Page 151 of Dirty Hit
“Then I send everything,” she says. “I send the unblurred videos to the scouts. I send the alley tapes to the police. I send the videos of you laughing while you work to every reporter with a pulse. I send his parents every image of you fucking their son and blow up both your lives, and then I finish what I started and put him in the ground anyway.”
The room feels very small.
She tilts her head, watching my face closely. “So,” she says. “Choose. Your future, or his life. Your legacy, or your little pet.”
There’s a part of me, the old part, the trained part, that knows how to pretend. How to mask. How to say yes and mean no. How to survive. And there’s another part built on one single truth that has replaced every other rule in my head.
I never want to hurt Brendon.
My mother smiles as she watches me process. She thinks she knows the outcome—that I’ll choose the path she carved. Shethinks I’ll sacrifice the soft spot because that’s what she taught me to do.
This is what she always wanted: to force me into her shape. To make sure every choice runs through her hands first. To prove that nothing matters more than the work she carved into me with blades and whispered commands. Love is leverage, she’s said it a hundred times. I thought I finally understood that well enough to outplay her.
Apparently not.
“Time is ticking,” my mother says. “He won’t last much longer without medical attention, so choose.”
She’s right about one thing: if I call for help, and she hits send, everything burns. Not just my career. My freedom. My ability to touch him again without bars between us. His name. His family. All of it.
But she’s wrong about what I’m willing to sacrifice.
I breathe in slowly—the way I do before the snap, or before I slide a knife in.
“Okay,” I say.
Her eyes sharpen. “Okay,” she repeats. “Which is it?”
My throat works. I force myself to relax my hands, unclench my jaw, roll my shoulders like I’m conceding. “You win,” I say quietly. “You always do.”
Satisfaction flares in her gaze. “I knew you’d see sense. You are mine, after all.”
I rise from my knees slowly, careful not to jostle Brendon too much. His eyes are half open now, glazed and confused, trying to focus on me. His lips part, and a faint sound escapes him.
“Dom,” he rasps. “What…”
I ignore it, because I can’t afford my mother seeing what his voice does to me.
I stand fully, then take a step toward my mother and let my shoulders slump just enough to look defeated. I let my gazedrop, because she loves that, loves the visual of me bowing to her.
We’re close enough that I can smell her perfume; the same expensive floral shit she wore when she came to school plays, parent-teacher conferences, and the funerals of men she helped put in the ground. It makes my stomach churn.
Up close, I can see the lines at the corners of her mouth, the places where age has finally started to touch her, despite all her efforts. Behind me, I hear Brendon sputter my name again, soft and panicked; the sound slices through me.
I sink down in front of her, lowering myself with deliberate slowness—returning to my place. I’ve been kneeling at her feet since I was old enough to stand. My heart is steady, my mind is cold, and my hands don’t shake.
Behind me, I hear Brendon sputter again, struggling, probably trying to sit up. My mother hears it too, and she laughs softly.
“You see,” she murmurs. “He’s already trying to take you from me, even bleeding out. Pathetic.”
She keeps talking, because she always does when she thinks she’s won. She leans down slightly, voice turning lazy with satisfaction.
“You were always mine, Domenyk. You can play at rebellion, you can pretend you’ve grown teeth, you can pretend you can love something, but in the end, you always come back. That’s what you are. That’s what I made.”
Her fingers brush my skin. “You didn’t leave me another option,” I say softly.
“Life rarely does,” she says.
She doesn’t notice my hand move.
