Chapter 5
Dominic
The gym hums through my closed office door, the muffled thud of someone hitting a heavy bag, the distant clang of weights being racked. Most days it settles something in me, reminds me that I built something real here, but today it’s just noise.
We’re getting closer to the New York City fight, and everything hinges on it.
The training schedule is spread out in front of me, half the entries crossed out and rewritten.
I should be thinking about Roman’s conditioning blocks, the sparring rotation, the footage Victor Herrera’s camp just released showing takedown defense that looks significantly better than anything we’ve seen on film.
Instead I can’t stop thinking about Brooke.
I’ve spent over a decade successfully filing her away in the part of my brain marked “ancient history, do not open, seriously don’t fucking touch it.
” She was a closed chapter, a cautionary tale.
And now she’s here, talking to me like I’m the unreasonable one, like she didn’t blow up my career and disappear to New York without a backward glance.
I drag my attention back to the schedule. Roman. The thing that actually matters.
A win over Herrera puts Roman in the top five rankings and could fast-track him to the title fight in Mexico City in the fall.
Champion of the world at twenty-four. But this fight could change things for me too.
If he takes that belt, I’m the coach who got him there, and that dream I had in my twenties, the one that went up in smoke thanks to an article with Brooke’s name on the byline, might finally mean something again.
I rub a hand across my jaw and realize I’ve been doing that a lot lately. My dad used to do the same thing, pace and scrub at his stubble like he could sand the problems away. I’m turning into him more every year, which is either comforting or terrifying depending on the day.
A knock on the door jolts me out of it. My first thought is her, and I hate that it is.
“Come in,” I say, leaning back.
Frankie pushes the door open and pokes his head around the frame. “Hey, Dominic? There’s a guy out front. Says his name is Mateo? He says you pulled him out of a car wreck the other day and he wanted to come say thanks.”
I blink. That’s the last thing I expected, and I’m not sure if what I feel is relief or disappointment that it’s not Brooke. The fact that I can’t tell the difference pisses me off more than either option would on its own.
“Yeah,” I say, pushing back from the desk. “Send him in. Thanks, Frankie.”
“No problem, boss.” He disappears back around the corner, and I hear his sneakers squeak against the floor as he jogs back to the front desk.
Mateo appears in the doorway, and he looks better than the last time I saw him, which isn’t saying much given that the last time I saw him he was unconscious and bleeding in the back of an ambulance.
And while I’d told myself that the resemblance to Calvin was just my brain playing tricks in the chaos of the moment, adrenaline and smoke making me see things that weren’t there, standing here now in the plain light of my office, it’s undeniable.
He looks like someone took Calvin and redrew him with a heavier hand. The features are sharper, his coloring deeper, and there’s an edge to him that Calvin buries under books and quiet, but looking at him is like looking at a stranger wearing my brother’s face.
He offers a small smile in greeting, though it looks painful given that his face is bruised along the left side and there’s a cut above his eyebrow, and his left arm is in a sling.
“Hey,” he says from the doorway, his voice deep. “The hospital told me the gym owner at Midnight Boxing was the one who pulled me out, so I wanted to come find you and say thank you in person. I’m Mateo.”
I come around the desk to shake his good hand. Solid grip. “Dominic. Not necessary, but I appreciate the gesture. Glad you’re on your feet.” I nod toward the sling. “You’re looking better than the last time I saw you.”
I wave him toward the chair across from my desk and he lowers himself into it carefully, favoring his left side, dropping his duffel bag down beside him with a soft thud.
“All thanks to you, from what I hear,” he says. “The paramedics told me the fire was about two minutes from the cabin when you got me out.”
“Right place, right time.” I wave it off and settle back into my chair. “You just get discharged?”
“A few hours ago. I went to see my car first, which was depressing.” He gives me a half smile.
“Funny thing is, I actually do fire and rescue for a living. Also search and rescue, disaster response. I’ve spent the last few years running into situations like that, never been on the wrong end of one before. ”
“That must have been a shock,” I say. “And I saw that actually. The fire and rescue, I mean. I was looking for an emergency contact in your wallet while I waited for the ambulance.”
Something flickers behind his eyes at the words emergency contact. It disappears almost before I can clock it, but it was there. I definitely hit a nerve.
“Yeah, well.” His fingers tap against the arm of the chair, a quick three-beat rhythm. “I’m not from here anyway. No one to call.”
I clear my throat. “Boston area, right? You’re a long way from there.”
“Yeah, long way.” He shifts in the chair, adjusting the sling against his chest. “I’d been on a road trip, actually.
Driving cross-country, taking my time with it.
Was just arriving in Dark River after driving all night when that guy hit me.
” He shakes his head, something dark flickering across his face. “Hell of a way to see a new town.”
“Could’ve been worse. You could’ve not walked away from it.” I lean back in my chair, studying him. There’s something about this conversation that isn’t adding up, an itch at the back of my brain that won’t quit. “You got a job lined up out here, or was this just a trip for the hell of it?”
I swear I see that flicker again, that brief tension in his face, and he shifts his weight in the chair before answering.
“No, I’m on a sort of sabbatical, I guess you’d call it.
Taking some time off. Usually when I’m working I spend most of my time bouncing around the East Coast with Boston as my home base, going wherever the work is.
FEMA contracts, wildland fire, search and rescue. Whatever needs doing.”
“Hell of a résumé,” I say with a low whistle. “Not exactly a nine to five.”
He gives a rueful half-smile. “No, it’s not. But it’s good work, and I like moving around, so it keeps me useful.”
I nod along, but that nagging feeling won’t let go. Mateo seems like a decent guy, and I believe he came here to thank me. But there’s more to the story. I’m sure of it.
“Your last name is Midnight, right?” he asks, and something about the way he says it makes the hair on the back of my neck prickle. “I mean, I figure, based on the gym name.”
“Yeah, it is. Why do you ask?”
His fingers stop tapping on the armrest.
“You might find this hard to believe,” he says, “but I’m actually in town to see a man named Calvin Midnight. Who I’m guessing is your brother, based on the name on the building.” He pauses, his hand curling around the arm of the chair. “I’m pretty sure Calvin and I are half-brothers.”
The word lands like a body shot. Clean, precise, and right under the ribs where you don’t see it coming. Half-brothers.
I look at his face, really look at it, and every detail I’ve been circling around for the past few days snaps together like a combination I should have seen coming.
“I know how that sounds,” Mateo says. He’s sitting very still now, watching my face. “I’m not here to cause problems or ask for anything. I just wanted to see him. I had to.”
“I...” I run my hand through my hair. “You’re sure?”
Like I even need to ask. Like the answer isn’t sitting right in front of me, wearing my brother’s face.
He nods. “Yeah, pretty damn sure. His dad and my mom had an affair, and my dad... uh, his biological dad, was never really part of my life. His wife didn’t know about the affair, or maybe she did and just didn’t want to.
I dunno. I never gave a shit about that, but once I found out I had a half-brother, I just.. .” He shrugs, trailing off.
I sit back in my chair. Like me and all the Midnight kids, Calvin was adopted.
And he only reconnected with his birth family a couple of years ago, and it wasn’t easy for him.
They’re on good enough terms now, but it was a rocky start.
And now this guy is telling me Calvin’s biological father had another kid out there.
“How long have you known?” My voice comes out flat, like I’m asking someone about their gym membership instead of something that could upend my brother’s entire understanding of his own history.
“A few years. My mom ended up telling me, and I did some digging. I didn’t want to uproot his life or mine, so I left well enough alone, but then...” He looks away, out toward the window. “Anyway. That’s a longer story. The point is, I’m here now. I figured he didn’t know about me.”
“No.” I exhale through my nose. “He definitely doesn’t know about you.”
Mateo nods.
“How old are you, out of curiosity?” I ask.
“Twenty-seven,” he says. Younger than Calvin by a good stretch.
Out on the floor, a timer beeps. Roman calls something to Sarah, and the normalcy of it lands strangely against what’s happening in this room. There’s a whole gym full of people going about their afternoon ten feet from this door, and in here the ground is shifting under my feet.
I look at him for a long moment. He’s got a quietness to him, a steadiness, but there’s an edge underneath it that tells me life hasn’t been easy on him.
Our parents raised us to believe that blood doesn’t make a family, that love does, that showing up does.
But they also taught us that when family does show up, you don’t turn them away.