Page 23 of Dominion

I halfway expected them to start talking like Arnold Schwarzenegger in theTerminatormovies. I had never seen so many men whose only emotional response to everything was a nod and a lifted eyebrow when they didn’t agree with something.

They were different with Chiara, but with the rest of us… Not really.

“So, are you from Italy?” I dared to ask, trying to occupy my mind with something else.

“Yes,” was his short and curt answer, and that’s how the rest of our conversation went.

“Did you come here when you were a kid?”

“No.”

“Are your parents alive?”

“No.”

“Do you have any siblings?”

“Yes.”

“Are you working with them?”

“No.”

And so on and so forth, until the passenger side door opened, revealing a flushed Cillian.

“We’re about to start,” he told Claudio and immediately looked at me. “Remember what I said, Skylar.” He enunciated every single word. “Do not move from the fucking car.”

“Yes, Dad,” I answered cheekily, but instead of a smile, all I got in return was a grunt before he looked back at Claudio.

“You’re gonna stay with her?”

“Yes.” A-ha, so I wasn’t the only one who got one-word answers from him.

“Stay inside the car, Skylar,” Cillian said again. “I mean it. Do not get out of here, no matter what. And listen to Claudio.”

If Claudio ever actually spoke. Apart from the few words he granted us during the ride, the rest were one-word answers, so I had a feeling that there wouldn’t be many orders issued by him.

“I’ll be here.” He was about to close the door when I called out for him. “Cillian.” I shuffled forward, pressing my face between his seat and the door. He looked at me as if he already understood what I was going to say, but I needed to utter the words. “Please bring them back to me.”

The smallest nod was all I got, but it was enough to calm the nerves climbing up my throat. Claudio looked at me through the rearview mirror, but there were no emotions on his face. I wondered what he thought about all of this. I had no doubt that they all already knew what happened and how it happened. While I thought about it constantly, as if it could change anything, I never allowed myself to think about the anger I was going to face once I saw Ash and Dylan.

There was going to be so much anger.

My worry for them overpowered every other feeling, everything else that plagued me, but sitting here, in this quiet car, with only our breathing noticeable, I knew that there would be hell to pay once they were back.

But I would rather listen to Ash yelling at me, or having them both angry, than this complete silence that had become a part of my life since they’d been gone.

“Water?” Claudio suddenly asked, holding up a bottle of water in his right hand. My lips were dry, but not from the lack of water. Blood still trickled from the wound I made on my lower lip, chewing on it as we drove up here.

“No, thank you,” I answered, pressing my back against the backrest, willing the minutes to pass by faster.

The night fell on us, fog descending down from the mountain, covering the ground with a white cover. I just hoped it would be enough to help Chiara and Cillian to break through the defenses of the Red Manor easier.

I tried counting the tree branches I could see through my window, then the pine trees that were still visible, but none of it helped. Nothing held my attention long enough so that I could stop thinking of what was happening up on the mountain.

We couldn’t hear a sound here, apart from the occasional gust of wind slamming into the car, and the darker it got, the harder it was to see anything outside. But still we sat, for what felt like an eternity, before a sound I would never forget in my entire life shrieked inside the car.

Claudio immediately picked up the additional radio he had inside the car when a voice I couldn’t recognize started speaking over the radio in a language I couldn’t quite understand. Claudio practically barked back at the man. Before I could even ask what was happening, he unbuckled, turning fully toward me with the gun in his hand.

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