Page 42 of Dominion

Maybe it would take years or a lifetime, but, now, after all this time, I firmly believed that all of us needed a fresh start, and we couldn’t start fresh until we got rid of all those demons from our pasts that haunted us.

“I’m listening,” I said, leaning closer to him. Maybe it was the fact that I needed someone in my corner, someone who knew what they were doing. I needed just one day where I could loosen the reins in my hands and just be. Maybe having Casimir with us would help.

“We need to go back to Winworth,” he murmured, leaning back into the chair when my brain went haywire.

“I’m sorry, what?” My eyes widened and my heart beat wildly. “Did you just say that we need to go back to Winworth?”

“Yep.” He popped that p at the end, smiling from ear to ear. “My main operation is there?—”

“And you never thought that maybe, just maybe, you could’ve saved Skylar a long time before.”

“No.” He shrugged. “Skylar had it handled, and we needed time to collect everything.”

“To collect what?”

“Evidence, what else? I’m not in the business of killing people, Ash.” He smirked. “Alas, I might have other people for that, but I would much rather have them disappear in a legal way. Judah Blackwood destroyed my family and he damaged thereputation of our Organization. He has to pay…” he trailed off. “And he will, in time. Every one of them will pay in their own time.”

“Who?”

Casimir turned toward me, smirking the entire time. “The ones who thought they could fuck up my parents and get away with it. The ones who took my sister away from me. It wasn’t only Judah Blackwood who orchestrated that entire thing. I’m only sorry that your parents paid the price when all they wanted to do was help, which is also why I helped you. Your mother and your father helped my mother and father when they had needed it. They helped Gabriel who was like a second father to me. Judah Blackwood and his fucked-up Order decided that they wanted something they never should’ve had. His obsession with my family, with our bloodline, has to stop. His sick desire to keep his own bloodline pure has to stop. Skylar was taken because her bloodline is the closest one to the Blackwood family, from Lacroix’s side. Because she looks like them. Well,” he chuckled, “both of us do, but that’s beside the point. And trust me, Judah wasn’t the only one who betrayed Danika and Gabriel, our mother and Skylar’s father. Other people were involved as well.”

I replayed the words he said, the facts he shared, and in every single word I could feel the hatred he felt for Judah Blackwood, but he never answered my question.

“I understand all that, but you never answered my question. You never said what it is that you want with Skylar.”

“I want her to be happy,” he answered immediately. “I want her to live her life far away from all this bullshit, from all these politics. I want her to be able to go to school without three bodyguards around her, because that’s what her life would be like if I took her with me back to my home. She would hate it. So no, Ash, I’m not planning to marry Skylar or to do anything like that. Dominion banned Red Maidens from our organizationmore than a hundred years ago, when some men thought that they could do whatever they wanted to with those poor women. Red Maidens were initially the wives of our leaders. They weren’t broodmares. Judah Blackwood and his father were the ones who turned them into that. They were the ones who sullied the name, who kidnapped young women and brainwashed them into serving the Order of Black Dahlia. They kept some of our customs, but the rest… The rest is on them.”

We both wanted her to be happy. I was just afraid that the way we wanted to achieve that didn’t exactly match.

“So,” I started. “Once we go back to Winworth, what then?”

“Then, my dear friend, we destroy Judah Blackwood.”

12

DYLAN

My fists clenchedand unclenched as I stood in front of the door leading to the back porch, listening to Ash and Casimir talking as if they were old friends. They didn’t see me when I opened the door, needing to talk to someone, to share what was happening inside my head. I saw the look on Ash’s face. It wasn’t even what they were talking about that stopped me from interrupting them. It was the interest in Ash’s eyes that had my blood running cold, freezing me to the spot.

It wasn’t the same look he had when he talked to Skylar or me, but it was close to it. It was the first time I saw some sense of relief in his eyes since we came here. Perhaps it was my fault for being too stuck inside my head and not noticing the fact that he was drowning too.

Skylar wouldn’t talk to me when I tried explaining why I never told her about Dominion, and I knew that there was only one person who could maybe understand why I hid this information from them. Why my fear prevailed over everything else.

But there he was, chatting with a man who was a better version of me. A version I could’ve been if I hadn’t listened toeverything my fucking father told me and if I hadn’t fallen prey to his sick desires.

Casimir was right—I was my father’s son.

On some deep, molecular level, I was just like Judah Blackwood. You couldn’t run away from the poison in our veins, and both Skylar and Ash would be much better off without me in the picture. They would be able to fight this, to put a stop to this. Casimir was here to help them.

He had an entire organization at his beck and call, while I was just dead weight pulling them down into the dark abyss. I was as useless as my father told me I was. I was just a hollow soul without a purpose or a goal. If Skylar and Ash were to get away from this insanity, I had to get away from them.

The mere thought of leaving them tore through me with the force of a thousand knives, and I finally understood all those stories of people explaining what it felt like when their hearts broke. It wasn’t supposed to be a physical reaction, but with every new step I took away from the door leading toward Ash, I felt the painful throb in the center of my chest where all the feelings I had for them resided.

My lower lip wobbled the moment I came closer to the staircase leading to the second floor, my hand gripping the rail as if that could give me the strength I needed for the next step. Skylar would hate me, Ash would be disappointed, but at least I would be able to give them something in return.

They gave me peace in a life filled with torment and sorrow and I would never be able to repay them for actually believing in me when no one else did. I would never be able to give them back all the things they gave me. As I started climbing the stairs, I knew that my heart would forever stay here, with them, where it was always supposed to be.

Maybe one day they would be able to look back at this time and be grateful for how it all turned out. Maybe they would understand why I had to do this.

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