it was tearing apart. Her vision whited out. But her feet stayed planted, her good arm braced against the doorframe.
Every instinct was screaming: Hit him. Put him down. End this.
But she couldn't. Her left arm was useless in its sling. Her right arm was the only thing keeping her upright. Even if she threw a punch, it would be weak, off-balance, nothing like what she used to be.
Violence wouldn't solve this. And even if it could, she didn't have the weapons anymore.
So Dom just stood there. She didn't raise her fist. Just her body between Lewis and CJ. One-armed and broken but not moving.
A shield, not a sword.
"I saw her on TV!" Lewis's voice rising. "Looking like THAT! Making me look like I can't control my family!"
There it was. Not love. Just his pride.
Behind him, cameras were clicking. Capturing every second.
Thelma stepped up beside Dom, her voice cool even in a bathrobe. "Mr. Jordan, let's talk inside. Away from the cameras."
She let her robe slip slightly off one shoulder. That Nightshade smile.
Lewis looked at the reporters. At Thelma. At Dom still blocking his path with one good arm and stubbornness.
He followed them in.
Papa Louie took CJ upstairs but stayed at the top of the landing. Close enough to hear. Close enough to come down fast if needed.
Dom eased onto a barstool, her good arm taking her weight.
The bar smelled of last night's bourbon and Papa Louie's coffee, familiar and close.
Lewis stood, scanning the space as if calculating exits before he sat.
Dom and Thelma sat across from him. Papa Louie behind the bar, hands flat on the wood.
"You're the one from TV," Lewis said. "Nightshade."
"Thelma Blake."
Lewis looked at Dom, then at Papa Louie. "Why am I here?"
Papa Louie spoke, his voice quiet but carrying weight.
"Because you can't show your face at the docks anymore."
Lewis froze. He looked at Papa Louie. The calculating look Dom had seen in the doorway returned, harder.
"She's fifteen," Lewis said. "Still mine legally. I could walk out of here with a cop and there's not a damn thing any of you could do about it."
No one moved.
"Go ahead," Dom said, her voice flat. "Call one."
Lewis looked at her.
"There are twenty reporters outside who just watched you shove a woman with a broken shoulder and a sling. Call a cop. See how that plays," Dom said, her gaze steady. "See what the evening news does with it."
"She's my daughter—"
"And those cameras got all of it," Thelma said quietly. "The shoving. CJ saying his name. All of it. My lawyer in California has already been called. You want this to be a legal matter, we can make it a legal matter."
Lewis's jaw tightened. He looked at Papa Louie. "You think your union friends are gonna protect a—" He stopped, looking at CJ at the top of the stairs. "You think they care what happens to someone like that?"
"I think," Papa Louie said, "that three dock foremen already know what you did to that kid.
I think their names are Eddie Broussard, Cal Tureaud, and Marcus Fitch, and I think you know all three of them.
" He let that land. "I think if you walk back onto those docks, you're not walking back onto friendly ground. "
Lewis went rigid.
"I know men down there," Papa Louie said. "Been knowing them for forty years. And right now, they're saying Lewis Jordan can't control his family. Saying his daughter's running around dressed like a boy, getting arrested with criminals. Saying she made him look like a fool on national television."
He leaned forward.
"You go back there tomorrow, what do you think happens? Think they're gonna respect you? Think they're gonna let you forget? Every shift, every break, every time you walk past—they're gonna remember. They're gonna talk."
Lewis's jaw worked. The fight slowly drained from him, like air from a punctured balloon.
"Men like us," Papa Louie said, "we got pride. We got reputation. That's all we got sometimes."
He gestured at the bar top. "I got you a union job at the Galveston shipyard. Good job. Better pay than here. I can get you a ticket on tonight's train and enough money to get settled—first month's rent, get yourself established. Job starts Monday."
"Why would I—"
"Because you can't stay here. You know it. I know it," Papa Louie's voice stayed level. "Every man at those docks saw that TV. You think they're gonna let you forget?"
He paused.
"Or you could walk away. Tell the boys you're done with her. Tell them you washed your hands of it, can't stand the shame. Tell them she's dead to you now. They'll understand that. Hell, they'll respect that."
Dom watched Lewis's face. Saw him calculating. Papa Louie had found it—the only thing that mattered to a man like Lewis. Not the kid. Not love.
His pride. His reputation. His standing with other men.
"Men in Galveston don't know you," Thelma said quietly. "Fresh start."
Silence.
"Or you stay here," Papa Louie said, "and spend the rest of your life being the man who couldn't control his daughter. The man everyone whispers about. The man who got shown up by a boxer and a dead TV star."
He let that sit.
"Your choice. But make it now."
Lewis stared at Papa Louie. At Dom, still sitting there with her arm in a sling, not backing down.
Finally: "Get me the ticket."
Papa Louie nodded. Stood. "I'll make the call. Train leaves at eight tonight. Be on it."
He went to the phone behind the bar.
Lewis stood. At the door, he stopped. Turned back. Looked right at CJ, standing at the top of the stairs.
"You embarrassed me," Lewis said. His voice cold. Flat. "Made me look like a fool in front of everyone. I can't show my face at those docks again because of you."
He looked at Dom and Thelma.
"So keep it. I don't want it anyway. As far as I'm concerned, I never had a daughter."
The door slammed.
CJ flinched. Went pale. His body curled in on itself.
Dom saw the words land like fists.
A truck started outside. Drove away.
Dom's breath came out shaky. Shoulder on fire, jaw throbbing. She'd held her ground.
Papa Louie stood at the phone after hanging up.
Forty years of knowing men like Lewis. Forty years of watching pride eat men alive from the inside, watching them choose reputation over everything that mattered.
He'd done it himself, once. A long time ago.
Left things he couldn't get back. He wasn't going to watch this family pay the price for one more man's pride if he could help it.
He came around the bar and put his hand on Dom's good shoulder. Then he went upstairs to get CJ.
CJ came down slow, hunched. Papa Louie's hand on his shoulder, but the kid looked small. Breakable.
"He's gone?"
"Yeah."
"Forever?"
Dom lowered herself into the chair—balance was shit with the sling, couldn't kneel. But she could sit, get close to eye-level. "He took the deal. Took the job. He's gone."
"He meant it." CJ's eyes welled. "What he said. That he doesn't want me."
"He's wrong." Dom kept her voice steady even though her jaw screamed. "He's been wrong about you since the day you were born."
"But he's my father—"
"He was never your father," Dom said. "He was just a man who hurt you."
CJ's face crumpled. "I embarrassed him. That's why he left. Because I made him look bad."
"No." Dom squeezed his hand. "He left because he cares more about what other men think than he ever cared about you. That's not your fault. That's his."
Thelma knelt beside them. Dom watched her find the words, not the Nightshade calculation, not Elle's careful quiet. Just Thelma, pulling from somewhere real.
"I spent two years being nobody," Thelma said.
"Making myself so small nobody could see me.
Because I thought if I hid right, if I disappeared enough, I'd be safe.
" She looked at CJ steadily. "The hiding didn't make me safe.
It just made me gone. You were never the problem. You were never supposed to disappear."
"Then why—" CJ's voice broke. "Why didn't he want me?"
"I don't know," Dom said honestly. "But I know this—we want you. All of us. Papa Louie, me, Thelma. You're ours now. And we're not going anywhere."
CJ collapsed into both of them then. Dom embraced him with her good arm, Thelma with both of hers, Papa Louie's hand coming down on all their shoulders.
"You're free," Dom said into CJ's hair. "You hear me? You're really free. And you're wanted. By all of us."
CJ cried for a long time. They let him. Let him grieve the father he never had, the father he'd kept hoping would change, would see him, would love him.
Finally: "I'm really free?"
"You're really free."
Family you chose. Family that chose you back.
That night, finally alone.
Dom's shoulder was worse. The confrontation, the shoving—she'd undone some of the healing. Thelma rewrapped the sling, hands gentle but worried.
"We should wait," Thelma said. "You're hurt worse now—"
"I don't want to wait." Dom caught her hand with her good one. "Please. I need to feel something other than pain."
They lay down together. Dom on her good side, Thelma pressed against her.
Thelma's hands finding all the places that didn't hurt, that felt good, that made Dom remember what it was like to be alive and wanted.
Dom touched her back with her good hand, found the heat of her, and they moved together slow and careful and enough.
After, in the quiet:
"I love you." Not the first time—she'd said it bleeding and broken two months ago, thought it might be the last. But this felt different. Chosen. "Still love you. Always will."
Thelma pressed closer. "I love you too. Both of you."
"They're the same person."
"I know. That's why it works."
Silence. Thelma's fingers traced patterns on Dom's stomach.
"Can I still be Elle with you?" Thelma asked. "When we're alone?"
"You can be anything with me."
Dom closed her eyes. She let herself be held. Downstairs, Papa Louie played quiet blues. Outside, a few cameras still waited.
She'd been thinking about the warehouse on Burgundy Street. About what she knew and who needed to learn it. About building something that could outlast her—protection as practice, as purpose, passed on. But that could wait.
Tonight she slept.