Page 63 of Where He Ended

“It's Dominic, isn't it?” I say it and I instantly realize I'm right. I pull at my seatbelt, ignoring how my wrists burn as I lean towards Vahn. “Don't you dare touch him! Leave him out of this, he's suffered enough!”

His eyes widen. He laughs with hollow surprise. “You thinkhe'sthe one who suffered? Him, not me, the one who let him stay under my own roof, allowed him topoisonmy own son with his ideas of what it means to be worth something?” He hunches towards me in the small space, shadows darkening him from his brow to his twisted smile. “Did you know my sister thought about getting an abortion when she found out she was pregnant with him?”

I shake my head side to side. I have no words.

“She came to me. We were always close. She had no one else to talk to about it, certainly not Silas. She said the pregnancy was an accident. I knew she was in love with your father and it was pathetic. Joseph left a week before she found out she was knocked up, you know. I told my sister that the man she loved was never going to come back to her, and that she should embrace the future in her hands at that moment, instead of the one that would never be.”

Images swim through my mind. All of them involving Annie's cold expression as she watched her own son. She'd looked at him with distaste when he was young, and she looks at him the same way now.

Vahn links his hands together, watching me over the top. “It's my fault that Dominic exists. It's time to take responsibility for that.”

He's going to kill him.

I know it in my bones.

“Please,” I sob, finding the source of my voice. “Please, please, you can't do this!” I start to scream, hoping whoever's flying the helicopter will hear me over the blades and just dosomething.Even crashing us into the ground would be fine. It'd prevent Vahn from meeting up with Dominic and ending his life.

He unclips himself and comes my way. From his pocket he removes a rag and loops it around my face, gagging me with it. As he ties the rag firmly, his fingers run over my hair. They touch the short ends. He rubs them between his fingers and it makes my skin crawl.

When he sits back down, I roar into the thick rag.

I scream until my throat is raw.

I scream until I lose my voice.

Vahn watches me through it all. I search his face, hoping to see a sign of emotion – of fucking humanity. It never comes.