Chapter 13
The taste of victory is still sweet on my tongue when Dom finds me in my apartment three hours later.
I’m sitting on my couch with an ice pack pressed to my swollen knuckles, replaying the fight in my head, when I hear his key in the lock.
He’s the only one I’ve given access to, a decision that felt right even when I couldn’t explain why.
He enters quietly, closing the door behind him with deliberate care. In the dim light of my living room, he looks older somehow, the lines around his eyes more pronounced, his shoulders carrying a weight I haven’t seen before.
“Can’t sleep either?” I ask, setting aside the ice pack.
“Sleep’s overrated.” He moves toward me with that controlled grace that makes him so dangerous, but there’s something different about him tonight. The fierce pride from earlier has been replaced by something darker and more complex. “We need to talk.”
A chill runs down my spine that has nothing to do with the ice pack. “About what?”
He settles into the armchair across from me, his massive frame somehow making the expensive furniture look delicate. For a long moment, he just stares at his hands, those scarred, powerful hands that have dealt out violence and protection.
“About your father,” he says finally. “About the night he died.”
My blood turns to ice. “Dom—”
“You deserve to know the truth. All of it.” His dark eyes meet mine, and I can see the weight of secrets he’s been carrying. “I was there, Raven. I was there when Vincent Blackwood was murdered.”
I suck in a breath. Five years of wondering, of constructing theories and chasing shadows, and the man I had a crush on years ago and who I’ve been falling for has known the truth all along.
Will what he say line up with the intelligence Marcus gave me? What about The Sterling Syndicate?
“Tell me,” I whisper, my voice barely audible.
Dom runs a hand through his close-cropped hair, and I can see his knuckles trembling slightly.
“Your father called me that night. Said he’d discovered who was feeding information to his enemies, who’d been slowly dismantling his organization from the inside.
He wanted me there as backup when he confronted them. ” He pauses, his jaw working.
I lean forward. “Marcus told me Jacek Kowalski was the inside man, that he provided security schedules and intelligence to the killers.” I watch Dom’s face carefully. “He showed me photographs and financial records.”
Dom’s expression flickers with surprise and then something that might be relief mixed with resignation. “Fuck. I should have known Quintana would get to you first.” He scrubs his face with both hands. “Marcus wasn’t lying. Not entirely.”
“What do you mean not entirely?”
“ Jacek Kowalski was involved, but he wasn’t the mastermind.” Dom’s voice is heavy with old pain. “He was only a facilitator. Someone got to him and convinced him your father was planning to destroy everything they’d built together. Jacek thought he was saving the organization, not destroying it.”
The pieces shift in my mind, creating a more complex picture than either man had painted alone.
“Who got to him?” I ask.
“Antonio Vega.” Dom’s voice cracks on the name. “My uncle. My father’s brother. The man who raised me after my parents died.”
The room spins around me. Antonio Vega. Another one Vincent Blackwood’s most trusted lieutenant and maybe his closest friend for over twenty years. Antonio bounced me on his knee when I was small and called me his honorary niece.
“So Marcus was right about the betrayal,” I say slowly, “but wrong about who orchestrated it?”
“ Jacek was a pawn,” Dom confirms. “Antonio fed him carefully crafted lies about your father planning to eliminate longtime associates, about how Vincent was going soft and would get them all killed. Jacek believed he was protecting the organization by providing intel to what he thought was an internal reorganization.”
“But it was actually Antonio setting up my father for murder.”
“Yes.” Dom stands and moves to the window, his shoulders rigid.
“Your father had started to suspect Jacek was feeding information somewhere, but he never imagined it was being manipulated by Antonio. The night he died, Vincent thought he was confronting Jacek about loose lips and poor judgment. He had no idea he was walking into an execution.”
I sink back into the couch, trying to process this layered betrayal. “So Jacek was the one to pull the trigger? And you were there for what happened next?”
“I got there just as your father was confronting Jacek. Antonio was in the shadows. I didn’t even see him until it was too late.
” Dom’s reflection is ghostly in the window.
“Vincent was trying to understand how Jacek could be so careless with family secrets, and Jacek was terrified, trying to explain that he’d only shared information with people he trusted, people who wanted to help the organization transition… ”
“Transition to what?”
Dom turns back to me, his dark eyes filled with pain.
“Your father was planning to legitimize the business, Raven. Get out of the criminal world entirely. He wanted to leave you something clean, something you could be proud of inheriting, but Antonio couldn’t let that happen.
He’d spent twenty years building power in the criminal world.
He wasn’t going to watch Vincent dismantle everything he’d helped create just because of a guilty conscience. ”
“What happened when the confrontation started?”
“Antonio stepped out of the shadows, gun already drawn. He started talking about how Vincent had gone soft, how he was going to destroy everything they’d built together.
Jacek was shocked. He finally realized he’d been manipulated.
” Dom’s hands clench into fists. “Your father… God, Raven, your father didn’t even try to defend himself.
He just looked at Antonio with this expression of complete betrayal and said, ‘I trusted you with everything. With my life, with my daughter’s life. ’“
A sob breaks free from my chest. It echoes in the quiet room.
“I tried to get there in time,” Dom continues, his voice barely above a whisper. “I was moving the moment I saw the gun, but Antonio was too close, and your father was too shocked to react. Three shots, center mass. By the time I reached them, Vincent was already gone.”
“And Antonio?” The question comes out as a snarl.
“You don’t need revenge, Raven. I killed him.” No hesitation, no regret in his voice. “Put two bullets in his head and didn’t lose a second of sleep over it, but it was too late. Your father was already dead, and you… you were going to be next.”
I turn to face him then, tears streaming down my cheeks that I don’t bother to wipe away. “What do you mean?”
“Antonio had a contingency plan. If Vincent ever discovered his betrayal, he was going to eliminate the entire Blackwood line. He’d already sent men to your apartment, Raven. If I hadn’t called in a favor to get you evacuated…” He doesn’t finish the sentence.
He doesn’t need to.
The betrayal hits not like a wave but like a bullet I never saw coming. Not just my father’s murder but the fact that the man I’d loved like an uncle had planned to kill me too. Had seen me as nothing more than a loose end to be tied up.
“And Jacek? What happened to him?”
“He was collateral damage. Literally caught in the crossfire when I moved on Antonio.” Dom’s expression is grim. “The official story was that the Sterling Syndicate eliminated all three of them in a coordinated attack. It served everyone’s interests to let that version stand.”
“So Marcus wasn’t lying,” I say slowly. “ Jacek was involved in providing the intelligence, but he didn’t know he was setting up my father for murder.”
“No. Jacek died thinking he’d failed to protect the organization he’d served his whole life. In a way, he was as much Antonio’s victim as your father was.”
The revelation reframes everything I thought I understood about my father’s death. Instead of a simple betrayal, it was a complex manipulation that destroyed multiple lives.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I’m crying now, five years of grief and rage and misplaced hatred boiling over. “Why did you let me believe it was just the Sterlings? Why didn’t you tell me about Jacek’s role or Antonio’s manipulation? I hated Kieran…”
I even hated myself for kissing Kieran, but now, everything is all twisted up.
“You needed someone to blame!” Dom shouts back, his own control finally snapping.
“If I’d told you the truth five years ago—that your honorary uncle murdered your father after manipulating another honorary uncle into unwittingly providing the means, you would have destroyed yourself trying to understand how people you loved could betray you like that.
You needed a clear enemy, a target for your rage that would keep you focused and moving forward instead of drowning in the complexity of it all. ”
“That wasn’t your decision to make!” I’m shouting now, ugly sobs that tear at my throat. “You had no right—”
“I had every right!” His voice fills the room, commanding and absolute. “Your father made me promise to protect you no matter what. His exact words were ‘keep her alive, keep her strong, and make sure she becomes the woman she’s meant to be.’ So that’s what I did.”
The fight goes out of me all at once, leaving me hollow and shaking. I sink deeper into the couch, my legs no longer able to support me. Dom is there immediately, kneeling in front of me with those dark eyes full of pain and regret.
“So Marcus told me part of the truth,” I whisper. “To the extent of his knowledge.”
“Marcus tells people exactly what they need to know to serve his purposes,” Dom says carefully. “He’s not malicious, but he’s… strategic about information. He probably wanted to give you enough truth to build trust while keeping the more complex details for later.”
Or Marcus didn’t know all of it. I don’t like that Dom is trying to cast Marcus in a poor light.