“Imagined?” His laugh is cruel. “Kane told me everything, Aria. How you kept whispering forhimin the car, reliving sweet little moments I never knew about.” Dom’s eyes burn fever-bright, searching my face for something I’m not sure I want him to find. “Tell me, love, when you were in my bed, moaning for me, was it his touch you were chasing?”
“You’re being absurd,” I snap. “He was there because—”
“Because what?” He surges forward, looming over me, one hand braced against the headboard. “Because you needed him? Becausenoble, golden Rowe just happened to be there when the attack started?” His breath fans hot against my cheek. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out you were alone with him that night? That you let him in, let him—”
“You don’t own me.” The words land like a slap, and I see the moment they hit, watch disbelief flicker in his eyes before it curdles into hurt.
There’s venom in my tone I didn’t know I was capable of. I’ve always known how to cut Dom, but this feels new, colder. He jerks back, and the look on his face should’ve stopped me, but it doesn’t.
“And you sure as hell don’t get to interrogate me about what I did while you were locked away by daddy dearest, playing heir to a psychopath.”
The second the words leave my mouth, I regret them. Dom goes deathly still, his face blanks completely, every emotion wiped clean by shock. I can see the break behind his eyes, the fracture line I carved straight through his ribs, but it’s like I can’t stop.
“Rowe was there because Margaux asked him to—”
“Stop! If you’re going to lie to me, Aria, at least make it convincing. My sister would never—”
“She asked him to retrieve the security tapes,” I say, the words slicing out before I can soften them. “From the night my parents died.”
His jaw flexes, mouth opening, then closing again. The urge to reach for him wars with this strange new anger burning in my blood.
“But I’m guessing that’s not what you want to talk about,” I murmur, voice flat. “You’d rather argue over your bruised pride.”
“What?”
“There was a Blackwood car.” I try to ease the words. “That morning before the explosion, my mother stepped out of your father’s vehicle.”
Color drains from his face. “No.”
“I saw it. The footage doesn’t lie.”
“Aria . . .” Something in my chest splinters watching his features crumple. “The contract. The wedding. You signed it because . . .” His hands rake through his hair, trembling. “Fuck. He’s been planning this for years. Using me to—”
“That’s not all.” The confession tastes of betrayal, but he deserves to know. “Rowe implied that you were told to pursue me. That it was arranged from the beginning.”
The silence that follows is cavernous. Dom’s jaw clenches so tightly it’s a miracle his bones don’t splinter. A sheen of sweat slicks across his brow, his entire body taut with restraint.
“Tell me it’s not true.” My voice falters on the plea. “That this wasn’t another one of their fucking games.”
He opens his mouth, then snaps it shut as pain cuts through him. His breathing turns shallow, every attempt at speech dragging fresh agony. The contract’s magic works under his skin. I see it in the veins standing dark against his throat, in the convulsive swallow that follows.
“I . . .” His voice rasps. “I can’t confirm or deny that.”
The phrasing guts me.
Dom’s eyes squeeze shut, while his fingers drum an erratic pattern against his thigh. Unlike the binding that choked him when we asked about my parents’ work, this one isn’t flawless. It wasn’t meant for scrutiny. It’s clumsy, rushed. Kian didn’t think Dom would ever need to hide the truth.
“What I can say is that first day at the Academy, you were meant to be nothing. Just another name in a sea of them.” His smile is bitter. “Everyone always wanted something from me. Girls with their perfect stumbles into my path, boys with their desperate attempts at friendship, all of them smiling with teeth as they measured what piece of the Blackwood empire they could cut away for themselves.”
The raw honesty in his voice startles me. Dom rarely speaks about the past or the weight of expectations that shaped him. Even with me, he keeps these wounds carefully hidden most of the time.
“I was so fucking tired,” he continues, rubbing his thumb over the inside of his wrist. “The whispers behind perfect smiles, the bows and scrapes to my face while cursing my name the moment I turned away. Even the ones who claimed to love me were conditional, always about what I could give, what doors I could open.” He goes quiet for a breath, eyes distant. “Then you came down that corridor as if you owned it. No diplomacy, no artifice, only pure fire. I blocked your path, threw some cruel line about charity cases reaching above their station, and I expected you to fold. Everyone else always did.”
My fingers curl in the sheets. I remember the sneer on his lips, the glint in his eye, the condescension soaked into every syllable. I thought I hated him.
“You looked me dead in the face,” he says, voice lower now. “And told me if I didn’t move, you’d make me. Said you didn’t give a damn who my father was. That I was just another asshole in your way. You were never supposed to matter and somehow you became the only thing that did.”
I can’t respond. The memory is already reshaping itself. That moment I once thought random—two storms colliding in a hallway—revealing itself not as chance at all, but as something curated, or at least something that began that way.
