Chapter 30
CHAPTER 30
DOMINO
“ O ne… two… I’m coming…for…”
His voice was soft, haunting . It slithered through the air like a whisper in the dark. Remi sounded like a fucking delinquent. He started doing this a few days ago, and it freaked me the fuck out.
At first, I thought he was watching horror movies—but no. He didn’t enjoy just sitting, being still. He preferred to be doing, creating, moving. And right now, he was doing exactly that.
I leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. Watching him.
His hand flew across the page, dark lines slashing the canvas. At first, the strokes looked meaningless. Something about them tickled a memory. Something I couldn’t quite place. It settled in my head like an itch. A mystery I had to unravel.
Just like that damn song stuck on repeat in my mind. If I could, I’d happily gouge my brain out with a hook.
The ding of the elevator cut through my thoughts. Ghost had finally decided to deliver what I had sent him to get hours ago. He strode into the penthouse, smirking as always, black box in his hands.
“Morning, boss.” He tilted the box up. Mocking. Teasing. “I can’t believe you wanted it.” His eyes flicked between me and the box, his curiosity burning. “What are you gonna do with it?”
He went to open it, but I snatched it away before he could. “That’s not your concern,” I ground out. My fingers smoothed over the ribbon, avoiding his gaze.
He hummed. Low. Knowing. “Ohhhh. Mmmm. I see.”
My head snapped up, my gaze colliding with his. He smirked, cheeks tinged pink. He mimed zipping his mouth shut and throwing away the key.
I glared at his idiocy. “If only you would fucking do that.”
He snorted, “Nah, you’d miss the sound of my voice too much.”
I shook my head, jaw tensing. I was about to tell him to shut the fuck up, but his attention suddenly shifted. His gaze flicked down the hallway, toward the art room. His lips curved.
“What the fuck is he singing?” His eyes slid back to mine, amusement flickering on his face. “Well, that shit certainly suits you two.”
I barked out a sharp, “Enough.”
He chuckled but straightened at the tone. Back to business.
“Did you get everything sorted?”
He nodded. “Yes. Everything is in place… the club will be?—”
I held up a hand. “Good. That’s all I want.” A pause as I gathered my thoughts. “I assume you’ll be able to manage?”
Ghost snorted, rolling his eyes. “Pffft, obviously.”
“Good. Now get the fuck out. I have things to do.”
He lingered like a bad smell until my attention was back on him. “You don’t really call him a ‘thing,’ do you?”
I didn’t even dignify that with an answer. “Fuck off, Ghost.”
He grinned, saluted, and headed for the elevator. Just as his finger pressed down on the button, he turned to look at me. “Don’t forget to call Salvatore when you know.”
I exhaled, aggravation crawling under my skin. “I won’t. Like any of them would let me.”
The doors eventually slid shut. Ghost was gone. Thank fuck. Being in his presence gave me a headache, but for some reason, Remi liked him.
Now it was just me and the weight of the gift in my hand. I turned it over, fingertips grazing the edges. How should I do this?
Should I leave it for him to find?
Should I sit him down?
Should I bring it to him?
Fuck . Anyone would think I was about to propose with how indecisive I was being. Ridiculous.
But the moment had to be right.
Remi had a way of twisting my insides, dragging me into a place where rational thought and obsession blurred together until they were the same thing.
Luckily for me, the soft hum of the coffee machine and the clatter of cups on the counter pulled him from his reverie.
He strode in, barefoot, wearing my sweats like they belonged to him—which they did. Hung low on his hips, exposing the sharp cut of his abdomen, the bruises and marks from last night shadowing his skin like kisses made of violence.
He didn’t say a word. Just snatched the cup from my hand with a snicker, grabbed the creamer from the fridge, and started making his coffee. I let him. Let him steal from me like he always did.
Because it was Remi.
Because it was mine to give.
And maybe that was the problem. Maybe that was why I was standing here like a fucking fool, staring at his back, at the raised, healing lines of my name carved along his spine.
A shudder of satisfaction coiled through me, curling deep in my gut. He was mine. And now? Now everyone would know. Not that I’d ever let another fucker get close enough to see him without his shirt on.
But that wasn’t the point.
I knew.
And so did he.
Remi settled onto one of the stools, his legs spread wide, completely comfortable in my space, my clothes, my life. His gaze locked onto the black box in front of him.
“What’s this?”
He traced a single charcoal-stained finger along the edge, turning it this way and that, searching for some mark of origin.
I smirked against the rim of my cup and leaned against the counter opposite him, waiting for him to drag his intrigued gaze away from it.
Eventually, I felt his eyes on me again. The moment that weight settled, something inside me eased. Like pressure lifting off a trigger.
Like the gnawing hunger I carried under my skin, finding something to sink its teeth into.
Marlow Heights was mine.
But I didn’t want it.
I wanted him .
That was enough.
“Open it and see,” I said finally when the drumming of his fingers against the lid got to be too much.
He huffed out a laugh, practically buzzing with curiosity. “Really?”
His excitement did something to me, something I didn’t fully understand, a heat curling through my chest that I refused to name. Remi had tried to explain it once. Said it was probably love. Maybe that was wishful thinking. But I had said those three words to him.
When he wasn’t preoccupied with sketching and planning his kills, he liked to remind me. Sometimes with words. Sometimes, by melting into me when I ran my fingers down his back, over the deep cuts where I’d carved my name into him.
Other times?
He would drop to his knees, take my cock to the back of his throat, and moan in thanks.
A shiver of anticipation flickered down my spine as I watched him lift the lid. The sharp inhale that followed was pure, breathless delight.
“Holy. Fucking. Shit.” His fingers trembled as he reached inside, brushing over the fractured remains of a skull. His eyes snapped to mine. Wide. Wet. Impossibly bright. “Who?”
I smirked.
He already knew. He always had to know. Couldn’t rest until he understood the story inside the bones, inside the blood.
“The one you stole from me,” I murmured.
A sharp intake of breath. Remi’s grip on the skull tightened. He placed it gently on the counter, his fingers running over the cracks, the fractures, the hollows where life had once existed.
“You mean?—?”
“Yes.”
His whole body went still. His breath caught in his throat, his pulse visible in his neck, his lips parting on something between a gasp and a laugh.
“It’s really his?”
I rolled my eyes and reached forward, turning the skull in his hands, my fingers brushing over his knuckles, over the scars and violence now etched into his skin.
“If you look here,” I murmured, tapping just above the left temple. “You’ll see where your bullet went through.”
Remi let out a sound. Low. Guttural. Pure fucking reverence. “Fuuuuuucccckkkk.”
He tilted the skull toward the light, tracing the delicate spiderweb fractures left behind by the impact of his kill shot.
“This is one of the best things you’ve ever given me.” His voice was breathless. Almost shaking.
Remi was… interesting.
He didn’t care about jewelry. Clothes. Money. As long as he had a dry place to sleep and enough food not to starve, he didn’t want anything. Not the things normal people craved.
He craved this.
The dark, ugly parts of life. Blood and pain. Power and suffering. Control. And I was here to give them to him.
The skull rested on the counter, and his fingers tightened around it, pulsing, curling, shaking with something sharp and raw.
I watched. Fascinated. A starving man watching his lover feast.
Remi’s tongue darted out, wetting his lips as his eyes darkened, his pulse jumping beneath his skin.
Slowly, deliberately, he tilted the skull toward his face, his fingers drifting over the hollowed sockets, over the place where he’d once seen the world before Remi ended him.
He parted his lips. The tip of his tongue flicked out, running over the jagged cracks, tasting the ghost of gunpowder and bone.
A shudder ran through him, his lashes fluttering, his breath catching in his throat like he was suffocating on power.
“God,” he whispered, voice wrecked.
It broke something in me. I stepped closer, my fingers wrapping around the back of his neck, my grip tight, possessive. His breath hitched. I could feel it. Feel the heat of him.
His obsession.
His worship.
I dragged my thumb along his pulse point, pressing just enough to feel it flutter beneath my touch. And then I leaned in.
Voice dark. Low. “Do you like it, piccolo agnello?”
Remi turned his head, eyes gleaming, wicked, fucking manic. His lips curled, his grip still tight on the skull. “I love it.”
Remi’s lips were curved in something sinful, his breath still ragged, fingers clutching at the skull like a relic.
A prize.
A trophy.
A testament to what I had done for him. And yet—it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. His obsession fed mine. His darkness reflected, refracted, amplified in the twisted mirror we had become.
I needed him to show me. To prove that he knew. Knew what I had done. Knew how far I would go. Knew that he belonged to me.
“Then show me how much you appreciate what I’ve done for you.”
I didn’t wait for an answer. Didn’t need one.
The moment I grabbed a fistful of his hair, Remi gasped, his body going lax, pliant, willing in a way that made my head spin and my pulse thunder. I hauled him off the stool in one smooth motion, his legs instinctively wrapping around my waist, locking at the ankles.
Like he was meant to be there. Because he was. Because there was no world, no version of reality, where he wasn’t in my arms.
Where he wasn’t mine.
His fingers dug into my shoulders, his breath hot against my throat as I carried him through the penthouse. Everything about him sang to me. The way his body curled into mine.
The soft, shaky exhale when I tightened my grip on his thighs. The way he shuddered when I turned my head and ran my nose along the pulse in his neck.
And when he whispered my name—a prayer. A plea. A promise. I almost lost it. Almost. Not until he had placed his gift down with the care it deserved.
The door to our bedroom slammed shut behind us, the sound sending a sharp thrill down my spine.
The skull—his trophy, my offering—rested on the nightstand. But my attention wasn’t on it anymore. It was on him. On the blood still drying under his fingernails. On the bruises I had put there.
On the scars I had carved into his skin, his soul, his very being.
A smirk curled at my lips, a slow, creeping thing as my gaze flicked to the skull. To the hollow sockets where eyes had once been. My father. Watching. Helpless. Forced to witness every single thing I was about to do to the boy in my arms.
I turned back to Remi, tilting his chin up, my grip bruising. His lips parted, his pupils blown wide, his breath catching in his throat as I murmured
“Show me, Remi. Show me who you belong to.”
And he did.
He always did.
“Come with me.”
It wasn’t a request. It never was. Remi’s fingers slid into mine without hesitation, his trust blind, unwavering, devotional. He would follow me anywhere.
Into the shadows. Into the flames. Into death itself.
And he would go smiling.
That knowledge burned in my gut, feeding the gnawing hunger only he could satisfy. It was a gift, this power he gave me, this absolute control. A heady, intoxicating thing.
And yet, somehow, he owned me more.
The doors to the elevator slid shut, sealing us inside a silver cage lined with reflections—infinite versions of us drowning in each other. Remi turned, looking at me through thick lashes, lips curling in a coy smirk. Wicked. Knowing.
“Where are we going?” he asked breathlessly.
I grabbed his throat and pinned him against the mirrored wall. His breath hitched, and his pupils blew wide. “We have an appointment.”
My lips hovered over his, barely brushing, teasing—because he would always want me more in the moments before he got me.
“It took a while to get everything organized,” I murmured against his mouth.
Remi didn’t care about appointments. Didn’t care about plans, schedules, obligations. Didn’t care about anything that wasn’t me.
His fingers dug into my jacket, his body arching, pressing closer. His lips crashed against mine—savage, desperate. Each brush of his tongue against mine deepened the madness.
Remi never got enough.
And neither did I.
He rocked against me, his hardness grinding against my thigh in a frantic, needy motion. I tightened my grip around his throat. His pulse pounded under my palm. His breath faltered—caught in my grasp.
His body trembled.
His nails bit into me, sharp little reminders that he loved this, loved me. Loved being on the edge of death, knowing I was the only one keeping him tethered to life.
Tears glistened in his eyes. He looked beautiful like this. Fragile and invincible, all at once.
Mine.
I exhaled, loosening my grip just enough to let the oxygen rush back into his lungs. “Patience, piccolo agnello. ”
I stepped back as the doors slid open. Remi glared at me, flushed, panting, his eyes dark with lust and fury.
“Fucking tease,” he muttered.
My lips twisted in a smirk. I lived to unravel him. To push him to the very edge—and pull him back when it suited me. His ice-blue eyes lit up as I fastened his helmet. A ritual. Something that should have been mundane, but with him? It was an intimate interaction. Binding. Sacramental.
I threw my leg over my bike, glancing at him over my shoulder. He bit his bottom lip, the softest act in a boy who had never been soft. Then slid on behind me, his arms locked around me. My body shuddered, electrified at the contact.
He was a disease. A virus. A toxin.
And I wanted him to ruin me completely.
My Ninja growled beneath us, its roar reverberating off the concrete walls. The vibrations hummed through our bodies as I pulled back the throttle, the rush of speed intoxicating. Behind me, Remi buried his face against my neck as much as his helmet allowed, his grip tightening around my waist with every shift of the gears—silent, steady, utterly in sync.
The streets were quiet tonight. The city was still recovering from the war we had brought upon it. Still littered with the ghosts of the men we had killed, as the steel buildings blurred past us.
But all I saw was him. Remi—a creature carved from the same hunger that devoured me. Nothing else mattered. Not the past. Not the bodies. Not the city we had burned to the ground.
Only him.
Engraved in my bones. Fused to me at a molecular level. I’d had fixations before. But nothing like this. Nothing like him.
We pulled into a covered garage, the rain growing heavier as we dismounted.
“Elysian Chambers?” Remi grinned, a slow, creeping thing. “It’s time?”
“It is.”
He whistled, low, appreciative.
I pulled my helmet off, shaking out my hair. “I assume you came prepared?”
Remi scoffed. “I don’t go anywhere without my babies.”
His arm curled around my neck, reeling me in until our noses brushed. His breath, warm and teasing, ghosted over my lips—a whisper of what he knew I craved.
“Thank you,” he murmured, pressing a slow, deliberate kiss to my lips, his tongue swiping against mine just once before he pulled away. A taunt. A fucking torment.
My fingers snapped up, gripping his chin, forcing his gaze back to mine. “Don’t make me wait.”
He smirked, the kind of smirk that made my blood heat, that made me want to carve my name deeper into his skin. “Impatient, are we?”
The buzzer screeched as he pressed it, an offense in the quiet of the night. I gritted my teeth. I hated waiting. Hated being made to wait. I wasn’t the kind of man who waited on others. They followed my rules, or they paid the price.
Rain dripped from our clothes, pooling at our feet as the silence stretched, taut and electric.
“Hello?” Casius. His voice cut through the night like a blade, smooth and practiced, hiding the sickness beneath.
Remi turned to me, eyes wide. Not in fear. In hunger. Excitement. Because this wasn’t just about meeting an artist. This was about something darker. Something that had festered between us since the night Remi found him out.
The girl had been dying when he found her.
A fragile, broken thing, crumpled in the overgrown grass between the headstones, a whisper away from the very grave she should have been laid in.
And yet—she still clung to life. Barely. She was young. Too young. Her breath hitched in shallow, gasping sobs as her glassy eyes fixed on Remi, as if sensing that even in the presence of a monster, she had found something far worse.
But there was no fear in her gaze. Not at first. Not until he crouched beside her, tilted his head, and let his fingers brush the sticky warmth of her blood where it pooled in the dirt.
She flinched, her body trembling, but she didn’t have the strength to pull away.
“Who?” Remi had murmured.
The girl shuddered. And then she broke, spilling everything. Every horrifying, disgusting, vile truth about the man who had done this to her. She had idolized Casius Moreau. Had worshiped him.
A promising young artist, she had won a competition—a chance to learn from the master himself. But Casius had taken one look at her and decided she was not meant to be an artist.
Because she was art.
She was a canvas, a creation, a thing to be molded beneath his hands. And he had torn her apart like he was sculpting a masterpiece.
First, her mind—plucking at her thoughts, unraveling her sense of self, corroding her will like acid. Then, her body.
Breaking it. Defiling it.
Piece by piece.
She had never been meant to survive. And yet, somehow, she had crawled her way there, to the cemetery, to Remi.
Maybe fate was cruel, or maybe it was precise.
Because if she had dragged herself to anyone else, she would have been another forgotten corpse buried in a city that did not care. But she had found Remi. And Remi found me. That was the night he decided Casius Moreau had to die.
That he would suffer.
That his body, his life, his very existence would become another one of Remi’s masterpieces.
Casius Moreau was a man who thought he understood monsters. He was wrong. He thought he could hide his sins beneath oil paints and grandeur, beneath layers of pretense and careful curation.
But Remi and I? We saw through it. We saw the rot beneath the polish, the grotesque thing lurking behind the illusion of artistry. And tonight, we would make him pay for it.
Casius, of course, had no idea what he had invited into his home when he greeted me.
“Casius, it’s Domino DeMarco,” I muttered coolly, watching him on the intercom display.
“Ahhh, yes. How could I forget someone like you?” His words dripped into my ear, each syllable curling with poison. “Would you like to come up and see my current pieces?”
Beside me, Remi snorted, tension threading his body, his irritation flashing like the edge of a blade.
Neither of us answered. We didn’t need to.
We followed his instructions up the spiral staircase into his twisted sanctuary. Half-finished portraits lined the walls, their hollow stares following us as if they could sense what was coming.
The air was thick—oil paint, linseed, and something rancid. Something rotten.
Something human.
At the top of the stairs, Casius stood waiting, a glimmer of surprise flickering across his face when he noticed Remi. It soured quickly.
I smirked and let the silence hang between us, dragging it out, savoring the discomfort spreading over his face like an oil spill.
“Domino, a pleasure.” He held out a hand to me.
I stared at it. Let the air go thick and heavy before I finally tilted my head, eyeing it like it was infected. He dropped it. Smart.
“What can I do for you tonight?”
Remi huffed a sardonic laugh, slipping past Casius like a wolf circling its prey, skimming the artwork with an air of casual disinterest. It was a mockery. A performance.
Casius doesn’t even realize that he is already dead.
“My husband is an artist.”
Remi froze. That single word hung between us like a knife on a taut thread.
Casius’s brows lifted. “Husband?”
I ignored him. Remi didn’t turn, didn’t react beyond the slight twitch of his fingers, the slow curl of his shoulders. A shiver ran through me. Mine.
“He has always appreciated others’ works but was interested in hosting his own exhibition.”
Casius blinked. Then smiled—thin, forced. “That’s wonderful. What’s his style?”
Remi snickered, vanishing behind a curtain. “The macabre.”
Casius stiffened. “Uh, you can’t go back there?—”
Wrong move.
I was already there, closing the distance, my fist wrapped around his wrist, wrenching it behind his back. His body jerked. A breathless, startled gasp. My other hand curled tight around his throat, squeezing just enough to feel his pulse hammering against my palm. He trembled in my hold.
Slow. Measured. Methodical. “And why can’t he go back there?” My voice was ice, licking up his skin like the first whisper of a blade.
His lips pinched tight. His eyes darted to the corners of the room. Searching. Hoping.
I chuckled. “No one is coming.”
Casius sucked in a sharp breath. “W-what?”
“We took out your security before we stepped inside. No one knows you’re not alone. No one will know the last people that came to visit you…”
His body went rigid. His breath shuddered against my knuckles. “What do you mean, the last people?” His voice cracked.
Pathetic. I leaned in and let my lips graze his ear. “This will be your last meeting, Mr. Moreau.”
His mouth parted in a silent scream, but before sound could escape, a flash of silver glinted in the dim light. A blade. Thin, sharp, hungry. The edge teased against Casius’ throat above my fingers, pressing just enough to draw a thin bead of red.
Casius whimpered.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Remi’s voice was a purr, his knife spinning between his fingers with lethal ease as he stepped back.
Casius whipped his head around, only now realizing Remi was beside him. A fool. A dead man. “W-w-why not?”
Remi smiled. A small, sick, sadistic thing. “Because I know everything you’ve done.” He chuckled, dragging the tip of his blade down Casius’ jawline, light enough to tickle. “I’ve spoken with your victims. I’ve seen the bodies. What did the poor girl hanging by her neck do?”
Casius thrashed, kicking out in panic. Remi danced away, laughing. Effortless. Elegant. A predator toying with his meal.
“What was it about hurting them? About killing them that captivated you?”
Something changed in Casius. His struggle slowed. His eyes went black, empty, something hollow and endless bleeding through.
His reflection in the mirror opposite us told me everything. Recognition. He had stopped fighting. Because he thought he was among kindred spirits. He thought we were the same.
Remi was fascinated by death, by the permanence of it. The way it silenced the noise and made things still.
But me?
I craved the power. The control. Holding life in my hands and deciding whether it burned or withered or was simply snuffed out like a candle.
“The rush,” Casius whispered. “The challenge.”
How unoriginal.
Remi smirked. “And the girl from the gallery? The one hanging next to your bed?”
Something dark and vicious flickered in Casius’ gaze. He licked his lips. “I destroyed her. Piece by piece. Took everything her body had to offer me.”
That was a mistake. Remi stilled. Something shifted in him, slow and terrible. The amusement bled from his features, replaced with something still. Something ice-cold.
Something lethal.
“Do you like little girls?”
Casius smiled. A disgusting, grotesque thing. “Don’t you?”
I scoffed. Remi frowned, and a furrow appeared between his brow.
A smirk carved across his lips. “I was never interested in anyone until Domino took me.” His gaze flicked to mine. Hunger. Reverence. Worship. My pulse thrummed. My grip tightened. “Until he showed me who I really was.”
Casius’ breathing hitched. His false bravado cracked, splintered. Shattered.
Remi wiped his blade clean, eyes flicking toward the staircase. “Where are your keys?”
Remi tilted his head, waiting.
Casius hesitated. “The gallery space isn’t locked. The door’s at the bottom of the stairs.”
Remi reached the top step, then turned, watching me. His voice dripped with something dark, something electric, something that made my blood sing. “Bring him.”