Chapter Nineteen: The Choice That Broke Us

The gunshot didn’t sound the way I expected.

It wasn’t loud or dramatic. It didn’t echo the way movies pretend it does.

It was sharp. Final. Terrifyingly real.

For a split second, I didn’t know who had been hit. Pain didn’t bloom in my body, so my mind rejected the possibility that it was me. My sister screamed, a raw, broken sound that sliced through the chaos.

Dominic staggered.

Time cracked.

“No” I breathed, my voice tearing apart as I ran toward him.

Blood soaked his shirt, spreading fast and dark. He dropped to one knee, teeth clenched, refusing to fall even as his body betrayed him.

Selene laughed.

It wasn’t hysterical. It wasn’t loud.

It was pleased.

“You see?” she said softly. “You always choose wrong.”

Ryan tackled her from the side before she could raise the gun again. They crashed into a table, glass shattering everywhere. Alex reached Dominic at the same time I did, pressing his hands hard against the wound.

“Stay with me,” Alex ordered. “Stay with us.”

Dominic’s gaze found mine.

God help me it found mine.

“I told you,” he whispered. “I would ruin you.”

Tears blurred my vision. “Don’t you dare die.”

His lips twitched. “Still giving orders.”

We escaped by inches.

By luck. By violence. By men who refused to lose.

Ryan didn’t let Selene die.

That, somehow, felt worse.

When the police finally arrived called anonymously, carefully, too late it was Alex who spoke. Alex who controlled the narrative. Alex who ensured Selene was taken away screaming Dominic’s name, promising this wasn’t over.

Because with women like Selene, it never was.

The hospital smelled like antiseptic and fear.

I sat beside Dominic’s bed, my sister asleep on the couch behind me, wrapped in a blanket and shock. Ryan stood near the door, arms crossed, jaw tight. Alex spoke quietly with a doctor just outside the curtain.

Dominic looked smaller here.

Vulnerable.

Human.

I brushed my fingers over his hand, careful not to disturb the IVs. “You scared me,” I whispered.

His eyes opened slowly. “Good.”

I laughed weakly. “That’s not funny.”

“It means you care.”

The truth of that hit me harder than any bullet.

“You chose her,” I said softly. “You chose my sister.”

“I chose you,” he corrected. “And I’d do it again.”

Ryan shifted behind me. “You almost died.”

Dominic didn’t look away from me. “Worth it.”

Ryan swore and left the room.

The days that followed were… strange.

My sister moved in with a friend temporarily. She avoided Dominic entirely, her eyes filled with questions she wasn’t ready to ask. I didn’t push her. Trauma demanded patience.

Ryan withdrew in a way that scared me more than anger ever could. He watched me like I was already gone, like he was memorizing the shape of me before losing me.

Alex became my anchor.

He handled logistics. Legal fallout. Security. He slept on the couch outside my room without ever saying why.

One night, I found him there.

“You don’t have to guard me,” I said softly.

He looked up, exhaustion etched deep into his face. “I know.”

“Then why?”

“Because loving you quietly is the only way I survive this.”

My chest tightened. “Alex…”

“I don’t expect anything,” he said gently. “I just need to be here.”

Dominic was discharged a week later.

He tried to leave the city.

Tried.

I stopped him.

“You don’t get to disappear,” I said, standing in front of his car. “Not after everything.”

“This ends with me gone,” he replied. “That’s the only way you’re safe.”

“I don’t want safe,” I said. “I want truth.”

He looked at me for a long time.

Then he said something that changed everything.

“Selene wasn’t the beginning,” he said. “She was the aftermath.”

My breath caught. “Aftermath of what?”

“Of the thing I never told you,” he said quietly. “The thing that ties all three of us together.”

Behind him, Ryan and Alex froze.

And in that moment, I understood

This story wasn’t about forbidden desire.

It was about a past that had been waiting for me to step into it.

And once I did…

There would be no going back.