23. Kiera #2
“But when I made it to the driveway, there was no SUV waiting. It was a two-seater. No driver, just Isaac and I all alone, driving to God knew where. The dread started building in my stomach immediately. I knew there was no way that this was good news. But I didn’t dare ask questions — I knew he would take it as a sign of weakness. So I got in the car.
“The drive was only a couple of miles, but it felt like it lasted forever. I’d never really been out that way before.
The fields outside of Valemount were beautiful in the setting sun, but they stretched to the end of the world.
I kept trying to figure out what sort of business meeting would happen in all that farmland.
“But when I looked to Isaac for some clue of where we were going, he kept his eyes on the road. When he spoke, all he would offer were aphorisms about responsibility and consequences, the ‘hard choices’ required by a business like his. The lessons it taught you.
“Honestly though?” She scoffed, “I hardly absorbed a fucking word of it. When I heard his voice, I expected my father: the man he’d been in my childhood.
But every time I turned to look at him, I was startled by the monster who’d taken his place.
I wasn’t sure who he was anymore, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to find out. ”
I understood what she meant. Even seeing that blurry photo of him on Leo’s laptop had brought up a similar feeling in my gut. I couldn’t imagine how much worse it must be as his actual kid.
My dad might be dead, but Dom had lost her father too. At least I knew that Brennan was the man I’d remembered him to be. After her mom disappeared, Dom had to watch a demon puppeting the body of the only family she had left.
And what she said next was enough to convince me that he truly was evil incarnate.
“Eventually, we turned off the road into a line of trees. I thought for a second he’d snapped and that we were going to crash into one of them. But then the tree line opened to a big, brick warehouse, hidden way off the main strip.
“It was the middle of fucking nowhere, but he drove up to the busted-up building like he’d been inside of it a thousand times. Pulled his fancy luxury car in between a bunch of old vans and beaters, and told me to lead the way inside.
“It was already dark out. The only reason I knew where to go was because of the rinky spotlight flickering over the doorway. I was confused and afraid, but with Isaac breathing down my neck, I had no choice but to march onward. But once we got inside…”
Her fist clenched the sheet between us. Hoping it was the right thing to do, I lowered my hand to give hers a squeeze.
Her dazzling blue eyes met mine briefly with a need I hadn’t seen from her before — confirmation that I wouldn’t leave. And with a nod, I fought back the sorrow already blooming in my chest. “You can tell me.”
With a deep inhale, Dom nodded and continued her story.
“There wasn’t much to see inside. A dark warehouse, a bright spotlight, and a column with a chain lying at its base.
My eyes had hardly adjusted by the time I heard his goons lurking in the shadows, laughing hungrily.
But it wasn’t until Isaac told me to step forward that I knew how bad it would be.
“He wanted me to put on handcuffs and let myself be chained to the post with my back to the crowd. I remember turning to him, asking if he’d lost his mind.
And for the first time, he looked deep into my eyes and told me not to make him repeat himself.
I could see what he’d been hiding this entire time: his utter hatred for me.
“I tried to run, but it was too late. I hadn’t made it three steps before one of his assholes tackled me.
I almost shook him, but then another dragged me back into the light by my scalp.
I tried to fight back as they chained me, but there were too many of them.
I begged Isaac to stop them, but he just frowned at me like I was the disappointment.
Told me that I must not have been listening to what he said in the car. ”
Acidic rage burned at my throat. I’d never felt an anger so violent, but Dom pushed on. As if she was scared that if she stopped, the words might never come out.
“Once my arms were secured with my chest pressed tight to the pillar, he told them to rip away the back of my shirt. They moved quickly, careful not to break skin as he gave his commands. They were to keep their strikes somewhere easy to conceal, but to make sure that it was a lesson I couldn’t forget. ”
Her eyes gleamed as she recounted it all. For a moment, I thought she might be crying, but it was probably just a trick of the light.
“For hours, they took turns beating me with anything they could find: chains, bats, shards of glass. Sometimes, the weapons were heated over a burn barrel before they were brought to me. Those ones left the worst scars.
“But what haunted me most wasn’t the pain or the brutality; it was how fucking meticulous they were with the beating. Isaac told them to keep the scars hidden, and not a single fucking strike strayed from my back.
“Isaac went last,” she scoffed, “But by the time he got to me, my nerve endings were torn to shreds. I could hardly feel the whip he’d reached for — I only knew that he was hitting me from the crack it made with each blow.
“I guess at some point, my body must have quit. Either I passed out from the pain or from the blood loss. I could have believed it was all a nightmare, but when I woke up back in my bed, I was in agony. It took weeks for the wounds to heal, and Isaac didn’t visit me once.
“But it was for the best. If he’d visited me, he’d have realized how wrong he was.”
“For… for doing that to you?” I stammered.
“No,” she shook her head, turning to face me. “He’d have realized that the scars he’d left me with weren’t a lesson. They were a talisman. A reminder of the promise I made to myself on that warehouse floor to destroy him.”
I balked, unsure how, from all of that suffering, she could have come out so clear-headed on her mission. But now that we were reunited, now that the Oracle had revealed our path and Dom had revealed her truth, I made a promise to myself too.
We were going to destroy that man. And we were going to make him regret the day he ever laid hands on Dom.