Page 77 of Dominion

I always knew that he lived in his own world, believing in his own delusions, but I never thought I would see the day where he would pretend like this. Where he would simply try to brush it all under the carpet.

“Well.” I shrugged. “It’s been a crazy couple of months.” If he could pretend, so could I. “But it was time for me to come back home. To be where I belong.” I should’ve taken an antacid before coming here, but I bit my tongue and kept on with the fake pleasantries.

“You know I did all those things to show you, right?” Oh, he showed me, alright. “To show you where you belong.”

“I know... Dad.” I let the word roll off of my tongue, hating every single moment of this. “I should’ve listened to you when you said that Ash Blackwood was bad news. Unfortunately, I got entangled with both of them and that never should’ve happened.”

I was surprised how easy it was to lie to him. How easy it was to stand here and spew bullshit about the man I loved. But then again, I learned from the best. I had spent half of my life lying and pretending to be something else—someone else. This shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

“That little fucker has no idea who he messed with,” Judah spat out, his face changing in an instant at the mere mention of Ash. “But he will learn.” He cackled. “You don’t mess with the Blackwood family and walk away. Oh no. Both of them will learn.”

The venom lacing each and every one of his words made the blood in my veins freeze, and I strained myself to keep still. Not to react.

This was a test. I had no doubt that Judah didn’t trust me yet, but he would.

For the last three weeks since I came back to Winworth, I was doing every single job he told me to do. I was a good little soldier, just how he raised me to be, but the trust still wasn’t there.

“Only if I get to slit his throat when the time comes,” I said firmly, smirking at the shock on his face. “What? You didn’t think I would let you have all the fun? Ah, Dad.” I chuckled, swallowing the bile in my throat as I clasped his shoulder with my hand. “Ash Blackwood is mine to toy with and trust me—you’re gonna like what I have planned for him.”

His shock faded faster than it came, and that familiar sinister look in his eyes replaced the one of the worried father. “That’s my boy,” he said proudly, pulling me deeper inside the house. “We’re gonna destroy them together.”

“Of course,” I agreed as we walked toward the living room, where the person I never wanted to see again in my life sat, looking at us with evident fear in her eyes. “Mother,” I spat out. “How are you?”

“Dylan.” Her breathless voice used to grate on my nerves, but now I only felt pity toward the woman who gave birth to me. The woman who destroyed my childhood. She looked like a shell of her previous self, and I allowed myself one small moment to gloat at her disheveled state.

She was ratting out the Order to the Dominion, and I had a feeling that her shock of seeing me wasn’t because she missed me, but because she knew I wouldn’t mind destroying her just how she tried to destroy all of us.

“H-how are you?” she stammered, keeping her hands neatly folded in her lap, trembling from head to toe. “Your father told me you decided to come back. That’s so?—”

“Spare me, Mother.” I stopped her incessant babbling, taking a seat on the opposite couch. “We both know you don’t want to know how I was or where I was, so cut the crap and get the hell out of the room. We have things to discuss.” I smirked. “Things you can’t know.”

“Judah!” she exclaimed, looking at him as if he could help her. But the only thing she found was the proud look on his face and that gleam in his eyes as he looked at me. “He can’t talk to me like that. He?—”

“You heard the boy,” Judah cut her off, taking a seat on the sofa chair next to me. “Leave the room.”

“I-I?—”

“You do understand English, don’t you, Mother?” I laughed when she started turning pale. “Leave. The. Fucking. Room.”

I had dreamed of the time when I would get to tell her to get out of my face. When I would get to hurt her just how she hurt me, but now wasn’t the time. This was only the beginning of the torment I was planning to inflict on her, but later… Later, she would get what was coming to her.

She stood up with a huff, rubbing her hands over the beige skirt she wore. She always looked plain, boring, so fucking concerned about her looks, about the things other people would say about our family, yet she never bothered to look in the mirror to see that the real fucking monster lived inside her.

Her heels clicked on the floor, and within seconds, she was out of earshot, slamming the door on her way out.

“There’s something different about you,” Judah said, chilling me to the bone. I took a moment to turn and look at him, making sure to keep a blank expression. “I like it.” He laughed. “I like it a lot.”

It was as if the weight fell off of my shoulders, making it harder to breathe, and I laughed alongside him, as if he didn’t cost me my fucking sanity. As if we were old friends, reuniting after years of being separate.

“That thing we spoke about,” he added. “St. Clare and Lacroix boy. Is it done?”

“Yeah,” I confirmed. “Both of them are in the old church, on the other side of the town. Danny is there as well.”

“Good, good.” He smiled, satisfied with my answer. “That boy is very special.” He was making me sick. “So loyal. I’m glad you got to meet him properly now. He’s been helping me for quite some time to bring things to the way I want them to be.”

Or well, he meant that he was using him for a long fucking time to do his bidding, to spy on other people, especially Skylar, while also fucking him on the side. Danny thought diamonds fucking shone in Judah’s eyes, and probably in his ass as well. Just those couple of minutes I had to spend in his company made my skin crawl.

Insanity lived in all of us, and human beings were capable of a lot more than they thought—both good and bad. But Danny... Danny enjoyed living like this. He didn’t blink an eye when we brought in Kane and Rowan or when we tied them up.

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