Chapter 16
Dominik
I need to get back to Cilinm. But Vance Kane has put a target on my head. Everyone is ordered to shoot me at first sight. Shoot me to kill.
I tried saving them both. Vance and Marie.
I didn’t calculate that the table I sent Marie flying out to was made of glass.
And I wasn’t really expecting it to slit her neck when it got broken.
I was ostracised if I wanted to live. Josh was the one who gave me the opportunity.
I’ve been texting Love but she doesn’t reply.
I look at the messages and want to scream I didn’t mean for things to end up this way.
Josh probably blocked all my messages. I still read the one reply I got on the night of the incident.
Vie: Run. Far. Stay there and don’t ever come back. Please.
I can’t give her that. I can’t run away. I’m not one to give up at the first struggle.
It’s not the first struggle.
My brain keeps wanting me dead. And I nearly let him drown me in a bathtub. I resurfaced for air with the simple thought of seeing Love again. Ever again. No matter when. I open our chat and reread the latest messages.
Me: Today I really wanted to go back home to you. Your father would’ve killed me but seeing you would’ve been worth it.
Me: Don’t even think about replacing me, ma Vie. I’m coming back. You know I didn’t do it on purpose, don’t you?
Me: And yet your father tried to kill me again. Tell him to stop sending his lackeys on a suicide mission; he’ll never succeed if I don’t want him to.
This last message was from yesterday. Vance has been going out of his way to kill me. My phone buzzes.
Karl: Vance is allying with Mitkus against you. Go to this address, XXXXX-XX. Be careful. They’re not expecting you, but they’re with Mitkus.
Right, how did Love call them, barbarians? Doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Me: Get our team the nearest you can without drawing attention to yourselves and be ready to help me out of there if anything goes south.
Karl: Got it. Don’t kill her father Dominik, you’ll lose her.
I know Karl.
I think and get my gear before hopping in the car and driving to the street next to the address. I enter the building in front of the address and assess how many people are inside and what kind of conference this is.
I’m at twenty guards when I spot a familiar face with his arm around my girl. The audacity.
I almost shoot him but that would ruin both my undercover mission, and anything Love still feels for me.
The memories of that night keep coming to my mind, I keep thinking what I could’ve done differently.
There was nothing else I could’ve done. If I didn’t push her away she would be dead.
If I pushed less hard she might’ve been alive, if the bullet didn’t hit her.
That’s what her father blames me for, yet there were no other circumstances she was getting out of that bullet’s way. She’d always get hit.
I gave her a chance. What I didn’t expect was for my chance to be taken with her life.
I tried to clamp her carotid with my fingers until Damian arrived, but it was too fucking late when he did, she had bled out.
Josh knocked his father out so he wouldn’t kill me and sent me away.
He thought his father would stop once I was out of their city, their territory. He didn’t, he wants me dead.
A life for a life.
I know how this world works but I have no family left. My brother’s daughter is out of question and everyone else is dead. Damian is the only one who still replies to my messages sometimes. So I text him.
Me: Is Kai near Love?
Damian: I don’t know what you’re planning, but don’t.
Seems like I’ll have to find out by myself. I walk up and down the building’s stairs to locate everyone and see what I’m getting myself into. Hell, that’s what I’m getting into.
I get out of the building, gun in hand. My plan is to enter unnoticed, what happens when I find Love is still unknown territory for me. It depends on whether she hates me or not. I might get her to come with me, or she’ll scream and her father will kill me.
When I say my life has been nothing but a chaotic sequence of events I mean it.
The two years I had looking at Love from a distance, were the calmer.
There were no attacks, Josh and I stopped them before they even started.
When I walk inside the building I see my reflection in a window and I’m glad I don’t recognise myself.
I’m calmer, collected. Not going in to kill everyone, get what I want and leave.
I’m proud of the humanity I gained with Love.
What I’m sorry for is that humanity? It clouds my once clear vision.
It puts faces, families, friends, emotions in people, and it doesn’t help me to be able to coldly murder them.
“You sure you saw a shadow?” a guard asks another. I hide inside a closet.
“Maybe it’s just the booze talking,” I hear who I assume to be the other guard talking. I wait until their footsteps are far away and there’s no other kind of noise to get out of the closet.
“Where are you Love?” I ask in my mind saying it out loud would be madness. I’m somewhat suicidal to be here but not looking to be a martyr and start a war I’m not sure hasn’t started yet.
I walk unnoticed through the less agitated corridors and hear a voice I recognise, I hide behind a half-closed door.
“He’s not going to show up, little spark. He’s insane not idiotic,” Aiden says and I can sense he’s loving every second of this.
“I know. But I can almost feel him,” Love whispers in her melodic slightly high-pitched voice. I peek when they start to walk away and Love looks behind, I hide.
“Are you going to skip dinner?-”
“No. Give me one second alone please, I need to breathe,” Love says and I hear footsteps coming in my direction. “No one is here, Dominik. But I’d suggest you leave,” Love says and I step from behind the door so she can see me. Still staying away from the security camera’s direction.
“I’m going nowhere without you-”
“I’m not going anywhere with you. Things have changed,” she says coldly and I watch her look at her phone.
“Leave while you can. We’re over,” she says and abruptly turns around, not fast enough to hide tears.
I enter the camera’s field of vision not caring about being found anymore and hold her wrist. “Don’t make this more difficult,” Love requests but I shake my head.
“I can’t allow us to be over. We’re only over when we both agree we are.
And I never will. I will only walk out of here with you or in a casket there’s no in between,” I say, Love looks at me and hugs me, I can feel her sobbing and I want to know what or better why and who made her say we’re over.
Her father of course, but how? How did he convince her?
“I’m begging you, Love. Please forgive me, I was trying to save her.
There was nothing else I could’ve done.”
“I already forgave you. But you need to get out of here. My father never will and-”
The door flies open and I shoot both of her parent’s guards.
Kai in the arm holding the pistol and Jane Doe on the head.
“You should’ve gone as she suggested. I’ve been digging your grave for a long time.
Ever since I met you I knew you were trouble.
I thought you’d be my daughter’s end. You chose to take my wife instead.
And Love might forgive you but I’ll never allow her to be with you,” her father says and aims his own gun at my head.
Love puts herself in front of me. “Dad, stop! Or you’re not losing just mom, you’re losing me too,” Love says and I hold my breath when I see her father unlock his gun, still pointing at my head.
“I’m sorry,” Love whispers turns to me and before I can do anything she steals my gun and shoots herself in the head.
Someone screams “Damian,” not someone, me.
I scream for Damian, applying pressure to Love’s wound in her head.
If there’s no exit wound the bullet is still inside her.
My bullet. I check her pulse until Damian takes over I don’t let go of her hand until I’m knocked out by her father’s men.
I’m in and out of consciousness while they carry me somewhere.
The torture chamber, with those barbarians who have been at my ass since I was born.
I look around when my head’s throbbing is less intense.
I look outside, it isn’t dark anymore. There’s a small, ridiculously minuscule window that reflects sunlight. I’d say about half a day has passed.
I try to move but I’m chained to a chair. I slide my fingers along it, metal. The Mitkus bastards won’t give me a fucking break. I look around. There’s only a table here full of torture instruments and one phone.
“Go ahead do whatever you please, let me warn you, it doesn’t matter what you do, I’ve been through worse,” I spit at Love’s father.
Losing Love, the thought of losing Love was the worst. “Is Love stable?” I ask showing weakness for one second, but I really need to know she’s going to be fine.
I need to know she’ll make it out alive.
“You’re smart, boy. I’ll give you that. I don’t know what kind of trickery you used on my daughter. But undo it. She says and I quote ‘I’d rather die than live without him.’,” Love’s father says and I smile, she’s alive. She’s alive and she still wants me.
“I fear I can’t undo it. I used no trickery. I was honest to her and my feelings for her since the beginning-”
“Think I don’t know you were sent by Spencer to kill Love?” he asks and I shake my head.