Chapter 25
CHAPTER 25
REMI
T he haunting melody of Sleep Token’s Alkaline drifted through the hidden speakers in my art room, winding through the space like ghosts whispering in the dark. Outside, rain lashed against the window, drowning the world in shifting gray, smearing the city into something unreal.
Before me, the canvas took shape—shadows stretched into something almost human, something half-alive. A dismembered body hung suspended in barbed wire, flesh torn, bone gleaming through raw muscle. The metal coils bit deep, twisting in a brutal embrace, a perfect contradiction of life and death. A moment stretched between agony and peace. Between the past and the future, stitched together in suffering.
Barbed wire had become my recent obsession. It had taken root in my mind since our day at Salvatore’s house. Mansion. Compound. Whatever it was. The imagery consumed me, dug into my skin like a thorn I couldn’t pull free. I had to understand it—to feel it. To know its power. Domino had gotten me some when I asked. When I needed it.
And I had felt it.
That night in his playroom, with one of Federico’s men strung up before me, thinking he could get the jump on me. The idiot never stood a chance.
I dragged the barbs over his skin, felt them split flesh from muscle, watched the thin red lines blossom into rivers. I had stripped off my hoodie and shoes before I began—I needed to feel connected . I needed to see the moment he realized he belonged to me. The moment the fight drained from his body, his struggles slowed, his gurgling breaths turned shallow, and the light in his eyes dimmed to nothing.
I had never felt more alive. Reborn.
The memory lingered as I added another stroke of deep red to the canvas, dragging my brush in long, fluid motions. I stepped back, tilting my head, studying it. Beautiful. Perfect. The essence of suffering is captured, preserved in oil and shadow.
A vibration in my pocket pulled me from my trance. My fingers, still smudged with paint, dug out my phone. The screen glowed.
Arti
Hey kid, long time no see.
I rolled my eyes, exhaling through my nose.
Remi
Not my fault you weren’t on shift when I visited her last week.
Arti
You could have let me know??
I could have. I didn’t.
Arti and Doll had taken it upon themselves to care about me. To pretend I was something salvageable, something worth saving. Doll especially—she hated Domino with a passion, but she never saw the parts of me that were him. Never acknowledged that the monster she tried so hard to protect me from was already inside me.
Arti, though? He ran Hollow Pines Care Home now since Brielle became too far gone to function. She was barely more than a corpse on borrowed time. Most days, she couldn’t do more than stumble from her bed to the bathroom and back, her body shaking like a live wire, every movement sending volts of electricity through her veins.
I knew what had pushed her over the edge. A sinister smile curved my lips. The moment she saw her baby boy lying lifeless in her basement.
On the days she did manage to pull herself together, I made sure to remind her why she feared her own shadow.
Remi
Margaret told me you were sick.
A pause as three dots appeared and disappeared.
The itch crept beneath my skin, that slow-burning agitation that made my muscles tense, made my fingers twitch. Arti could never just get to the point. Always dancing around it. Like he was afraid of what I’d say.
My fingers tightened around the phone as Arti’s next message popped up.
Arti
Your mom doesn’t look good this morning. Her heart rate’s dropping. O2 saturation is tanking every hour.
A beat of silence, my heart frozen solid in my chest. I knew this day would come. I’d prayed for it more than I cared to admit, but being faced with the reality of it? I wasn’t ready.
Arti
It’s time, Remi.
I stared at the screen, then tapped out the only reply possible.
Remi
Ok.
Arti
Drive safe.
A snort escaped me despite myself. I didn’t drive. Never had. Never needed to. Domino wouldn’t let me go anywhere without him. It had just become an unspoken rule—I was the passenger, or I was walking. And if I was walking, he was never far behind, lingering in the shadows, watching. Waiting.
I locked my phone and slipped it into my pocket, turning back to my canvas. The figure still hung, motionless, forever frozen in its suffering. Just like mom had been for so long, but now her long night was ending.
I heard him before I saw him. Domino moved like a shadow, silent but there . Always there . I didn’t turn when he stepped inside.
“ Beautiful, ” he murmured, voice low, rich, edged with something dangerous. “ Haunting. ”
A slow smirk curled at my lips. “You always did have good taste.”
His boots crossed the room, stopping just behind me. I felt his heat at my back, his presence settling over me like a second skin. His fingers skimmed the edge of my wrist, a featherlight touch over drying paint.
“Who’s it for?”
“Everyone,” I murmured. “No one.” A beat. “ Me. ”
His breath was warm against my neck, his voice a whisper against my ear. “What do you need?”
My fingers twitched, aching to return to the brush, to keep shaping the twisted beauty into something more. But there was something else. Something far more urgent.
“We need to go,” I said instead.
Domino stilled. “To Hollow Pines?”
I turned in his arms as they wrapped around me, meeting his gaze. Green, dark, and knowing.
His expression didn’t change, but I saw the shift—the way his jaw tensed, the way his hand flexed on my hip before it relaxed again. He already knew. He always knew .
“Now?”
I nodded. “Now.”
His slow exhale ghosted over my lips. Domino lifted a hand, dragging his fingers down the column of my throat. Possessive. Unyielding.
“Fine.” His voice was quiet, but there was something in it. A promise. A warning. “I’ll drive.”
I didn’t remember getting into the SUV. Didn’t remember the city streets bleeding together in the rain, the neon signs warping into something shapeless and distant.
Didn’t remember walking into Hollow Pines, past the hushed voices, past the pitying glances, past the smell of antiseptic that clung to the air like something rotten beneath the surface.
But I must have walked in the rain because my clothes were wet, the fabric clinging to my skin, heavy and cold. Drops still rolled down my face, trailing along my jaw, slipping past my lips. Water. Maybe. Maybe not.
I stood at the threshold of room 213, staring at mom’s frail form in the bed. She didn’t look like a person anymore.
Her skin was almost translucent, stretched too thin over sharp bones, her arms skeletal against the stark white sheets. Her chest barely moved, the only sign of life coming from the slow, mechanical rise and fall—oxygen forced into her lungs by the intubation tube taped to her lips. But she wasn’t breathing. Not really. The machine was doing it for her.
She was already gone.
I stepped closer, my movements automatic, like I wasn’t the one controlling my body. I felt nothing. No grief. No anger. No relief. Just… nothing.
The heart monitor beeped, steady and artificial. A hollow rhythm filled the silence between the whispers outside the door.
I stared at her face, searching for something familiar. Some remnant of the woman she used to be. But all I saw was the empty shell left behind.
I thought I’d feel something.
I thought I’d remember. The way she used to hum under her breath. The way her voice sounded when she said my name. The way she held my hand in hers, fingers warm, solid, real.
But there was nothing.
The doctor stood on the other side of the bed, waiting. I didn’t look at him, didn’t acknowledge the presence of the nurses hovering just out of view or Arti where he hovered at the end of the bed.
I reached out, my fingers brushing the back of her hand. Cold. “Goodbye, Mom.”
I said the words people expected to hear, not through conscious thought. My lips just wormed the words as they rolled off my tongue. I exhaled slowly, then gave the doctor a single nod.
He moved immediately, pressing a few buttons, shutting off the machine. The silence that followed was deafening as we waited and watched. We held our collective breath like some miracle of god might happen, but it didn’t.
The heart monitor let out one final, long, unbroken note before the line went flat.
No breath.
No movement.
No life.
The doctor murmured something— time of death —but I barely heard it. One by one, they left. The nurses. The doctor. Arti. Until it was just me.
And Domino.
He hadn’t said a word the entire time. Hadn’t moved from his place at my side. Silent. Watching. A sentinel standing between me and whatever storm was waiting beyond these walls.
I should’ve felt something.
I should’ve cried. Or screamed. Or something.
But my face stayed blank. My hands remained steady. My chest didn’t ache.
I turned away from the bed, my gaze landing on the window, on the endless rain streaking down the glass. The view outside blurred into nothing, distant and unreal.
I didn’t remember leaving the room.
Didn’t remember stepping into the hallway or the way the walls seemed to close in, pressing against me, suffocating. Didn’t remember walking through the front doors of Hollow Pines, the night swallowing me whole.
But I must have.
At some point, I was back in the SUV. Domino was driving, and the city appeared in front of us. I leaned my forehead against the cool glass of the window, watching the rain slip down in thin, winding trails.
Still, I felt nothing.
The SUV stopped.
The rhythmic drumming of the rain on the roof was the only thing my brain could process, a steady, numbing beat that filled the silence. Domino didn’t speak. He just sat there, staring through the windshield, watching the droplets slip down the glass as it started to mist over, his breath barely visible in the cold air.
I didn’t think.
My fingers curled around the door handle, and before I even knew what was happening, I was outside, stepping into the downpour. Cold water seeped into my clothes and clung to my skin, but I barely noticed. I just walked.
And walked.
With no real direction and no thought behind each step. My body moved on instinct, pulled by something deep inside me, something ancient and hollow. Some part of me must have known where I was going, even if my mind didn’t.
The towering, ornate archway of my favorite cemetery emerged from the darkness like a specter, looming under the dim orange glow of the streetlights. I rarely used this entrance—preferred to lose myself among the graves, to wander through the headstones and let the weight of the world slip away.
Here, among the dead, was the only place I ever felt at peace.
Well— almost the only place. The other was in Domino’s arms, but even that had its limits. Even that had an end.
The dead never left.
They didn’t whisper false promises or pretend to be something they weren’t. They didn’t judge. Didn’t have expectations. Didn’t disappoint.
They welcomed me.
My sins, my twisted perversions, my darkness—it all meant nothing here. Because, in the end, we were all the same. Flesh and bone and breath, all reduced to dust and memory.
Death was the great equalizer. The only certainty in this pointless existence.
What purpose did money have once your lungs stopped drawing air? What meaning did love hold when you weren’t there to hear the sobs of those left behind? The world didn’t stop turning just because you ceased to exist.
It moved on.
Erased you.
Swallowed you whole until nothing remained.
Life was a mirage, a beautifully cruel illusion meant to trick you into believing it had purpose. But it didn’t. It never did.
Humans weren’t special. We were parasites, feeding off the world around us, pretending our lives mattered when we were no different from the insects we crushed underfoot. No different from the animals we slaughtered to fill our stomachs. We wrapped our existence in laws, in governments, in the pursuit of power, but for what?
To die all the same?
To be buried under six feet of dirt, just another nameless body in a graveyard filled with the forgotten?
From the moment we took our first breath, our internal clock started counting down, but instead of living, truly living, we let ourselves suffer under the weight of meaningless expectations.
We forced ourselves to endure.
For nothing.
My legs gave out beneath me, knees sinking into drenched, freshly turned earth. It was wet and cold—clinging to my fingers like it was trying to pull me under, like the earth itself was hungry for another body. Maybe it was. Maybe I was.
Lightning split the sky, illuminating the grave I was kneeling in.
There was no headstone yet—just a simple wooden cross standing vigil over the body below. Most people would have been horrified to find themselves here, but I felt nothing.
No grief. No guilt. No fear.
Just nothing.
The night pressed in around me, thick and suffocating. Rain ran down my face, mixing with the dirt on my skin, but I didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Didn’t care.
And then, he was there.
I felt the shift before I saw him, the static charge in the air as his presence wrapped around me like smoke and steel. Even with my eyes closed, my mind half-comatose, I knew who was stalking me from the shadows.
Domino.
I’d know him anywhere. Any lifetime. Any nightmare.
His presence was a razor’s edge—twisted, dark, and consuming. It pulsed out in waves, hunting me with the precision of a sniper, locking onto me with deadly intent.
Black biker boots filled my vision when I blinked raindrops from my lashes. He crouched in front of me, but I couldn’t lift my head.
Couldn’t move.
Didn’t want to.
His fingers brushed over my lips, slow, deliberate. The barest touch, but it felt like a lightning strike to my nerves.
“What do you need, piccolo agnello ?” His voice was raw, gravel grating over steel, stripping me to my bones.
The world around us held its breath, as if it was waiting—waiting to see if this would be the night I begged him to end me.
To make me his next victim.
I swallowed, throat tight, my body betraying me with the way it tilted toward him. Seeking. Needing.
“I don’t feel anything,” I admitted hoarsely.
Domino hummed low in his throat. A warning. A promise. “Then I’ll make you feel.”
The words crawled over my skin. A shudder raced through me. I exhaled shakily as his hands curled into the front of my hoodie and yanked me forward, dragging me out of the grave and into him.
Heat. Muscle. Control. Leather and smoke. Home.
He crushed me against him, his breath hot against my rain-slicked skin. His heartbeat pounded through his chest, steady and unyielding. Something I could latch onto. Something that made sense when nothing else did.
I needed his touch like I needed oxygen.
I needed his pain.
His brand of obsession.
His way of carving me open until I had no choice but to feel something.
My fingers fisted in his leather jacket as his teeth scraped along my throat. My breath hitched when I felt the sharp sting of his switchblade dragging down my ribs.
Not deep enough to cause irreparable damage, just enough to break my skin. Just enough to make me burn.
I gasped. And finally, finally, I felt it?—
The spark. The pain. The fire.
I was alive.
Domino’s growl rumbled against my skin as he shoved me back against the damp ground, pinning me beneath him. My pulse pounded against his palm when he wrapped his fingers around my throat, squeezing just enough to make me dizzy.
His dark green eyes burned into mine, searching, demanding. “Come back to me, Remi.”
I arched into him, nails biting into his skin. My entire body was a live wire, crackling and begging for him to ground me in the way only he could.
I needed more.
I needed all of him.
His breath was hot against my ear, his voice nothing but a snarl. “Let me bring you back.”
The storm raged around us, but the real tempest was inside me. A chasm of nothingness, vast and consuming, swallowed me whole.
“Please,” I rasped, baring myself to him, offering up my shattered pieces like some broken thing begging to be ruined.
The pop of my button and the slow, deliberate rasp of my zipper were deafening, even beneath the relentless downpour. Every sensation was magnified. The bite of the rain against my skin, the rough kiss of the wind, the brutal press of his body against mine—it all made me feel alive in a way nothing else could.
“You’re going to feel every inch of me when I sink inside your tight hole, piccolo agnello.”
His voice coiled around my throat, tighter than his fingers ever had, and I ached for the noose of him.
Cold hands yanked my jeans down, exposing me to the unforgiving earth. Sharp stones dug into my back, grit biting into my skin like hungry little mouths, but I barely noticed. Not when he was looking at me like that. Not when his deep green gaze bore into mine, burning through my soul—or whatever was left of it.
Domino shoved my knees to my chest and dropped his full weight onto me, pinning me to the dirt, his hand a steel vice behind my knees. His lips crashed against mine—feral, consuming, merciless. The first icy brush of his mouth stole my breath, my body opening to him on instinct, obedient, desperate.
Always his.
His tongue invaded my mouth, licking inside with a hunger that obliterated everything else. Possessive. Savage. Teeth sank into my tongue, the sharp sting of pain chased by the metallic bloom of copper. I moaned into him, for him.
I was leaking, my cock aching, smearing slick against my stomach, but it was the ice-cold kiss of his blade against my rim that had me gasping.
His lips dragged across my jaw, his teeth marking their claim against my skin in the most primal way possible. His breath ghosted over my ear, low and dark, a whisper that sent violent shivers down my spine.
“Your blood or mine?”
His words didn’t register, not fully. My brain was fogged, spiraling, slipping through fingers like water.
“W-what?”
Domino chuckled against my throat, a dark sound that slithered beneath my skin. “Your blood or mine?”
I swallowed hard, felt his teeth scrape against my Adam’s apple, the silent promise of devotion through destruction.
“Mine.” My voice was wrecked, raw, the word spilling free as I tilted my head back, exposing the vulnerable column of my throat.
Pain flared, sharp and electric, as he sucked the blood to the surface, a branding deeper than ink, more permanent than scars. My heavy-lidded eyes refused to open, but I felt everything.
The blade circling my entrance shifted, the dull side turning sharp.
The first slice of metal into the sensitive skin of my taint had me arching off the ground, screaming. Hot blood met ice-cold steel, running down to my clenching hole, slicking me in my essence.
“That’s it, Remi,” he growled, his swollen lips brushing against my ear, sending shockwaves through my entire being. “Feel me.”
His thumb dragged through the blood, coating it, circling my rim in slow, deliberate movements before pressing inside, working me into me.
A stream of unintelligible words poured from his lips—too fast, too soft, lost in the relentless downpour that lashed against our exposed skin. My world was rain and blood and him.
The moment his thumb left me, my eyes snapped open.
He was kneeling back, his blade slipping into his boot with practiced ease before his fingers found his zipper. The slow, controlled descent of the metal teeth sent thrill and terror curling around my spine.
His cock sprang free—thick, hard, leaking. Bare.
My tongue flicked out, catching the rain on my lips, and his dark green fire met my gaze. He watched me. Studied me. His hand wrapped around the base, dragging from root to tip, working my blood over his length in slow, measured strokes.
He notched his slick, flushed head against my hole, gaze locked onto mine.
“Who do you belong to, Remi?”
My lips parted, my voice barely more than a whisper. “You.”
And then he was inside me.
A brutal thrust. No warning. No mercy.
My spine arched, my fingers scrambling against the mud as the force of his thrusts shoved me across the ground. The cold, the pain, the sharp sting of the rain—it was all nothing.
Nothing compared to him.
Molten pleasure and raw, biting pain seared through my veins as I let him take, let him ruin, let him carve his name into my flesh with every brutal snap of his hips.
I only breathed when he forced air into my lungs.
I only existed where he ended and I began.
“Is this what you needed, Remi?”
His lips found my rain-slicked skin, licking the droplets from my face before pressing his forehead to mine, a devastating contradiction. Gentle and brutal. Soft and merciless.
I was floating. I was drowning. I was burning alive.
Pleasure slammed into me, blinding and brutal, my body tightening around him as his cock thickened inside me.
“N-not gonna last… p-please,” I whimpered, voice fractured, hands clutching at the only thing grounding me to this world.
Him.
Always him.
Domino’s breath ghosted over my lips, a cruel whisper of salvation before the fall. “Come for me, piccolo agnello. ”
His voice was my undoing. The words shattered something inside me, ripped me apart from the inside out, and launched me into a freefall of pure euphoria.
White-hot bliss detonated in my veins, my body convulsing, spiraling, lost to the abyss. And when Domino came, when he roared his climax into the black, starless sky, flooding me with everything he was, I let him take me under.
We had found each other in blood.
And in blood, we would stay.