Chapter 28
Dominic
Iwake up to the faint tickle of fur across my temple. My brain goes straight to the worst place: cat on my face, suffocating in my sleep. This is how the serial killer dies—not with a bullet or a knife, but a house pet staging an assassination.
My neck hurts in that dull, stiff way that says I fell asleep somewhere I wasn’t planning to, and my head has that cottony ache that comes after adrenaline burns off and leaves you with nothing but the bill.
I crack one eye open.
Jericho is perched two inches from my face on the arm of the couch, yellow eyes huge and unblinking.
His whiskers are forward like he’s making sure I’m actually awake and not some particularly large corpse he has to figure out how to eat around.
His paws are tucked neatly under him, tail curled in that smug, self-contained way only cats manage.
“Morning, menace,” I rasp, voice wrecked.
He blinks slowly, then lifts a paw and taps my cheek once, claws politely sheathed. He curls back into his loaf afterward and starts purring, like that settles that.
I shift my head, and the room comes into focus. On the floor, right up against the couch, Brendon is curled onto his side with his neck at a murderous angle, one arm thrown over his head, and mouth parted on soft, uneven breaths.
He didn’t make it to his bed. He didn’t even make it to the other end of the couch. My chest pulls tight in a way that has nothing to do with bruised ribs.
He didn’t leave.
He could’ve. He should’ve. I broke into his apartment in the middle of the night, bleeding and half out of my mind, knocked over his shit, scared his cat, and he could’ve called security and had me dragged out in cuffs.
He could’ve stood there and watched me bleed, made me explain everything, made me beg.
He could’ve told me to get the fuck out, and locked the door behind me.
Instead, he stitched me up with shaking hands, and slept on the fucking floor so he’d be close if I needed anything.
Even the cat stayed.
All I can do is lie there and stare at them, that tight feeling in my chest squeezing harder. The last time I remember bleeding this much in front of anyone, I woke up alone, half-dead in a bathtub, with a note taped to the wall that said: “Clean up your own mess.”
Being taken care of has never been part of the package. You fight, you bleed, you patch yourself up, and you move on; because no one else is coming. That’s the rule. It always has been.
Except last night.
I lift a hand, every muscle protesting, and very gently run my fingers once over Jericho’s back. He starts purring louder, eyes slitting in contentment, and the sound fills the quiet apartment.
When I sit up, last night comes back in pieces, floating up through the fog.
The bar I didn’t go into; the alley I did.
The guy who tried to fight back—tall, wiry, reeking of stale beer and bad decisions.
He swung first, which always makes it easier.
His knife kissed my shoulder before I caught his wrist and turned it, before the anger took over and the kill got messy.
Bone and breath and the familiar rhythm of making someone go still.
My head hitting concrete. His body hitting the ground. Blood on my hands, where it belongs.
I remember calling for cleanup, voice cool and clinical out of habit, even while my shoulder burned and my temple throbbed. I remember leaning against the wall, breathing through the pain.
I remember my mother’s voice in my head, telling me love is just leverage—and my own, harsher voice, telling me to cut him loose before she saw.
I remember ignoring both and ending up here instead.
And my mouth. I remember that too, unfortunately.
The words that slipped out in both Russian and English, both slurred and stripped bare. The confession I’ve never made sober, not to anyone—not even to myself, when I stare up at the ceiling at three in the morning and pretend I’m fine.
‘Didn’t want to love you. But I do.’
“I’m so fucked over you, Little Sin,” I whisper now, the words barely louder than the sound of Jericho’s tail flicking against the cushion.
Brendon stirs on the floor, face tightening in sleep as his neck protests whatever angle he fell into. That decides it for me.
I carefully get my feet under me, and the room sways for half a second, pain flaring bright in my temple, but it settles. I’ve been more fucked up than this and still stood. The stitches pull when I straighten, a hot line in my shoulder, but Brendon did good work. It holds.
He makes a soft sound when I crouch beside him, some half-formed sleepy protest, but he doesn’t wake. Up close, he looks exhausted—there’s a crease between his brows that even sleep didn’t smooth out. My chest does that ugly, tight thing again.
“You’re gonna be pissed when you wake up and your neck’s locked,” I murmur.
I slide one arm under his knees and the other behind his back. He folds instinctively into me, head tipping against my shoulder, breath puffing warm against my throat. His fingers twitch, then curl into the fabric of my shirt, as if his body recognizes me even while his brain is offline.
The stitches bite when I lift him, but I grit my teeth and ignore it.
Every instinct I have screams that I’m making a mistake because I swore I’d never let anyone get close enough to use my own heart against me. Then this idiot crawled under my skin with his cross and his cat and his stubborn, shaking hands.
The bedroom is only a few steps away, but it feels like a gauntlet with my body in the state it’s in.
Jericho hops down and trots ahead, tail high, like he’s leading the way to some sacred place I’m only temporarily allowed inside.
I move to the bed, lowering Brendon as slowly as I can.
The mattress dips under his weight, sheets rucking up around him, shirt riding a little higher to expose a sliver of his waist.
I should leave now—get my shit and text him some half-decent apology for bleeding on his furniture and oversharing like a drunk idiot.
I should get the fuck out of here before he wakes up and starts asking questions I don’t want to answer in daylight.
Before I get too comfortable; before my mother’s shadow gets long enough to touch this place.
She’s still in town. That’s the part my brain keeps skirting around, like it’ll go away if I don’t look straight at it.
If she figures out Brendon matters more than he should, then this apartment becomes a target painted in bright fucking colors. Him, the cat, this whole tiny life he’s built out of books and tea and soft blankets; all of it.
She’ll ruin it just to remind me that every good thing in my life can be turned into leverage if she gets bored enough. Brendon is leverage because I love him, and she’d smell that from a mile away.
The only place I’ve really felt safe in years is around him or in his arms. That fact lands in my chest with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.
I’m a weapon; I know that. I was built that way, honed that way, trained to be exactly what I am. Weapons don’t get safe places. They don’t get soft spots. They don’t get boys with weird cats and stupid crosses, who stitch them up and fall asleep beside their couch.
My gaze drops to that stupid piece of leather on his wrist that shouldn’t mean anything.
It’s not branded or marked—it’s not even a collar—but every time I see it, something vicious wakes up in my chest; a feeling so primal, territorial, and completely unreasonable.
I gave it to him because I could, because I wanted to see if he’d wear it. And he does. Every damn day.
I’ve got a window of maybe five minutes before he stirs, and the last thing I need is for him to wake up and find me hovering like some lovesick freak. Because I’m not.
I’m the man who threatened him.
The man who dragged him down into the dirt, made him like it, then laughed when he begged for space and walked right through any boundaries he tried to set. I don’t deserve soft. I don’t deserve this moment.
“Fuck,” I whisper.
I back away from the bed, before I can change my mind.
Every instinct in me wants to crawl in there beside him, drag him into my arms, and let myself pretend for a few more hours that I get to keep this.
But pretending is what got me here. Pretending I could have him, and still keep him safe.
Pretending my mother wouldn’t notice. Pretending love could exist quietly around violence.
I grab my hoodie and wince pulling it on. My wallet. Keys. Burner. Knife. All the things that make up the life I actually live, shoved back into place one by one.
I move through the apartment quickly, collecting myself and leaving everything else untouched. If I start fixing things, or cleaning, or hovering, I’ll end up rationalizing one more hour, one more sunrise, one more morning, with him tucked against me.
By the time I get to my car, my jaw hurts from how hard I’ve been clenching it.
I don’t look back. If I do, I’ll go upstairs again—I know I will.
So instead I get in, start the engine, and drive away from the only place that’s felt safe in years—telling myself the whole time that if he hates me by the time he wakes up, at least he’ll still be alive to do it.