Chapter 22
CHAPTER 22
DOMINO
P ain was nothing new. It was ingrained in every cell, woven into my very existence. I didn’t fear it. I harnessed it. Turned it into something useful.
Rage.
It throbbed in my arms, deep and pulsing, where my shoulders felt like they were being ripped apart one sinewy strand at a time. The metal cuffs cut into my wrists, fresh blood welling around them as I flexed my fists. My body sagged from the corroded air conditioning pipe above me, the old screws whining with every subtle movement. It wouldn’t hold. Not for much longer.
Time was a luxury I didn’t have.
Copper coated my tongue. Bruised ribs protested every shallow breath I sucked in through dry, cracked lips. Blood seeped from the multitude of wounds on my body—fists, boots, and blades had all left their mark, but they had failed in the one thing that mattered most.
Breaking me. Taking me from him.
Remi had become the sole focus of my existence.
He was too quiet. Too still. Tied to that metal girder, head slumped forward, dark hair spider webbed with white, shielding his face. But I knew him. Knew he was listening, calculating, waiting—because he knew I was coming for him.
Would always come for him.
Salvatore Gallo and his sons droned on, their arrogance thick in the air like rot. Their men patrolled the space, careless, smug. Believing in their false sense of control. Fools.
I memorized them all, counted their steps, marked the ones who hesitated when they looked at me. They would be the first to die.
The dim overhead lights flickered.
A test run. A signal. Ghost was close.
We had a plan in place if Remi or I were ever taken, and it looked like my diligence was about to pay off. The embedded tracker in Remi’s necklace had led him right here. And when the lights went out for real, I would make each one of the men here regret everything.
A slow, steadying breath filled my lungs. I swung my legs and the momentum shifted the screws in their housing. A little more. A little looser. Again. And again I swung.
Salvatore’s words should have hit harder. They should have meant something. Instead, they rolled off me, insignificant against the only truth that mattered—Remi. Tied up. Vulnerable. Hurt.
The only thing in this world that I gave a fuck about.
I smirked, a calculated twitch of my lips, as Salvatore looked up at me, still rambling. “You’re talking a lot for a dead man,” I muttered just as the lights went out.
Chaos erupted as darkness blanketed the warehouse. Feet pounded on cement, echoing in the hollow space. A scream tore through the blackness—the first of many, if I had anything to do with it.
The last screw gave way. Metal groaned and snapped. I crashed to the ground, landing atop the unlucky bastard standing sentry by me. His ribs cracked beneath my weight, the air forced from his lungs in a sharp, wet gasp.
I was moving before he even had time to choke and stutter his last breath. Momentum carried me forward as adrenaline surged through my veins, sharpening my lethal focus.
The chain of my cuffs snapped tight as I looped it around the throat of the nearest soldier. His fingers clawed at the metal, gasping, gurgling as I twisted, using my body weight to yank him off balance. He stumbled, boots skidding across the blood-slicked floor.
A jerk, a twist. The satisfying crack of his windpipe breaking was music amidst the carnage. His body slumped in my hold. Dead weight. I let him drop and was already moving before his corpse hit the ground.
Even cuffed, I was faster. Stronger. More vicious than any man in the room. My monster was unparalleled in its brutality.
My fingers closed around the barrel of a soldier’s gun before he could even think to raise it. I yanked it from his grasp and flipped it until my finger curled around the trigger.
Bang.
The bullet punched through his throat. Blood and tissue exploded outward from the proximity of the shot. The flash of gunfire illuminated wide, horrified eyes. But I didn’t hang around to savour the kill and watch the life drain from him. I had a singular focus. Every cell in my body drove me forward, toward Remi.
I spun around and fired a round of shots in the direction of heavy thudding boots closing in on me. Another body crashed to the ground, skidding to a stop against a girder.
Blood thickened the air. Viscous and metallic as it coated my tongue with every inhale, tasting like sweet poison as it filled my lungs.
My monster roared as another Gallo fell. And another. They fell like flies. If this was the level of training they gave their men, wiping them off the face of the earth was going to be easier than I thought.
I moved like a phantom, precise and unrelenting, my world narrowing to the cold press of steel and the warm spray of blood.
Footsteps scrambled to my right. A coward hiding behind one of the thick pillars. I pivoted, catching the faintest outline of his form. He clutched his leg, blood seeping between his fingers where a ricocheted bullet had caught him.
His breath hitched. “P—please?—”
I silenced his pathetic pleas with the brutal press of my thumb into the open wound, pushing the bullet lodged in his flesh deeper. His scream echoed around us, as thick claret welled around my thumb. Delicious chills raced over my skin, making the hairs on my nape stand on end.
I smirked as his eyes widened. He could see the monster in me. Reflected in my eyes. “The keys,” I ordered, voice calm against the hysteria. “Now.”
His hand trembled as he yanked the ring free and thrust it toward me. I snatched it from his grasp, my fingers closing around his throat in a slow, deliberate squeeze. His racing pulse fluttered beneath my fingertips.
“You’re the one who locked me up.” My voice was almost gentle. A lie from a sinner’s lips. “Tell me. Did you enjoy it?”
He whimpered. I tightened my grip. His hands left his bleeding leg to claw at my arm. A manic grin curled my lips as pain sliced into my skin where he shredded it with his nails.
His body spasmed once. Then he went limp. Eyes glassy, unseeing. Euphoria rushed through my veins, chasing away the exhaustion. I discarded him, stepping over his corpse. Forgetting him like the nothing he was.
Remi—My eyes shot straight to him. The vice that had sunk its teeth into my heart retreated. He was watching me through his dark lashes, ice-blue eyes, almost phosphorus in the dim light.
My Remi smiled up at me and licked his lips. His heady gaze raked over my bruised and bleeding chest with a visceral hunger that went straight to my cock.
He was the only person I would ever kill for again. He was everything to me. My solitude. My home. My darkness made whole.
Mirrored souls, carved from the same depths of hell.
I crouched behind him, sawing at the zip ties with the sharp edge of the cuffs that had bound my wrists. My fingers brushed against his wrist, lingering a second too long on the bleeding flesh, feeling the depth of the lacerations.
His blood coated my fingertips. I brought them to my lips, sucking them clean one by one. Remi’s bright eyes hooded as he watched them slide into my mouth.
“You took your time,” he murmured, voice hoarse but steady.
A huffed laugh caught in my throat, and I brushed the pad of my thumb across his bottom lip. “Had to make sure they learned their lesson first.”
Remi’s lips twitched. But his gaze flickered past me. Tracking movement in the shadows. I turned just as a Gallo soldier staggered to his feet, gun shaking in his hands.
A low growl curled from my throat as I stepped in front of Remi. Protecting what was mine with my life. The soldier barely had time to blink before I pulled the trigger.
The bullet tore through his skull, splattering brain matter across the ground and silencing him before he could make another foolish mistake.
I reached out, tucking a stray lock of hair behind Remi’s ear. His breath hitched, and he licked his lips. My eyes traced the slow progression of the tip of his tongue.
His hands trembled—whether from exhaustion, relief, or something deeper, I didn’t know. But it didn’t matter. Because the moment I wrenched the last restraint free, the second his hands were no longer bound?—
He surged forward. His fingers clutched at my bloodied skin. And his mouth was on me, lips melding to mine, making me gasp as hunger parched my throat. It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t sweet. It was heat and desperation. Teeth and tongues. A brutal claim.
A promise.
A vow.
My fingers curled into his hair, dragging him closer, devouring him. Blood slicked our lips and stained our skin, the taste of copper and something sweeter lingering between us.
Remi gasped against my lips, his fingers digging into my arms as if to reassure himself that I was real. Alive. Here. “Where are they?” he whispered.
I glanced around. Bodies littered the floor, but we were alone. Salvatore and his sons were gone. Fucking cowards.
A hiss filled the warehouse. Even in the darkness, I could see it. A toxic fog filled the air, crawling across the ground like a sentient being with a singular focus. Search and destroy.
“Remi… I…” I gasped with desperation and slammed my mouth against his again. If this was the last time I ever got to taste him, then I would swallow him whole. I’d take him into the darkest, deepest parts of me and never relinquish my hold.
My body fought against the encroaching darkness, but blood loss, exhaustion, and chemicals coiled around my limbs like chains.
My knees buckled. My vision blurred.
The last thing I felt was Remi’s warmth beside me before the void swallowed us whole.
I woke to the sensation of dried blood pulling at my skin. It cracked as I moved, stretched taut over bruises that pulsed in time with my heartbeat. My jeans were stiff, the scent of copper clinging to the air, thick and heavy, coating my tongue like a memory I’d never forget.
Everything hurt. Every wound, every cut, every bruise sang beneath my skin. A symphony of pain, sharp and unrelenting.
The sheets beneath me were too soft. Too clean. An affront to the ruin carved into my body.
A low groan beside me snapped my focus back to reality, yanking me from the crimson haze threatening to consume me.
Remi stirred. His muscles tensed, the lines of his face drawn tight with exhaustion. But when his dark, sharp gaze snapped to the corner of the room, I recognized the shift immediately.
He saw it, too. The camera. The unseen person was watching us like we were animals here for their entertainment.
We had to be in a Gallo safe house, it was the only logical place. A temporary holding cell, a place to keep us under surveillance. They wouldn’t have been stupid enough to bring us to their main compound, but I didn’t care. I would tear this place apart. Brick by brick. Burn it down and salt the fucking earth.
They touched him.
They would pay.
But right now, none of that mattered. Right now, all I saw was him.
Blood streaked his skin, dirt smeared across the ridges of his cheekbones. A masterpiece of violence. Of survival.
He was fucking mine.
The word slammed into me, consuming and absolute. The last twenty-four hours or however long it had been since we were at the docks had been hell, and the only thing keeping me from unraveling was him. Breathing. Alive. Here.
I reached for him. My fingers tangled in his hair, yanking him closer. The strands slid through my blood stained fingers like silk, the contrast making something inside me tighten—a hunger, a sickness, an obsession.
Too soft. Too reverent.
Not enough.
It would never be enough. Remi barely had time to exhale before I shoved him back onto the mattress. His body tensed beneath me—a second of resistance as pain flashed over his features before he embraced it. Then he relaxed. Yielded to me.
Not in surrender.
In expectation.
In anticipation.
He’d been waiting for this. For me. A smirk ghosted across his lips, sharp and teasing. Daring me. “You think you own me?”
A growl rumbled deep in my chest. “I don’t think, piccolo agnello . I know.”
His breath hitched, his pupils blown wide; he licked his lips, watching me intently. He liked it.
He fucking loved it.
My lips crashed into his throat, dragging across his pulse point. Tasting. Marking. Branding. My teeth sank in, breaking skin, and he arched into me, gasping.
“You cry so beautifully, baby ,” I murmured against his skin, tongue flicking over the wound. The metallic tang of his blood burst across my tastebuds. Perfect. Before I kissed away the tears that pricked the corners of his eyes, leaving a fresh bloody trail across his pale skin.
His fingers clawed at my back, nails biting, digging. Pulling me closer like he couldn’t get deep enough.
Neither could I.
I ripped at his clothes as I kicked my jeans off, tearing the fabric from his body until every inch of him was bared to me. I needed more, needed all of him. His mind. His darkness. The blood and marrow of his bones.
His legs wrapped around my waist, locking me in, grinding up, dragging me deeper into his heat.
“You need me, don’t you?” I whispered, biting at his jaw, dragging my tongue over the sweat-slick curve of his throat. Scraping my teeth over his Adam’s apple, feeling his larynx vibrate beneath my lips.
He didn’t answer, but his body did. Writhing. Desperate. Willing. The soft puff of air that passed his lips as they searched for mine.
His cock, slick and hard, slid against mine, sending a violent, shuddering wave of pleasure down my spine. I gritted my teeth, forcing myself to slow down before I shattered too soon.
But he wouldn’t let me. Wave after wave of electricity danced across my skin, sparking everywhere we touched. Nerves came alive under my skin. Every thrust of his hips, every long grind of his slick length against mine only ratcheted the pleasure suffused in my veins higher.
“Dom…” he whimpered when my crown caught on his.
He was just as starved, just as desperate, grinding up, pushing, daring me to break.
“Say it,” I ordered, my grip on his throat tightening just enough to make his breath catch.
His lips curled in a wicked, ruined smile. “Make me.”
A snarl ripped from my chest. I devoured him. My lips slammed down on his, and I forced my tongue into his mouth, tasting every inch before I pulled his bottom lip between my teeth. Pulling a fresh bead of blood from the freshly scabbed over split.
Teeth clashed. Nails raked down my back, peeling layer after layer of skin away. The delicious burn of his brand on my flesh made my balls draw up tight to the base of my dick.
Skin dragged against skin, slick with sweat, blood, need. It was raw. Consuming. Violent.
I forced his thighs wider, pinning him beneath me, owning every inch of him. He arched his spine, his head thrown back, body taut with pleasure and pain, the line between them blurring.
My bloodied hand wrapped around my thick length as my gaze dragged over every inch of his body, following the trail of marks down to his glistening cock, a fresh bead of precum pooled against his abs.
“Fuck,” I groaned and notched the head of my cock against his unstretched hole.
I wanted him raw and brutally. I needed to force my way inside his body, feel it fight me before it sucked me in. I looked up, and my eyes clashed with his heavy-lidded ice-blues.
The unasked question between us as I increased the pressure against his entrance. That tight ring of muscle refusing to give. Bending forward I spit on my cock slicking it up as I worked my hand from root to tip.
Remi’s head thrashed. “Fuck me. Fuck me Domino. I need it. Need you.” A fresh wave of tears glittered down his cheeks.
With one hard snap of my hips, that tight ring of muscle was forced to give way as I drove myself inside him. The wet heat of his body clenched around me, and my mind fractured.
Nothing else existed.
Nothing else would ever matter.
I drove into him with an unhinged intensity, bruising, claiming, my hands leaving evidence of ownership in every mark, every scrape, every bite.
He gasped, wrecked, perfect, mine .
“You love this,” I murmured against his lips, forcing my cock deeper, making him feel it.
His response was a choked moan, fingers fisting in my hair, dragging me into a kiss that was all teeth and bloody desperation. I bit his lower lip, hard enough to coax a fresh drop of crimson to stain them. The taste burst across my tongue, copper and ruin and Remi.
I swallowed his gasp, his moan, his everything. As I pounded into him, my hands slid underneath his ass, hauling him up, changing the angle so I pegged his prostate with every brutal thrust. Sweat slicked his crimson stained skin, like fractured rubies.
His body tensed one muscle at a time until he was frozen. The muscles in his channel rippled around me with a pulsing heat as I shuttled into him, my hips slapping against his bruised flesh, pushing him higher and higher.
“Fuck! Fuck! Please…. pl….” his words devolved into a broken moan.
“Come for me, piccolo agnello .”
Remi shattered beneath me, his release painting both our bodies, hot and thick. The sight of him, ruined and spent, slick with cum, trembling in my grip, sent me over the edge.
I poured myself into him, claiming him in the only way that mattered. My vision whited out as my cock pulsed inside him. Spurt after spurt of my cum filled him. So much that it seeped out around my length as I continued to rock into him, prolonging both our orgasms.
When it was done, we lay tangled in the aftermath. Bodies slick. Breath ragged. But I wasn’t finished. I scooped up the cum coating his stomach, lifted my fingers to my lips, and sucked them clean.
Remi’s eyes burned, dark and knowing.
I leaned forward, braced my hands on either side of his head, and kissed him, deep and slow, feeding him his release, passing it back and forth, until we’d swallowed every drop.
Mine. Always.
The storm settled, but my mind was already shifting. Hunting for a way out of our prison. And that’s when I saw it. The vent. Partially obscured by the ornate furniture.
Remi followed my gaze, and within seconds, he was dressed in his shredded clothes and moving. Silent. Efficient. Deadly.
I let him go. I should have stopped him. Should have tied him to this bed, kept him here forever.
But I didn’t.
Because the hunt wasn’t over yet.
He disappeared into the darkness. Gone like he had never been here. Only the taste of his cum on my tongue reminded he was real and not just a figment of my imagination.
Silence stretched. The ticking of the clock on the nightstand grew obnoxiously loud. Jolting me with every tick. A muscle twitched in my jaw as I clenched my teeth and hauled what little in the way of clothing I had back on.
And waited.
A soft click coming from the door drew my attention. I pushed up off the bed and stepped silently over to it. The handle turned, wiggling from side to side before the sound of a lock barrel engaging filled the air.
The door unlocked.
A slow, sharp grin curled at my lips as Remi stepped through the door. A devastating grin twitched the corners of his kiss-bruised lips.
And just like that, the hunt began. We needed to find weapons and burn this place to the ground. I wouldn’t leave here until everyone was dead and buried under a pile of rubble.
“Are you alone?”
My hand wrapped around his wrist and yanked him into me, unwilling to be separated another second. I’d drag him through hell at my side rather than spend a moment without him.
His skin was hot beneath my grip, damp with sweat and streaked with grime. But he was breathing. Alive. Mine.
“I didn’t see anyone,” he murmured, voice hushed but sharp. “But I heard voices down the hall.”
The door shut behind him with a soft snick.
“Where did the vent lead?”
I cupped his face, fingers pressing in like I could mold him into me, merge us into something monstrous and whole. My thumbs dragged over the grime streaked across his cheekbones, smearing filth like war paint. Mine.
The visceral need to touch him, to consume him, to own him burned through me, feverish and all-consuming. Every breath he took, every tremor of his skin beneath my hands, was proof that he was real. That he was here. That no one had taken him from me.
I needed more. I needed to feel his pulse stutter beneath my fingers, feel his breath hitch under my lips, feel his body press against mine so tightly it was impossible to tell where he ended and I began.
The world could burn. Everything could fucking crumble. But as long as I had him beneath my hands, nothing else mattered.
“Linen closet. Four doors down,” he said. “Pretty sure it’s an escape route. That means they know we can get out, so we have to move fast.”
We turned in unison, eyes locking onto the camera in the corner, a silent specter bearing witness to our carnage, our hunger, our ruin.
They’d already seen what we were. A twisted spectacle of blood and filth, pleasure and pain, devotion and destruction. A sickness so profound it had no cure—only indulgence.
Now, it was time to show them what we were truly capable of. They thought they could break us.
They didn’t understand.
We weren’t fragile. We weren’t prey. We weren’t even human anymore.
We were a fucking cataclysm.
Deadly alone. Stronger together. When we moved in tandem, when our bloodied hands reached for each other, when our sick, obsessive love burned through everything in our path—we weren’t just destruction. We were the end.
And we were about to bring hell itself crashing down.
“We do.” My lips grazed his, a fleeting touch, but I needed more. Needed to taste him. Consume him. My fingers curled into his jaw, bruising, possessive. “They took my phone and my weapons.”
A slow, sharp grin tugged at my lips. My hands ached for blood. For death. Destruction. His breath hitched, and ice-blue eyes locked onto me like he could see every wicked thought forming in my mind.
“Do you believe what Salvatore told you?”
His words slithered through my mind, a poisonous whisper. That he was my father? It made sense. Too much fucking sense. I had nothing in common with Federico besides our thirst for blood and our mutual hatred of the Gallos.
My jaw clenched. “It makes sense,” I admitted. “But now is not the time.” I exhaled sharply, fisting the back of his hair, yanking his head back just enough to meet my eyes. “I need to get you home. Safe.”
Remi scoffed, his lips curling in something between amusement and disgust. “Safe? I haven’t been safe since the day I stepped into your world.” His breath came sharp, controlled—but his eyes burned.
He reached for me, fingers digging into my jaw, nails biting deep enough to break skin. To mark. To claim.
“I don’t want safe, Domino,” he murmured, voice low, reverent. “I want the darkness that runs through your veins. I want this—whatever the fuck this is—this approximation of love. I want blood and death and destruction.” His thumb pressed against my bottom lip, smearing my blood across my mouth. His pupils swallowed the light blue of his irises. “But most of all, I want you. And nothing—not even you—will take that from me.”
Fuck . He was perfect. Vicious and wicked, just like me. But still—something in me snarled at the thought of anything touching him, hurting him, taking him from me. The need to keep him, cage him, and own him burned through my veins like wildfire. I didn’t have time to unravel it. Footsteps heavy and rushed echoed in the hallway drawing closer. We had company.
I turned toward the door just as it burst open. The guard barely had time to register what was happening before I hit him like a bullet. My fists collided with flesh, and cartilage cracked beneath the force.. He staggered, gasped—but I didn’t let him breathe. I wanted him to choke on it.
My knuckles cracked against his ribs and shattered on impact. His knees wobbled, and blood coated his face as he flailed. I caught him by the throat and slammed him into the wall. The impact knocked the pictures to the ground.
His eyes bulged, his hands clawing at my grip, feet kicking uselessly against the floor. I leaned in, breathing in the scent of his fear, feeling his pulse stammer beneath my palm. “Take a good look,” I murmured. “I’ll be the last thing you ever see.”
His lips turned blue. His heartbeat faltered. Behind me, Remi inhaled sharply. I felt his eyes on me. In me. Consuming. Feeding.
I grinned over my shoulder. “That’s it,” I whispered, voice like silk-wrapped steel. “Watch me.”
The guard’s body convulsed once, twice—then went limp in my grasp. I let him drop, discarded at my feet. I crouched, stripping him of his gun and knife, holding it out for Remi.
Blood dripped from my split knuckles, warm and slick, splattered across my jaw, my clothes, my fucking skin. I licked it off my lips, slow and deliberate.
Copper and death. Perfection .
I turned to Remi, high off the violence, the power thrumming through my veins like electricity. “Ready?”
His gaze flicked to my bloodied hands, to the corpse, then back to me. Something dark flashed in his eyes. Something wicked. Something beautifully broken.
Remi smirked, and for a moment, I could have sworn the shadows curled tighter around him, whispering secrets only he could hear. His monster stared back at me, hungry and waiting to be freed. “Always.”
We tore through the hallways like starving wolves set loose from their cage, leaving nothing but death and devastation in our wake. Guards died like sacrifices. More bodies than you could imagine littered the floors. None survived.
Blood soaked the walls, decorated our skin.
Remi was a nightmare incarnate, moving through the carnage with a blade in each hand, painting the walls with crimson, carving beauty from their ruin. I ripped, tore, annihilated. Bones crumbled beneath my fists. Joints snapped in my hands. I broke them apart like toys, their screams fueling the fire inside me.
Gunfire rang out, but we were faster. Deadlier. By the time we reached the basement, the house itself was bleeding. It became a nightmare of our creation; it wasn’t a battlefield. It had never been a fair fight. It’d been a massacre. A show of power.
Remi darted toward the shelves, fingers trailing over the supplies with methodical precision.
“What are you doing?” I asked, wiping the blade clean on a corpse.
He didn’t answer, just huffed a quiet laugh and grabbed a can of gasoline and one can of paint thinner.
My cock throbbed, aching to be buried inside him—to claim him, to ruin him. Watching him slaughter without mercy, I craved him. Needed to devour him, to drink the sadistic poison that coursed through his veins.
I leaned against the doorway, eyes locked on him, watching him move with something raw, something feral.
He was beautiful like this.
Dark. Vicious. Unapologetic.
The monster I always knew he could be.
For a moment, he hesitated and turned to me. Searching for something only I could offer him.
Approval? Permission? Worship?
I nodded. “We need to do all the floors.”
A slow, manic grin split his face. He gestured toward the remaining cans. “Grab those and do the top floors.” I nodded and trailed him up the stairs to the first floor. “Meet me in the kitchen when you’re done. We’ll need to be fast,” he called, voice thick with anticipation.
When I returned, he was shoving aluminum foil and cutlery into the microwave, setting the timer. Turning on every gas burner. I fucking laughed Remi’s eyes danced with glee.
“I’ve always wanted to blow somewhere up.”
The air crackled—charged with destruction.
We slipped through the laundry room door just as the explosion tore through the house. Glass shattered. The ground heaved. Fire erupted, vicious and all-consuming, licking up the walls like a living, breathing beast.
Heat slammed into our backs, a violent embrace that sent us hurtling forward. We hit the ground hard, rolling across the grass, tangled in each other.
I caught him by the throat and dragged him into a filthy, brutal kiss. Teeth clashed. Blood smeared. His mouth opened under mine, a wrecked, desperate moan slipping free. My tongue tangled with his, swallowing it down.
I bit his lip, tasted copper, and claimed it. “That’s my boy,” I breathed against him.
Then we ran. Behind us, smoke billowed, thick and choking, curling into the night sky. The first explosion rocked the ground, a warning. The second devoured the house whole, flames swallowing it in a tidal wave of ruin.
No remains. No evidence. Nothing but fire and oblivion.
The gardens stretched before us, shadows bleeding into the trees. I caught his hand, yanked him with me, refusing to let him go.
The inferno raged, consuming everything, a reflection of the hunger twisting inside me. And as we vanished into the dark, into the night—I knew one thing for certain.
The world would burn before I ever let him go.