Chapter 35 #2
He makes a soft sound, but his eyes stay closed. My own breath starts to come too fast, but I force myself to slow it down. Freaking out won’t help him. I need to assess and figure out where the blood’s from. Mouth could be anything: a busted lip, coughing, internal blee—
I shove that last word away and run my hand down his hoodie, pressing gently, checking for dampness.
The T-shirt underneath is soaked on the left side, fabric clinging dark and sticky.
The smell hits me a half-second before the sight does.
The blood isn’t pouring, but the hoodie is soaked enough that I know it’s not nothing.
I press my hand lightly around the wound, feeling the heat, the tacky resistance. He groan again—a tiny, pained sound.
“Fuck,” I breathe. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
I peel the shirt up further, careful not to pull too fast, and see the source; a stab wound, low on his side, just above the hip, ugly and swollen. Not deep enough to kill instantly, but bad enough that if he bleeds out, or if something inside is hit wrong…
My heart slams against my ribs.
I cradle his head with one hand, the other hovering uselessly above the wound because I don’t have gauze—I don’t have anything. This is not how I operate. I know how to make these injuries, not how to patch them.
“Dom…”
His voice is a whisper, ragged and weak, but it’s there. His lashes flutter, and his eyes crack open, hazy and unfocused.
“Hey,” I say, my heart sitting in my fucking throat. “There you are, Little Sin. You scared the shit out of me.”
“Hurts…” he breathes.
“I know,” I say, because I can’t lie to him now. “I know, baby. I’ve got you.”
There’s a choice here—there’s always a choice.
Call an ambulance. Call Seth. Call anyone.
Get him out of this house and into a hospital before whatever’s going on inside his body tips into something he can’t come back from.
Expose myself, expose him, expose the wound and the cottage and the blood and the history.
I’m halfway to reaching for my phone when I hear a slow, soft clap behind me.
My whole body freezes, and I don’t have to turn to know who it is. The air changes when she’s in the room; it always has. The temperature drops, and all the shadows sharpen when she’s close.
“Domenyk,” my mother says, voice smooth and satisfied. “I should have known.”
I turn my head slowly, keeping one hand on Brendon’s chest, like I can anchor him to life through touch alone.
My mother stands in the doorway of my living room—hair perfect, coat draped over her shoulders as if she’s stepping out of a gala, instead of into a house where someone is bleeding out on the couch.
Her mouth curves. “You were so careless,” she continues, walking closer on silent steps. “You really thought you could hide a weakness from me.”
My fingers curl into the couch cushion. “What did you do?” I say, and my voice comes out low and lethal. “What the fuck did you do?”
She tilts her head, almost fond. “You were so distracted. Too busy playing monster in private and golden boy in public to even notice the trackers I put on your toys. Did you ever consider that I might want to know where my son goes when he’s not playing football and murdering strangers to calm his nerves? ”
My stomach twists. The forest, the bar, the campus, Brendon’s apartment, my cottage—she’s been watching. She’s been following.
I feel sick.
She steps closer and looks at Brendon like he’s a stain. “He’s pretty. I understand the appeal. Soft things are tempting. They make you feel human. That’s always the danger.”
My hand tightens on Brendon’s chest, and his breath hitches weakly under my palm. “Don’t talk about him,” I snarl.
She gives an amused laugh. “Really, Dominic,” she says.
“You’re brilliant on the field and in the alley, but you never were very good at looking behind you.
I wondered why you were suddenly so fond of that specific TA’s office, so I followed.
Imagine my surprise when I found you in that forest with him the other night.
A preacher’s son worshipping a false god. I simply had to let people know.”
My stomach lurches. “What the fuck did you do?” I ask again.
“I showed his parents his true deviance,” she says. “They were very eager to talk, by the way. Such a righteous man, your little TA’s father. So concerned about his son’s soul and his reputation. It was almost too easy to nudge him in the right direction.”
I picture Brendon in his office, his parents storming in, that horrified look on his face when he realizes they’ve seen him on top of me.
They know.
My hands curl into fists. “You ruined his life,” I say.
“I preserved yours,” she corrects. “Or tried to. You didn’t make it easy, but now… now you finally understand what’s at stake, don’t you?”
Ice slides down my spine. “So you did this,” I say, gesturing back toward the couch without shifting my stance. “You stabbed him.”
“He was inconvenient,” she says coolly. “You’re lucky the only one out there filming was me.”
“If you wanted me back in line, you could’ve just called,” I say, voice calm in a way that would scare me if I were watching myself. “You didn’t have to touch him.”
She arches a brow. “You didn’t pick up your phone, so I improvised. Besides, why should I waste time talking when I can show you exactly what happens when you ignore my lessons?”
My heart is beating so hard it hurts. I force my voice to stay level. “I’m going to get him to a hospital,” I say. “And then we’re done.”
She laughs again, the sound brittle. “You’re not taking him anywhere. You have a choice to make.”
“I’m not playing this game, Mother,” I say.
“Oh, but you are,” she says, and reaches into her coat pocket.
Every muscle in my body tenses, ready for a gun, another knife, anything. Instead, she pulls out her phone.
“I have more than one video now. It’s amazing what a good angle can do,” she says.
“Scouts, coaches, donors… They’re so impressionable.
I imagine the NFL will have very strong opinions about their shining first-round pick being caught like this.
Especially when there are other… videos to accompany it.
Ones that show more than just your interesting sex life. ”
I shake my head. “You release that, and you blow up my life too.”
“That’s the point,” she says. “You’ve forgotten who you are. You’ve forgotten why you were made. If I have to strip you down to nothing to remind you, I will.”
Brendon makes a faint, wet sound behind me, but I refuse to break eye contact.
“Here are your options,” she says. “You kill him right now in front of me. Cut the weakness out and prove to me that you still understand the hierarchy—that I come first. If you do that, I will keep the videos. I bury the evidence of your little indiscretions. The scouts never see them. You go to your draft, you sign your contracts, you play your little game on Sundays, and you keep being my son.”
“And if I don’t?” I ask, voice quiet.
“Then I send everything,” she says. “I send the unblurred videos to the scouts. I send the alley tapes to the police. I send the videos of you laughing while you work to every reporter with a pulse. I send his parents every image of you fucking their son and blow up both your lives, and then I finish what I started and put him in the ground anyway.”
The room feels very small.
She tilts her head, watching my face closely. “So,” she says. “Choose. Your future, or his life. Your legacy, or your little pet.”
There’s a part of me, the old part, the trained part, that knows how to pretend. How to mask. How to say yes and mean no. How to survive. And there’s another part built on one single truth that has replaced every other rule in my head.
I never want to hurt Brendon.
My mother smiles as she watches me process. She thinks she knows the outcome—that I’ll choose the path she carved. She thinks I’ll sacrifice the soft spot because that’s what she taught me to do.
This is what she always wanted: to force me into her shape.
To make sure every choice runs through her hands first. To prove that nothing matters more than the work she carved into me with blades and whispered commands.
Love is leverage, she’s said it a hundred times.
I thought I finally understood that well enough to outplay her.
Apparently not.
“Time is ticking,” my mother says. “He won’t last much longer without medical attention, so choose.”
She’s right about one thing: if I call for help, and she hits send, everything burns. Not just my career. My freedom. My ability to touch him again without bars between us. His name. His family. All of it.
But she’s wrong about what I’m willing to sacrifice.
I breathe in slowly—the way I do before the snap, or before I slide a knife in.
“Okay,” I say.
Her eyes sharpen. “Okay,” she repeats. “Which is it?”
My throat works. I force myself to relax my hands, unclench my jaw, roll my shoulders like I’m conceding. “You win,” I say quietly. “You always do.”
Satisfaction flares in her gaze. “I knew you’d see sense. You are mine, after all.”
I rise from my knees slowly, careful not to jostle Brendon too much. His eyes are half open now, glazed and confused, trying to focus on me. His lips part, and a faint sound escapes him.
“Dom,” he rasps. “What…”
I ignore it, because I can’t afford my mother seeing what his voice does to me.
I stand fully, then take a step toward my mother and let my shoulders slump just enough to look defeated. I let my gaze drop, because she loves that, loves the visual of me bowing to her.
We’re close enough that I can smell her perfume; the same expensive floral shit she wore when she came to school plays, parent-teacher conferences, and the funerals of men she helped put in the ground. It makes my stomach churn.
Up close, I can see the lines at the corners of her mouth, the places where age has finally started to touch her, despite all her efforts. Behind me, I hear Brendon sputter my name again, soft and panicked; the sound slices through me.
I sink down in front of her, lowering myself with deliberate slowness—returning to my place. I’ve been kneeling at her feet since I was old enough to stand. My heart is steady, my mind is cold, and my hands don’t shake.
Behind me, I hear Brendon sputter again, struggling, probably trying to sit up. My mother hears it too, and she laughs softly.
“You see,” she murmurs. “He’s already trying to take you from me, even bleeding out. Pathetic.”
She keeps talking, because she always does when she thinks she’s won. She leans down slightly, voice turning lazy with satisfaction.
“You were always mine, Domenyk. You can play at rebellion, you can pretend you’ve grown teeth, you can pretend you can love something, but in the end, you always come back. That’s what you are. That’s what I made.”
Her fingers brush my skin. “You didn’t leave me another option,” I say softly.
“Life rarely does,” she says.
She doesn’t notice my hand move.
I’ve had a knife on me since I was fifteen; tonight is no exception. It’s tucked at the small of my back, under my hoodie at all times. My fingers find the hilt now without thinking, and I slide it free in one smooth motion, flipping it in my grip as I rise.
She’s still talking when the blade hits home.
It meets resistance—muscle, and bone, and all the things I don’t think about when I do this to people who aren’t my mother. I don’t focus on the details. I focus on the handle in my palm and the way it stops when I’ve gone deep enough to make a point.
Her breath leaves her in a shocked rush.
For the first time in my life, she looks genuinely surprised. Her hands come up to my shoulders, not to push me away, but to clutch, fingers digging in. She looks down at the knife between us, then back up at my face, eyes wide.
“Domenyk,” she whispers.
“I’m done,” I say, voice calm in a way that feels terrifying even to me. “With you. With this. With your fucking choices.”
She laughs, a wet, disbelieving sound that catches in her throat. Her grip tightens, then loosens, and for a brief moment, I consider holding her up. Then I step back, letting gravity and the weight of everything she’s done pull her down.
Behind me, Brendon sputters, another rough cough tearing out of him.
I don’t look away from her as she hits the floor. Her eyes search my face, pride and horror twisted together.
“You stupid boy,” she whispers. “You’ve ruined… everything.”
I shake my head, the rage in my chest finally cooling into clarity. “No. I just killed the thing that’s been ruining me my whole fucking life.”
Her mouth opens, but no words come out this time. “I choose him,” I say, more to myself than to her. “I choose me. I’m done being your weapon.”
Her eyes roll toward the ceiling, unfocused, and whatever she was going to say dies on her lips. I don’t watch her die. I’ve watched enough people die because of her, and I am fucking done adding to that highlight reel for free.
I turn my back on her, and head for the couch, my hands already reaching for the only thing that matters—and it sure as fuck isn’t the woman bleeding out on my floor.
But my brain is already racing through how the fuck I’m going to keep all of us alive now that the queen is off the board.