Dom #3
“Then where? Where the fuck am I supposed to do it, Eli?” Milo growled, turning on Eli. “Dom can barely wake the fuck up to stop me, and who’s going to stop me, Levi’s fucking goons?”
“They’re not goons,” Levi said softly. “They’re here for Dom’s protection...and yours.”
“And look how well that worked out.” Mason, who I realized was sitting in the corner, his face a frozen mask of fury. “Look at our brother, Levi.”
“I see him. I’ve been seeing him, and I’ve come back one last time because I had to see him,” Levi said, and there was.
..something wrong with him. He was just as cold as Mason, but it was a distant coldness.
Mason was mad, but he was here; he was in the moment.
Levi though...I recognized was somewhere else, deep in his head.
“If I had known all of you were here, I would have waited. You yourself should know how much this hurts me to—”
I didn’t see Moira until her hand lashed out, balled into a fist, and slammed into Levi’s face, sending him stumbling backward.
From the doorway, I saw a large man come hurrying into the room, and everyone turned toward him, ready to lash out.
Levi, though, pointed at him. “Out. If anyone deserves to hit me, it’s anyone in this room. ”
The guard looked hesitant, but he backed up, giving Levi a look before turning his back and standing outside the room.
Moira stood, her shoulders taut, and I wanted to grab her before she punched him again.
“My son, my goddamn son. We welcome you into our home, and you put my son in danger? You put my brother in the fucking hospital? You’re goddamn right I deserve to hit you. You deserve a lot more than that.”
“I do,” Levi said, as if he knew it was true but wasn’t...connecting to it, not emotionally. He was connecting the dots because they made sense, like adding numbers together. “There is only one thing I will ask of you.”
“That’s bold,” I heard a soft voice say next to me, and if I could have moved, I would have jumped. Arlo leaned forward from where he sat next to my bed, his hand resting on my arm. “What could you ask of us at a moment like this?”
“You stay where you can be guarded by my men,” Levi said simply. “The police are useless. They won’t be able to protect you when it really counts. They don’t have the resources or the training to protect you from something like this.”
“And you do?” Arlo asked coolly. He didn’t sound like he was doubting Levi, but he definitely wasn’t happy. “The evidence we have lying right here says otherwise.”
“I made Dom a promise,” Levi said, adjusting his jacket.
“And while I am keeping that promise, I cannot risk any of you being in further danger. While I’m doing this, you need to stay with my men.
They will keep you safe, and if any of them fail.
..well, they had better hope they’re killed in the process. ”
“Jesus,” Milo said in a horrified voice. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“It means he’s a monster,” Moira said coldly, and I wanted to scream.
No! No, he was a man; he was a stupid, stubborn, irritating man, but he was a man.
He was still able to love; he was able to care, and he did both!
God, don’t punish him for being human, for not being able to do the right thing when he’d lost the chance to do the right thing for years. He still has to learn, he still has to—
“I am,” Levi said in that same, icy, disconnected voice he’d been using the whole time. “But I am the monster that is going to keep you all safe and make sure you stay safe. So until that time, do the one thing I ask.”
“And when you’re done...doing this promise, you’re leaving?” Mason asked. “Right?”
Levi looked at him. “Yes.’
No!
No no no no no!
You can’t take him from me, you can’t force him away from me!
I just got him back, and he was still choosing me; he chose me so many times, and I don’t care that he wasn’t perfect.
I didn’t care that he wasn’t always a good person and that sometimes he could be cold and dangerous.
I didn’t care that maybe it was because of him that I was here in this bed, unable to stop any of them, to help Levi as he stood in the face of my siblings and their rage toward him.
No, he was alone again, and I couldn’t help!
“Don’t worry,” Levi said, turning toward the door. “I won’t be back here again. I have a long list of things to do, and I can’t keep drawing attention. I needed to see him again before I...got started. So, if you’ll excuse me.”
Eli pulled Milo out of the way, letting Levi pass without saying a word. Moira let out a harsh noise and walked to the door, slamming it closed so the guards were cut off from them.
“I didn’t like that look on his face,” Eli said into the quiet.
“It was fucking creepy,” Milo said, frowning. “I don’t know what he’s going to do, but—”
“That’s the look of a man who has been pushed past the edge,” Arlo said softly. “I don’t know about any promise he made, but I think we’re about to see whether or not he’s going to live up to that monster accusation.”
“Don’t you dare start to take his side,” Moira snarled, turning on him.
“Guys, Dom’s awake,” Eli said, but it was too late; I was falling back into the darkness again.
It was hard to stay above the surface from that point.
..mostly. Sometimes I felt like I was awake because I would be in the hospital room.
There were always different people there, and I think I talked to them, but it was kind of hard to remember what we talked about.
Sometimes it was Matty and Marcus, her eyes wet as she held my hand while he stroked my head, speaking softly.
Sometimes it was Micah, who looked so goddamn lost when he looked at me, and I wished someone would get him out of the room so he didn’t have to see me like.
..whatever I was. Sometimes it was Milo, showing me the stupid shit he found on the internet, probably not even sure if I knew what he was showing me, and other times it was Arlo telling me about something Muffin and Rags had done, or reading from the trashy romance book I’d been reading the last time I’d crashed in his guest room.
“He wasn’t wrong,” I heard Kayden say at one point. “The cops...we can’t do much of anything. Not when Los Muertos may be the ones targeting all of you...all of us.”
“You can’t be serious,” I heard Moira protest but Jace’s voice, thick and heavy with regret, interrupted.
“He’s right. I hate to admit it, and I fucking hate that we’re forced to deal with goddamn gangsters to keep us safe, but when it comes to shit like this, we’re out of luck. We have to accept his protection, and it’s going to be a lot better than anything the cops could give.”
“They can do shit like Witness Protection.”
“That’s the feds, and that would take time.
Time we probably don’t have,” Jace said, and I could see him a little through the haze in my head.
He was frowning at the floor. “Levi might be the reason we’re in this fucking mess.
..but he’s also the only one who’s going to keep us safe while the city goes to hell. ”
“Christ,” Moira hissed, turning to glare out the window. It was dark out. “What is he doing?”
“Keeping a promise,” Jace said, turning to look at me. “Must have been one hell of a promise.”
Then I was back at the hotel bar. It was quiet there, and no one was working, but there was a drink in front of me that I didn’t remember being made. I took a sip and...could I actually taste it, or was that just my brain tricking itself?
“Does it matter?” a soft voice asked next to me.
I flinched when I saw my mother and father sitting at the bar.
They were dressed like the last time I’d seen them, my mother in a sundress and a wide-brimmed hat, my father in khaki shorts and a tropical-print short-sleeve shirt, with huge sunglasses that took over his face.
Except they weren’t exactly like I had seen them.
Their clothes were ripped, their skin cut and covered in mud and drying blood.
My mother’s face was half gone, or at least the skin was, leaving only bloody muscle stretched over a cracked skull.
My father’s entire left side was a horror of raw meat and seeping blood.
These were the parents who had shown up in my dreams for months after their deaths.
“You weren’t supposed to see us, remember?” my mother said, her smile gentle yet horrifying, as I could see the muscles stretching across her bones. “It was supposed to be a closed casket.”
“But you always had to do things your own way,” my father said with a chuckle, taking a drink from a glass I didn’t remember being there.
“Yeah, I snuck into the prepping area at the funeral home,” I said, remembering the cloying smell of chemicals as I walked through the shadowy room at the back, while Matty and Marcus dealt with arranging to have my parents’ bodies brought to the church the next morning.
I’d found the refrigerated drawers with their names on them and had opened one.
And what had I seen? Well, I hadn’t seen them like this because they had been naked, but their bodies had looked exactly like they did now.
It took almost twenty minutes of me staring at them before someone found me, but by then it was too late.
“You’re not ghosts,” I told them, pushing my drink away. “Ghosts don’t exist. You’re just memories, fucked up memories from when I saw something I shouldn’t have because I was a stupid ass, stubborn kid. That’s all.”
“What are ghosts but memories that won’t leave?” my mother asked.
“And we wouldn’t leave because you didn’t know how to let us go,” my father added. “Just like you don’t know how to let Levi go. He’s always haunted you too.”
“He’s out there,” I said, looking toward the lobby to find the door and frowning when all I saw was a wall that had never been there. “Fucking weird ass dream.”