Chapter 15 #3
“I can’t stop, Dominic. I need this. I'm afraid that if I don’t, it will only prove that all of this was for nothing.
The hatred. The plan to take out the first, most important thing to Patrick.
The second being the Cardinals. While everyone walks around thinking he was the world’s greatest guy, the greatest coach, he will always be the reason my mother is dead.
The reason she swung from the fucking ceiling for her son to find her, ruining his goddamn life. ”
Sasha looks up at Dom, his blue eyes swimming with tears I hadn’t noticed were there until now, and it breaks something inside me. Something that cracks my resolve and has me willing to blindly follow him into darkness, I already know won’t end well for any of us.
“I need you both to trust me. To help me do this.”
I want to say yes. I want to show my Alpha that I’m always here, by his side through thick and thin, come whatever may. But I can’t.
Lennon is innocent.
She doesn’t even know who she really is.
She still believes Patrick was her father.
The man she buried. The man she’s been grieving.
Imagine finding out he never was. Imagine losing the only parent you’ve ever known, only to have that pain ripped away from you and replaced with another, more hurtful kind of pain.
It will ruin her in a way I don’t want anymore.
Dominic has been through this. He’s grieved and mourned the loss of four parents.
Those who raised him, and those who died never knowing him at all.
Lennon is no different. While the situation may not quite be the same, it doesn’t change the truth of it.
Our Dominic shouldn’t have to be part of something that can cause such insurmountable pain. Pain he knows all too well.
I glance at Dominic, searching his face for hesitation. For doubt. For anything that tells me he’ll finally put his foot down. Instead, all I see is heartbreak. Because he’ll do it anyway.
He’d stand by Sasha’s side no matter the cost. No matter how deeply affected by his own grief, and how this situation might feel for him.
Sasha isn’t just asking us to ruin Lennon anymore.
He’s asking Dominic to weaponize the very grief he’s spent most of his adult life surviving. Which is why this feels so wrong.
None of us is perfect. We all have flaws driven by hurt and betrayal, just on varying levels. Surely Sasha can see that. See how this might be painful for someone other than himself.
Sasha remains quiet for what feels like the longest time.
He just stares at Dom, at me, his fingers clenching and unclenching into fists as he contemplates the situation.
I’m tired. I don’t want to fight the man I love.
I don’t want anything to come between us.
I just want things to go back the way they were, only this time with the woman fate destined to be ours.
I didn’t expect to feel this way. In the beginning, I was more than happy to do what Sasha wanted us to do. I’ve done it before. I’d do it again. But now that we’re here, now that we’ve arrived at this stand-off, I’m exhausted. And I think he is too.
“You’re both right.”
I blink, surprised by that sentence.
“So… we’re done?” I ask cautiously, watching intently as Sasha’s blue eyes lift to mine. Cold and calculating. I close the distance between us, standing beside Dominic, curious as to how Sasha arrived at this realization.
“No.”
The single word settles over the room like a thick blanket of smoke.
“I’ve been looking at this all wrong.”
Dominic stiffens beside me.
“What do you mean?”
Sasha picks up the iPad, staring blankly into the screen at Lennon’s birth certificate, zooming in on her birthname.
“Welsh,” he says, barely above a whisper.
“Patrick lied to her too. I doubt she knows about this.”
Understanding hits us all at once.
“She isn’t his daughter,” Sasha murmurs. “She’s another one of his victims.”
Bingo. We have a winner. That’s what I’ve been trying to say. For a split second, hope blooms inside my chest. Maybe this is it. Maybe Sasha is finally letting go. But then, he smiles. It’s small. Beautiful even. And utterly fucking terrifying all at the same time.
“If the Cardinals learn their beloved owner lied about his own heir…” He trails off.
“If fate gets to play such a big fucking part in ruining things for me, then I will let it be fate that decides how this happens.”
I wish I could say that I’m following, but he’s lost me somewhere between wanting to destroy her himself, and… this.
“Patrick had extended family, that we know. People who have every right to know he built his legacy on a lie.”
Dominic’s brows knit together, mimicking my own.
“So… what? You send them the birth certificate?”
Sasha nods once.
“Anonymously. Every document the PI found. If they decide they want the Cardinals, they can come and fight for it themselves. If they don’t…” he shrugs, the movement unusually light. “Then I’ll drop it and go back to living my life.”
I search his face for the catch, convinced there has to be one.
“And Lennon?” I ask, my voice low and quiet.
“She’ll never know it came from me.