With a shake of her head, Dom dispelled the shock from her gaze and focused back on the conversation at hand. “When we were kids, your family spent plenty of summers here.”
“I remember that… now.” I cleared my throat.
“Right. Well when your dad was still around, those trips were much more… family-oriented. But after he and my mother passed, Maura and Isaac were left to their own devices, and things started to turn. You guys didn’t spend whole summers anymore — just drove in when Maura felt like partying.”
Her words jogged blurs of memory in my head. Late night parties, strange adults in fancy clothes, shiny trays full of ‘medicine.’
Dom swallowed, gaze still trained on me. “I was a teenager already by the time the worst of it was happening. But you weremaybe twelve at the height of it? Too young to be cleaning up after the adults who were supposed to be taking care of you.”
“Story of my fucking life,” I scoffed, folding my arms against my chest.
Talking about that period, I could feel why my brain had blocked out so many of the memories. Even the little flashes I could remember were enough to make my chest tight.
Dom shook her head. “I did the best I could to keep you away from it when I was home. But I didn’t always know when you were coming, and I wasn’t home often if I could help it. I used to kill a lot of time at the old gym in Valemont. It was one of the few places that was open late around here.”
“Can’t say I blame you,” I muttered. If Maura was bad, I was willing to bet that Isaac was a different kind of hell entirely. But Dom’s gaze darkened.
“I do,” she grumbled, shaking her head. “The last time I saw you was one of those nights. I don’t even know what time I got home — well past midnight, probably. I was hoping I could just sneak back up to my room and avoid Isaac for the night. But then I saw Maura passed out on the couch…”
Her lip curled at the thought. “I figured if she couldn’t be bothered to look after her kid, the least I could do was pop in upstairs and make sure that you were alright. But when I walked upstairs, that’s when I heard his voice.”
“Who?” I furrowed my brow, shifting in my seat.
“Keith Cortes... Gabriel’s father.”
A chill coursed through me, forcing my spine straighter. “Keith? Gabe barely even knew him. How is that possible?”
“I know.” Dom frowned. “I walked upstairs, and when I heard his voice coming from your room, I knew that something was wrong. I tried the door, but it was locked, and I could hear you crying. So… I knocked the door in…”
I blinked, my head tilting to the side as I tried to wrap my head around what she was implying. The sound of splintering wood fresh in my mind.
She drew in a deep, wavering breath as her fingers pressed harder into the countertop. “By the time I’d gotten into the room, he’d gotten close to… I’m sure you saw too much. But I don’t think he touched you before I got there.”
Those words settled at the pit of my stomach like a lead weight.
I don’t remember any of this.
“Not that I cared,” Dom’s voice dropped to a snarl. “I knew what he was going to do. And I wouldn’t let it happen. Not so long as I was breathing…”
That part I remembered clearly: the blood on her face, my terrifying exit from the house, Maura’s fury.
My head shook, the disgust of it all hitting me at once.Gabe’s father…
When we had first started dating, Gabriel and I had bonded over the grief of losing our dads. But the entire time, the man Gabe idolized had been a fucking pedophile?
And now Gabriel was heading a sex trafficking ring.Like father, like son.
But I wasn’t sure what was harder to believe: that I’d been his target, or that Dom had killed for me.
“You were fifteen.” I stammered, locking onto her icy blue gaze. “You killed a man at fifteen? How did you not land in prison?”
As the question left my lips, two shadows filled the doorway: Spencer and Leo, finally joining the land of the living.
Dom’s gaze flicked from them back to me, raising her eyebrow in question.
I nodded, muttering under my breath. “They can know.”
Taking another deep breath, Dom waited for them to settle at the counter. “He needed to pay for what he did to you. So I made him pay. I thought I would go to prison too, but I just couldn’t stop myself. And then, they saved me… The Oracle.”
