Dom was the mystery. She never came with us to The Hollow. I’d yet to see her tattoo. And it was clear she was willing to get physical with me, to put me in the place she thought I belonged.
Wrapping an arm around me, Leo guided me toward the motorcycle. I didn’t want to draw her suspicion, trying not to flinch at the touch.
I’d always wondered where Dom’s loyalties truly lied. After all this time, she’d never given me the time of day. Never bothered to prove herself to me.
Now there was a pile of missing posters in her drawers. And I was a hostage in her mansion with nowhere to run.
81
KIERA
After what Isaw in the shop last night, the last place I wanted to be was alone with Dom in the house. But with Spencer and Leo off on some last-minute assignment from The Oracle, she was the only babysitter available on such short notice.
I hadn’t been alone with her in the house in weeks — usually, Dom avoided solo time with me like it was the plague — and given how the last time went, I had no idea what to expect.
At least it beats being stuck in my room?
If that was true, it was only a marginal improvement. In my room, there wasn’t much to entertain myself with, but at least I could breathe without feeling her murderous glare shooting my way. And I could try and distract myself from the poster pile of missing women that Dom had kept locked away.
I’d tried being nice to Dom despite my concerns. Something about keeping your enemies closer? But based on the way she reacted to me, I wasn’t just Dom’s enemy — I was her fucking nemesis.
I still had no idea what I’d done to earn the status. But if she was set on being a raging cunt about the whole thing, then I was done trying. While Dom skulked around the kitchen like abroody lion, I got settled in the living room — the farthest I could get from her eyeline without her biting my head off.
I couldn’t watch moreBojackuntil Spence and Leo came home, and I couldn’t quite muster the focus to start a new show, so I took to flipping through the cable channels, looking for some junk food program that could keep my mind off Dom’s disturbing desk drawers and her weird ass house.
There was no point harping on it right now. I couldn’t run from Dom, not now. All I could do was try to keep the piece and find out whatever I could while we were alone together.
Cooking channels, game shows, old sitcoms, local CCTV footage — cable TV had it all, which was to say that there was no rhyme or reason to the channel organization. Still, the flipping made me a bit nostalgic for sick days as a kid. Back then, getting to see what played during the daytime while I was at school felt like peering into a hidden world.
“Turn that shit down,” Dom snarled from down the hall.
Apparently, I was having too much fun, and Dom could smell it in the air.
Ignoring her, I tried to catch up on the plot of an oldI Love Lucyre-run mid-episode. It was one of the few nice memories I had of my mom in my childhood, actually. Sitting on the floor by her feet, leaning my back against her shins while Lucille Ball ran around on screen.
“I said turn it down, Viper.”
“Screw you,” I murmured, clicking the volume higher. There was no way it was bothering her from all the way over here, but if I was going to do the time, I might as well do the crime.
Some sick part of me was desperate to see if Dom had it in her, to really kidnap me. To really hold me hostage. Ineededto know.
Vivian Vance only got through a few more lines before Dom’s footsteps thundered down the hallway. Her tattooed fingersclenched the doorframe, but I refused to flinch at the thud of her hand slamming down, even as she narrowed those icy blue eyes at me. “Are you fucking ser?—”
Before she could get the words out of her mouth, I clicked the volume three levels higher. “Sorry, I can’t hear you!”
“Give me the fucking remote,” she seethed, but each bitchy comment earned another click up of the TV volume.
“Try asking nicely,” I sneered, crossing my arms over my chest.
But as Dom stepped through the doorway, I knew that wasn’t going to happen.
Worth a shot.
She’d crossed the room in two paces, but I’d be damned if she caught me that easy. Her arm shot out toward the couch, but I leapt up just before she could grab me, dangling the remote just out of her reach. “Looking for something?”
Shock flared through her eyes before she furrowed her brows. “Have you lost your fucking mind?”
“Yep, being trapped with you has finally broken me. I’m fucking crazy.” I clicked the volume higher and watched something snap inside of Dom.
