Chapter 50 FAMILY SECRETS
Ava's POV
Nobody moved.
That was the thing that struck me most, it was just four people standing in that warehouse and not a single one of us moved for what felt like a full minute, just the sound of Marcus's ragged breathing and the distant sound of water somewhere outside.
Dominic was still standing in the center of the space and the light was wrong around him, shifting slightly even though nothing was casting shadows, his eyes still that strange molten gold that I had never seen before tonight and couldn't stop staring at now.
My father had the gun still raised but his hand was shaking.
"Put it down," Dominic said and his voice was calm in a way that was more frightening than anger would have been, calm the way a man is calm when he already knows exactly how something ends.
"You stay back," my father said, his eyes darting between Dominic and me, "Ava, come to me right now."
I didn't move and he looked at me like that broke something in him.
"Ava, please."
"You just told me you've been working with the man who shot me," I said and my voice came out steadier than I expected it to, "you don't get to say please to me right now."
His jaw tightened and he lowered the gun slightly, not putting it away but lowering it, and something in the room shifted because of that small movement.
Dominic's eyes slowly returned to blue and the shadows settled and he looked like himself again except that I now knew what was underneath and I couldn't unknow it.
Adrian's car pulled up outside, I could hear the engine, and then the sound of sirens in the distance getting closer fast because Adrian had clearly made the call.
My father heard it too and his face changed.
"There are things you don't know," he said quickly, moving toward me, "about what he is, about what your mother was, about what you are."
"Then tell me," I said, standing my ground even as he came closer, "tell me right now."
"I can't, not here, not like this," he grabbed my arm and his grip was urgent but not violent, "I left to protect you both, not because I stopped loving you, I need you to understand that."
"You left when I was eight years old," I said and my voice cracked on that and I hated it, "you left and Mom got sick and I ended up in a club at twenty three selling myself to survive and none of that was protection."
He flinched like I had hit him and his hand fell away from my arm.
The sirens were close now, maybe a block away, the blue and red light starting to bleed through the dirty warehouse windows, and my father looked at Dominic once more with something complicated in his expression that wasn't quite hatred and wasn't quite fear but was somewhere painful between the two.
"She's changing already," he said to Dominic like I wasn't standing right there, "you know what that means."
"I know what it means," Dominic said quietly.
"Then you know what comes next."
Two police cars pulled up outside and the doors were already opening and I turned toward the sound for just one second and when I turned back my father was gone, just the empty space where he had been standing and the warehouse door on the far side still swinging on its hinges.
The police came in fast and Marcus started shouting immediately about wanting a lawyer and Adrian was right behind them talking to someone in a suit who looked like a detective and for the next hour everything was noise and questions and forms and I answered everything on autopilot because my brain had stopped processing anything properly around the time Dominic's eyes turned gold.
They took Marcus in handcuffs and he looked at me as they walked him past and smiled with his swollen bloody mouth and said nothing which was somehow worse than if he had said something.
Dominic stood close to me the entire time, not touching, just there, and I was grateful for it and angry about it simultaneously.
By the time we got back to the car the sun was fully up and the city was waking around us, people heading to work and buying coffee like it was a normal morning, and I sat in the back seat and looked out the window and tried to locate my own feelings somewhere inside all the noise but nothing was happening. It all just happened so fast and all of it was just too much to process.
Adrian drove and said nothing because he was good at reading rooms and this room was very clearly do not speak.
Twenty minutes later we were back at the penthouse and Isabella was asleep on the couch with a blanket over her and I envied her that completely.
I went to the bedroom and sat on the end of the bed and Dominic came in after me and closed the door and we looked at each other.
"Ask me," he said.
"I don't even know where to start," I said honestly.
He came and sat next to me and his hands rested on his knees and he looked at the floor for a moment like he was deciding something and then he looked up at me.
"What you saw tonight was real," he said, "I am what your father said I am."
"And what exactly is that."
"Something that has existed alongside humans for a very long time," he said, "something your bloodline has been connected to for longer than either of us knew when this started."
I stared at him and he held my gaze without looking away which I respected even though it terrified me.
"My father said my mother was changing," I said, "he said that's why she got sick."
Something moved behind Dominic's eyes and he didn't answer right away and that pause told me more than words would have.
"We'll talk about your mother," he said carefully, "but not tonight."
"Dominic."
"Not tonight, Ava," his voice was low and final, "you've had enough for one night."
I wanted to push and I would push tomorrow but right now my body was exhausted in a way that went past physical and I didn't have the energy to fight him on it.
He reached out and touched my face slowly, his thumb against my cheekbone, and I leaned into it before I could decide not to.
"You didn't run," he said quietly, "in the warehouse when you saw me, you didn't run."
"I almost did," I admitted.
"But you didn't."
He kissed me then, slow and careful, and I kissed him back and it felt different now, heavier, like we were both aware of something we hadn't been aware of before tonight and neither of us knew quite what to do with it yet.
We lay down together still dressed and I fell asleep with his hand in my hair and his heartbeat steady under my ear and I didn't dream about anything.
I woke up alone.
The bed was cold on his side which meant he had been up for a while and when I found him he was in the living room on the phone, jacket on, fully dressed, looking like someone had handed him a crisis while I was sleeping.
He hung up when he saw me.
"Marcus is being extradited," he said, "financial crimes in London, they want him there for prosecution and they want my testimony."
"When?" I asked almost immediately
"We leave in two days." I heard him say and ilooked at him and he looked back at me and I already knew what I was going to say.
"I'm coming," I said.
He didn't argue and honestly that told me something too, that he wanted me close, that whatever was coming he didn't want distance between us for it.
"Two days," he said and turned back to his phone.
I went to make coffee and Adrian appeared in the kitchen doorway already holding a mug and he looked at me with his usual calm eyes except this morning there was something else there underneath it, something cautious.
"He'll be alright," Adrian said quietly.
"I know," I said, "it's me I'm not sure about." I added, looking at him
Adrian nodded slowly like that was a fair answer and handed me his mug without me asking, and I took it and stood at the counter looking out at the city in the early morning light and thought about gold eyes and shadows moving and a father I hadn't seen in fifteen years telling me I was already changing.
I pressed my fingers to my shoulder where the mark was and felt nothing unusual, just skin.
But Dominic's voice from the warehouse was still in my head.