Dominic #2
I walk away from her, but I don't go inside. I stop at the very edge of the water, my chest heaving with a breath that won't quite settle, and stare at the dark pool house beyond the ripples.
Somewhere across the ocean, Carter has already landed.
She’s probably elbow-deep in fixing things, stabilizing the chaos, and helping keep my team afloat while I’m standing here in the dark, drowning in a party I didn't want. I’m exactly where my father wants me: avoiding responsibilities, acting the part of the spoiled, reckless failure he’s spent my whole life perceiving me to be.
It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy I’ve finally perfected.
The pool house stares back at me, a silent witness to the carnage.
It used to be my mother’s. It was a place of art and solvent and truth—the only corner of this estate that didn’t feel like a museum.
I remember the paint-splattered floors and the way the air used to smell like linseed oil and her perfume.
But my father had the crew in there the same weekend the car took her to the facility.
He didn't even wait for the sun to fully set before he ordered it gutted. He stripped the walls, gutted the floors, and turned her soul into a generic, high-end guest suite as if she were nothing more than an inconvenient tenant he’d finally evicted. It was a surgical strike. An erasure.
And now, Carter stays there. Her things are on the shelves.
Her presence is in the air. Her life is unfolding in the exact space where my mother’s was systematically deleted.
It’s a collision of the only two women who have managed to impact me, housed in a building that stands as a monument to my father’s cruelty.
I’ve already lost Carter. There’s no way back, and I’m the one who lit the match.
But now, I’m watching my father use Sienna as some twisted finish line.
He’s never treated me like a son; he’s treating me like another piece of real estate he can develop, control, and drain dry, just like he did to the pool house. Just like he did to my mother.
The weight of it all—the ring, the child in Sienna’s womb, the looming reality of my own timeline—it all begins to compress. It’s a pressure cooker of every choice I didn't get to make.
The girl’s voice from seconds ago echoes in my head, poisoned and instructional. Make the night worth it.
The realization doesn't just sit there; it ignites. It’s a fierce flare of rebellion that burns through the numbness, a roar of defiance against a life that has been pre-packaged and sold out from under me.
“Okay,” I murmur to the wind, my nails biting crescents into my palms. “Fine.”
I climb onto the low stone wall, the decorative ledge feeling like a gallows.
My feet scrape against the masonry, a harsh, grounding sound that doesn’t do a thing to steady the world tilting on its axis.
The music keeps blasting, but the crowd begins to tilt toward me.
They always do. I’m the sun in this sick little solar system, and they’re just debris waiting for a flare.
I raise a bottle I snatched from someone’s hand in a lazy, mocking salute. “Since the night’s still young,” I call out, my voice cutting through the humidity with a sharp, edge that surprises even me, “we’re doing something different tonight. A garage sale. Everything’s got to go.”
A few cheers erupt. A ripple of confused laughter follows, but I can see the greed flickering to life in their eyes.
I gesture toward the dark pool house—the room my father bleached of my mother’s soul, the room where Carter’s scent still lingers on the pillows. “Start there,” I say, my voice dropping into something dangerous. “Anything you can carry is yours. Consider it a gift.”
I see the hesitation, so I throw the gasoline.
“I hid cash inside,” I add lightly, the lie sliding off my tongue with practiced ease. “A few grand. Maybe ten. I can’t remember. Finders keepers.”
That’s the spark. The crowd shifts as one, their energy snapping from boredom into a predatory, mindless focus.
“Make the night worth it!” I roar.
They don’t ask questions. They don't ask who the clothes belong to or whose books are on the nightstand. They just surge.
I step down and let them pass, a true stranger in my own home.
Bodies brush against mine—a frantic, sweating rush toward the doors of the pool house.
For half a second, a spike of guilt slides under my ribs.
I think of the way Carter organizes her notebooks for class on the counter in the kitchen.
I imagine the way she must look when she’s tucked into her bed, safe from the world.
I think of the last scraps of sanctuary I’m currently feeding to the wolves.
But then I see the ring again in my mind. I hear my father’s voice, indulgent and cruel. Congratulations.
It’s the sound of a gate slamming shut. It’s the realization that I’ve spent years boxed into a future designed by everyone but me. If my father wants to own me, if Sienna wants to anchor me, and if the world wants to watch me burn out—then I’m taking the sanctuary with me.
My jaw sets as the first glass pane shatters in the distance. The sound is beautiful.
If everything’s already decided—if my life is already over before I’ve even had a chance to live it—why should I be the only one who loses something tonight?