Page 54 of Dom 5: The Finale
She picked the glass back up and finished the rest of it in one swallow. Her throat worked overtime while she drank, and her hand shook more when she set it down than it had before. “You made me feel stupid,” she whispered.
“No,” I said. “You did that on your own.”
Her eyes shot to mine through the hot tears. “You don’t get to tell me how I feel.”
“I ain’t telling you how you feel. I’m telling you what happened.”
She stood up, pushed off the counter then and walked away from me, barefoot across the floor. She stopped near the terracedoors and wrapped her arms around herself again, with her shoulders curling in just enough to make her look smaller from behind. Out on the hills the darkness made it hard to see shit but the lights from the house glowed around her body and made the wine-colored dress look darker like rich blood.
“You know what I hate?” she asked without turning around. I didn’t answer. I let her keep talking. “I hate that I still would’ve took whatever you gave me. If tonight had gone the way I wanted,” she continued, in a low calmer tone in a way that was more dangerous than the crying had been, “if you touched me, if you kissed me, if you stayed here, I would’ve taken it. Even knowing it wasn’t enough. Even knowing you’d still go back to her.”
She finally turned around after that, and her face looked different now not in a softer way, but it was raw with real emotions and truth. She looked broken in a way that made her look older than she was right now.
“I hate that about myself,” she said. A woman finally saying the worst thing about herself out loud.
I walked toward her slowly, but not threatening her, just enough for her eyes to stay on me. She didn’t step back this time, and she didn’t try to run. She just stood there and let me stop right in front of her.
“You should,” I said with dark eyes.
Her mouth trembled. “You really are cruel.”
“Nah,” I said. “I’m finished.” I meant that shit. I probably would’ve let her live if she wasn’t so obsessed. With Victoria now having power, I couldn’t risk her making no moves on my family. She gave stalker vibes. She’d fuck around and allow her emotions to try to harm my child. She was a breach, a very high-risk breach and she had to go. It was no way around it.
Victoria let out one more shaky breath and looked past me toward the bar again where the pills now were, the rest of thewine bottles, and everything she had set up for a night that had already died before it began. Then she looked back at me.
“If I disappear,” she asked above a whisper, “would you even think about me again?”
That was the kind of question only somebody like Victoria would ask while standing in the middle of their own demise. “Not for long,” I told her the truth.
That answer gutted her. Something in her face just… emptied out. She didn’t cry harder after that nor did she yell, she didn’t throw the glass or nothing. She just got real still in a way that told me whatever fight she had left was finally slipping out of her. Then she walked back to the counter slow and steady but still graceful in that sad way beautiful women always seemed to be, even when they were falling apart. She reached for the bottle again, turned it in her hand, then unscrewed the cap and stared down into it for a second.
“Do you know what’s funny?” she asked, looking at the pills in her palm. “I used to tell myself if I ever got you alone like this, I’d make you love me.”
I stood a few feet behind her, close enough if I needed to be, but far enough to let her feel alone in the choice. “That was never going to happen Victoria.”
“No,” she whispered. “I know.”
She put two pills in her mouth, swallowed them dry and then she reached for her glass and poured more liquor. There was something about finally breaking that calmed people down when there was no more fight left. She drank a lot and then poured again while I watched emotionless. I needed the pills to do all the work, but I was prepared to suffocate her ass if I had to, but the scene needed truth in it. It needed enough of her own hand in it that no one looking later would question the shape of what happened. With the bottle already open and damn near gone from heavy drinking, the messages on her phone, thesmudged mascara, and isolation, it was too much even when you considered the pressure of her uncle being dead, her throne being too heavy, her private life being nonexistent, and the man she thought wanted her showing up only to strip the fantasy out of her body with his bare hands, all of that shit mattered.
Victoria looked over her shoulder at me after the killing the drink and gave me the saddest smile I’d seen on her all night. “You really weren’t lying,” she said.
“About what?”
“You would never belong to me.”
“No.”
She nodded, then took more pills and this time it was a few but not all. Then she drank again. By the time she set the glass down, her eyes were heavy, and sluggish while she began to move much slower. She looked at me like she wanted me to come hold her, and for a second I let her keep that hope and let her stand there in it just long enough. Then I finally walked over to her without affection, and I stood in front of her and took the pill bottle from her hand, shook more into my palm, and held them there between us. She knew what time it was. I’m sure I looked like a monster right now and I was. She knew I was a killer.
She looked down at them first, then back up at me, and the realization that showed on her face then was colder than anything other expression she had all night. “This is how it ends?” she whispered.
“This is how it has to.”
She didn’t move, she just kept looking at the pills in my hand, breathing slower now, with tears drying in uneven lines down her face.
“You really hate me,” she said.
“No, I don’t.” That was the truth. “I just love my family more than I ever could’ve cared about you.”
