Chapter 26
Dominic
The energy from the field still pulses under my skin. Game adrenaline doesn’t fade easily, especially when it’s a rival game. Every step I take off the turf buzzes with leftover energy like static clinging to my limbs.
My jaw is tight from the mouthguard, my muscles coiled. The helmet is off, but my head’s too loud. I can still hear the roar of the crowd, the echo of cleats against metal benches, my name shouted more times than I can count. It’s usually the kind of chaos I live for.
But tonight, there was a ghost in the stands.
I saw her in the third quarter. My eyes locked on the familiar shape before I could stop myself—dark red lipstick, expensive coat, and sunglasses, even though it was night under stadium lights. She looked like she walked straight out of a photo I burned years ago. Still beautiful. Still terrifying.
Luciana Volkova. My mother.
Every inch of my body went cold despite the sweat pouring off me. I forgot the play, because I hadn’t seen her in years—didn’t think I ever would again. She doesn’t just show up, she haunts; and once she does, someone usually ends up buried six feet under.
I should’ve known something was coming.
My little sister Kyra was tucked in small at her side and swallowed in a too-big Lakehaven hoodie, dark hair braided, blue eyes wide and hopeful as she stared down at the field.
That alone was enough to put a crack straight through my focus, because Luciana Volkova doesn’t come to watch. She comes to claim, to test, to remind. She comes when she wants to see whether the thing she made still answers to her voice.
That’s when I started playing angry.
Keller saw it before anyone else did. He knows my shoulders, my release, the split-second delay between read and throw when my head isn’t where it should be.
He knows exactly how long I hold the ball when I’m trying to force a lane that isn’t there, because I’m furious enough to believe I can break physics.
The problem is, anger usually makes me better. Cleaner, meaner, more dangerous. Tonight, it made me reckless.
And just like that, we lost.
Keller is already moving toward me when I get to the sideline—face thunderous, headset half askew, veins standing out in his neck.
He doesn’t wait until we’re in the tunnel.
He doesn’t wait until the cameras are at a better angle.
He gets right in my face, with the scoreboard still burning over my shoulder, and lets me have it.
“What the fuck was that?” he snaps. “You don’t get to lose us a game because your head’s somewhere else, Volkov!”
I take it, because I always do—because when authority gets loud, something in me goes still. My mother taught me that, too. Let them burn themselves out. Keep your face blank. Give them nothing they can use.
“Yes, Coach,” I say.
He stares at me like he wants to shake me, then thinks better of it because we’re still in public, I’m still his star player, and this is still salvageable if we frame it right on Monday.
“Get in the locker room,” he says finally. “And if I find out there’s some off-field bullshit bleeding into my team, I’ll rip it out by the fucking root.”
I almost laugh at that. He has no idea how literal that lands.
He stares at me for a beat longer, waiting for me to argue. I don’t—I never do. That’s not our dynamic. He yells, I absorb. He vents, I nod. He saves the special shit for me, because that’s how this works. The captain gets the weight, that’s part of the deal. I knew it when I took the position.
When we’re inside he lets me have it, and I take it. I stand there, towel around my neck, helmet dangling from my fingers, sweat drying sticky on my skin, and let him carve strips off me in front of everyone.
My face stays neutral, and my eyes don’t flinch—because this is familiar. Coaches have been screaming at me about football since I could walk; none of them has ever seen what it looks like when I scream back.
“You wanna hold the keys, you take the blame, Volkov!” he roars, jabbing a finger at my chest. “You play like a goddamn freshman with a hero complex, and we lose every time. You know better. You’re smarter than that. You wanna audition for the league? That tape’s not what you want them seeing.”
“Yes, Coach,” I say when he finally pauses long enough to need air.
He stares at me for another beat, then snorts and throws the clipboard at the bench. “Film tomorrow,” he grinds out. “No days off. Anyone who doesn’t like it can transfer to Blackthorne and ride Devereaux’s cock instead.”
Then he storms out, and the tension drains with him—leaving just exhaustion and frustration.
The locker room is a blur of slammed lockers, muttered curses, towels snapping, and the usual post-loss poison.
I strip out of my pads on autopilot, every movement efficient because my body’s done it a thousand times.
Teammates avoid looking me in the eye, which is smart. Nobody wants to be the guy to make eye contact with the quarterback who just choked a rivalry game and looks like he might bite.
When I finally dress and head out, the stadium lot is mostly empty. No one tries to stop me when I leave; they know better than to get between me and my car after a loss. The lights overhead cast everything in that weird, too-bright yellow that makes faces look wrong.
My breath fogs in front of me as I cross the lot. My neck aches. My shoulder twinges where a Blackthorne lineman drove me into the turf. None of it matters. The soreness feels deserved.
What I’m not prepared for is the sight waiting for me at my Charger.
Kyra’s sitting on the hood, ankles crossed, sneakers knocking lightly against the metal.
Up close, she looks smaller than the last time I saw her—swallowed in that hoodie, braid over one shoulder.
Her expression is twisted tight with the kind of nerves that make her look much younger than seventeen.
The second she spots me, her whole face changes, brightening and pinching all at once. So this is why she’s been trying to get a hold of me.
I’ve been ignoring her calls for the last week and pretending the rest of my life is held together by resolve stronger than spit. I thought maybe she wanted gossip, or money. I didn’t think she was trying to warn me that Lucifer herself had a ticket to my game.
My mother stands beside the passenger door, one hand resting on the roof. It wasn’t enough to take up space in my stands; she had to come claim ground in my lot, too.
I stop a few feet away, and let the silence stretch.
My mother smiles first. Her mouth curves in that exact calculated way—warm enough to fool strangers, sharp enough to make my skin crawl.
“Domenyk,” she says, like she didn’t orchestrate half my nightmares. “What a performance.”
“We lost,” I say flatly.
“Mm,” she says, tilting her head. “Unfortunate. You seemed… distracted.”
Her voice is the same—warm honey over broken glass. It makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
Kyra slides off the hood and lands with a small thump. “Dom,” she breathes. “Finally. I thought you’d sneak out the back.”
“I considered it,” I say, then look at her. “You shouldn’t be sitting on my car, solnyshko. You know that.”
She cracks a little smile, shoulders hunching. “You always yell at me for that,” she says. “I wiped my shoes. Relax.”
“I wasn’t aware you were coming,” I say.
“I texted,” Kyra says quickly. “I called, too. I tried to tell you, but you never answered.”
“I’ve been busy,” I say, eyes still on the woman beside her.
She flinches, the same way she always does when I pull the distance card.
I hate myself a little for it, but it’s better this way.
She’s already too close to the blast radius just by existing in that house.
If I pull her further in, if I give that woman more leverage by demonstrating I love my little sister, she’ll get put in the ground with my other siblings.
I’d rather she hate me a little and live.
My mother smiles, stepping closer. She’s aged well; people like her always do. Money helps, so does the kind of vanity that treats skin as another weapon. There are faint lines at the corners of her eyes now, but they only make her look more refined.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I tell my mother.
“I wanted to see my son play,” she says, and there’s a sliver of something like sincerity in it that pisses me off more than if she’d stayed cold. “Is that so terrible?”
“You didn’t come to watch me play,” I say. “You came to see if I’d broken your leash yet.”
Her eyes flash at that, a spark of pride and annoyance tangled together. “If I wanted you on a leash, you would be on one, malen’kiy volk. I taught you better than to project your guilt onto me.”
The old pet name lands like a slap. Little wolf. It used to soften me—now it makes my skin crawl.
“Don’t,” I say. “Don’t call me that. Don’t pretend you didn’t build this. You’re the reason I know how to clean a body out of a house in under an hour. You’re the reason there are six—”
I stop myself, and her gaze drops flicks to the front of my jeans, like she can see the ghost of those six bars. The bars I had put there to stop her. Revulsion rolls through me so hard I have to bite back bile.
Her pleasant little game-face slips off just a fraction, enough that I see the real thing underneath. Not a mother, a handler checking whether her weapon still cuts the right way.
Then she glances at Kyra and smooths it back on. “Still so dramatic,” she chides. “You make it sound like my presence is a curse.”
“It usually is,” I say. “I told you to stay away from my games.”
Her eyes harden for a flash before smoothing out again. “You’re still my son,” she says. “There is nothing you can do that will change that. You carry my blood.”
“Unfortunately,” I say.
Kyra flinches again. “Stop,” she pleads. “Please. Just… stop fighting for one night.”