Chapter 35 #2
He stopped for a minute to regather his thoughts.
“She’d left the house without her shoes or glasses.
When I got to the hospital, she was arguing with the nurse, insisting that she was going to miss her flight.
She kept repeating over and over that her husband was waiting for her, that they were supposed to be going on their honeymoon that day, and when I finally managed to get her attention, she just…
looked right through me. No matter how much decline we’d seen up to that point, she’d always been able to recognize me.
And until that moment, a part of me had honestly believed she always would.
That I was somehow immune to…” He trailed off.
Cleared his throat. “Anyways, that’s what finally made me snap out of it.
I was told she needed full-time care, but I’d already blown all her money on the trials…
I swear I almost called Robert. We still had enough to pay for five- or six-months’ worth of food and rent, but I couldn’t leave her alone, which meant I couldn’t go out and find a job.
So I unblocked his number, rehearsed what I was going to say, and…
nothing. I couldn’t bring myself to press the button.
Instead, I opted to do the stupidest, most reckless, idiotic thing I could have possibly done, especially at that age—I taught myself to trade options. ”
He smiled, but I couldn’t bring myself to match it. A nineteen-year-old kid had no business shouldering that much stress and responsibility. The poor thing must have been terrified.
“I started small, learned the basics, made a bit of money. But then I got cocky, attributed beginner’s luck to skill. Two bad calls—that’s all it took to lose 70 percent of her remaining savings.”
“Let me guess,” I said, “you still kept going.”
He chuckled lightly, then leaned back until he was lying on the bed, one arm tucked under his head. “I had to—couldn’t let it beat me.”
My mouth twitched. I lay down beside him, flipping to my side so I could stare at his profile to my heart’s insatiable content.
“It worked out,” he continued. “Eventually. I threw myself into it, made it another obsession, learned, and…”
“And became The Midas Touch Kid,” I finished.
His face had been all over the internet, headline after headline talking about the twenty-one-year-old college dropout who’d used the small fortune he’d made trading to buy the failing media company no one else wanted to touch with a ten-foot pole.
Rumor had it he was self-made, albeit too ambitious for his own good.
He’d gutted the company so ruthlessly during his first week that a former employee had been caught on camera egging his car.
By the end of week two, he’d liquidated most of their assets and informed what few employees he’d decided to retain that they were going to wipe the entire engine, as well as the underlying algorithm, and rebuild it all from scratch.
Two of them had walked out.
Everyone else said he was in over his head.
But he did it. He restructured, rebranded, and made the company profitable by doing something no one else had thought of yet.
Dominic found a way to gamify gossip.
Suddenly, users weren’t limited to consuming whatever the rage-thirsty algorithms and bots wanted to force-feed them that day.
They were active participants in the narrative, provided with the ability to boost or suppress stories depending on what they believed, or knew, to be the truth.
The platform allowed them to trade in Whispers, debunk false rumors, short false and toxic narratives, and go long on anything they felt needed to be seen by the masses or was simply too juicy to resist.
Then he’d branched off, buying more companies, gutting them, and restructuring from the ground up. Every time, they said he was biting off more than he could chew. And every time he proved them wrong.
“You did a really great job,” I said quietly, “just in case no one’s told you that yet. It couldn’t have been easy, carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders like that.”
A slow, disbelieving grin spread over his mouth. He rolled to his side, curving forward so that we were practically nose to nose. “Alice Cloutier, was that a genuine compliment?”
I smiled back, reached up, and grazed his cheekbone with the tips of my fingers. His eyelids went a little droopy in response to my touch. His breath rattled. “I have more. Most of them are just disguised as secrets. Do you want to know what they are?”
He nipped playfully at my fingers with his teeth, grabbing them when I retreated with a soft, amused snort so he could press a gentle kiss against their tips. “I don’t want you to say something you’ll regret in the morning.”
“So… you don’t want to hear how pretty I think you are,” I teased.
His brows went up. “I didn’t say that.” Then, “You think I’m pretty?”
“That shouldn’t be surprising. Everybody thinks you’re pretty.”
“You’re not everybody.”
Somehow, our legs had gotten twined, and the hand he’d grabbed was cradled against his chest. There was too much eye contact.
It was making me lightheaded, but I couldn’t bring myself to look away.
So I leaned in and pressed a comforting, delicate kiss to his lower lip.
He twitched like he instinctively felt a pull to chase it but stopped himself.
“Do you want to talk more about your mom?” I whispered.
“I’m happy to answer whatever other questions you have.” He sounded tired, the heavy strain of the last twenty-four hours bruising the soft skin under his eyes.
I had a million questions left, but it felt a little selfish to keep pushing him when he was already depleted. Plus, there was always tomorrow.
“She is happy, Alice,” he murmured when I hesitated.
“I felt so much guilt at first, putting her in full-time care. The plan was always to bring her to live with me when the house was finished, things were more stable, and I could hire a small team to take care of her. That’s one of the reasons I had a replica of her old garden made.
But I keep putting it off because she’s…
she has friends there. You’ll meet them eventually.
Her weeks are filled with group activities catered to her interests, she’s looked after by some of the best, most qualified doctors and nurses in the country, and she’s…
I know how grim it might feel right now, but it isn’t.
She has bad days, sure, but so do the rest of us.
I promise you that she’s happy, and if you spend some more time with her, you’ll see it for yourself. ”
I sniffed, quickly swiping at my cheek.
What about him? Was he happy? I bit my tongue before the question could escape. Now wasn’t the time.
“Okay?” he whispered, brushing the other tears away before I could get to them.
“Okay,” I relented. “What was the other reason, though? For creating a replica of her old garden.” The way he’d said it implied there was more than one.
After a moment, he said, “Selfishly, I wanted to keep a piece of her with me. I miss her. I know she’s still technically here, but it’s different, and I…
I miss my mom. She used to love that garden, and I thought I’d feel better if I managed to keep that part of her alive.
It’s probably a control thing. Grief affects people in weird ways.
” He moved his head forward, brushing a sweet kiss over the tip of my nose.
“I’ll stay here until you fall asleep. We can talk as much or as little as you want tomorrow. ”
“I’m not that tired.”
“You almost dozed off saying that.”
I swallowed, gripping his shirt and pulling myself forward so I could snuggle his chest before I completely lost control and started weeping. “I’m really sorry, Dominic. About everything.”
And the worst part was, I had no idea how to make any of it better.
He scooped me into his arms, hugging me tight as he murmured soothingly into my hair until I finally had no choice but to let go of consciousness and slip into the darkness.