The flash drive rested in her hand, icy as a secret buried too long.
Not merely cold—no, it was glacial, like it had slumbered in darkness, waiting for her touch to bring it back to life. Elena gazed at it in silence, as if trying to decipher the soul it carried. Its weight was far heavier than plastic and metal had any right to be. This wasn't just data. It vibrated faintly, like a living thing. Like breath trapped in code. Memory. Hurt. Truth. Her skin tingled where it made contact.
She eased it into Dominic's laptop, fingers trembling. The surrounding room was too still, too listening. Her heart pounded in a frantic rhythm, like it knew the storm she was about to call forth.
Then, a soft electronic chime.
A folder appeared on the screen.
CONFIDENTIAL – LEGACY
The title alone made her stomach turn. Legacy. Dominic's favorite word. His fortress and his weapon.
Inside the folder were dozens of files—videos, audio, digital documents. Page after page filled with names she'd never heard before: therapists, lawyers, investigators. Sealed cases, coded numbers, sessions long since closed. Some of it bore official seals. Some of it had been scorched by censorship. But all of it bled the same name.
Dominic.
Elena hesitated. Then clicked.
The first video was rough, grainy. A hospital surveillance feed blinked to life.
There he was. Dominic—but not the man she knew. This was a boy still wearing his pain like fresh skin. Nineteen, maybe. His body wrapped in bandages, face bruised beyond recognition. One eye was swollen shut. He stood beside a bed like a soldier standing on a post after a battle.
Beyond the glass pane of the observation room, a man paced like a caged predator. A suit cut sharp as glass. Jaw set like stone.
Elena's breath caught.
Jonathan Blackwell.
His voice thundered through the speakers: "HE DID THIS TO HIMSELF!".
She flinched.
"He's lying! He's always lying!"
A nurse entered the frame, stepping between the furious and the fragile, shielding the boy.
The video stopped.
Elena slumped back, stunned. Her world had shifted.
What had she just witnessed?
She opened another file.
A therapy room. Clinical. Remote. A camera watched without care, capturing a still-young Dominic. Seventeen, maybe. But older in his silence.
Therapist: "You're safe here, Dominic."
Dominic: "She's gone now. But the echo's still here."
He tapped his temple.
Therapist: "You said she tried to protect you."
Dominic: "She tried... But he made her believe pain meant love. That it was the only way to keep someone close. And she... she passed that on to me."
His voice broke on the last word.
Elena stopped the playback. The still frame of his face—young, haunted, bracing against a past too sharp to forget—froze her.
This wasn't the man who commanded boardrooms like battlefields. This wasn't the devil from whispered rumors.
This was a child, broken before he ever stood a chance.
His cruelty wasn't born from power.
It was carved from fear.
She scrolled down. Clicked again.
Marissa.mp4
Her heart beat faster. She hovered, then gave in.
The video opened to a bedroom. Quiet. Dimly lit. Captured from a high shelf—secret, watchful.
Dominic stood mid-argument with Marissa. But his fury was restrained. His hands were loose. His voice low. His face drawn, but not unkind.
Marissa: "You don't own me, Dominic."
Dominic: "You agreed to the terms."
Marissa: "I signed a contract. Not my soul."
He turned, hands in his hair, fatigue woven into every line of his body.
Marissa: "I'm leaving. And if you try to stop me—"
She pointed, defiance strong in her stance.
Dominic: "Then what? Another lie?"
Marissa: "I'll do what I must."
She left the frame.
No slaps. No shouts. Just two people trying to escape a cage they'd built together.
Elena exhaled. Her arms had gone stiff.
The photos Lena showed her. The insinuations. The supposed death.
But what if it wasn't true?
What if she'd been used—again—but this time by those playing the victim?
She opened another file.
Investigation Summary.pdf
Her eyes scanned the lines:
Marissa's overdose—accidental.
Dominic—protective, not criminal.
Payouts to media. Legal pressure on gossip columns.
Not to save himself. But to protect her name.
And then, in red:
Subject shows deep-rooted compulsions for control, trauma-induced. There is no known history of physical aggression.
The room spun gently.
Dominic wasn't innocent. But he wasn't a monster either.
Maybe he had simply done what he should to survive.
Maybe every blade in him was a shield.
And maybe now… they'd cut her, too.
She clutched the flash drive like it was her last lifeline.
"I don't know how to stop him," she whispered.
The door creaked.
She froze.
Footsteps. Slow. Deliberate.
Dominic.
Too early.
Too soon.
She slammed the laptop shut, pulled the flash drive free, and tucked it beneath her blouse.
He entered soundlessly, a phantom cloaked in elegance.
"Curiosity again?" he asked.
His voice was velvet dragged over broken glass—beautiful, but dangerous.
Elena tried to smile. Her pulse betrayed her. "Just... wanted to know more about you."
He tilted his head. Studying. Peering into her.
"You're lying," he murmured. "But... this time, I'll allow it.
The softness in his voice struck her harder than steel.
His gaze lowered, not cold but unreadable. And for the briefest moment, something inside him trembled.
He stepped closer, then paused.
"There are parts of me you shouldn't try to understand," he said. "Because if you do, you'll either run… or become like me."
She swallowed hard.
"I'm not afraid of your pain," she said. "I've lived with worse."
A flicker. A flinch. Barely there—but there.
"You think that makes us the same?"
"No," she answered. "It makes us cellmates in the same prison."
Silence stretched between them. Tense. Intimate. Devastating.
And then, for just a breath, the armor slipped.
Beneath it—Dominic, not as a man, but a boy who never knew love that didn't hurt.
The air shifted.
Buzz..
His phone lit up.
His expression hardened. He answered briefly, then held the screen out to her.
"We have a problem."
A message. Forwarded.
Photos.
Dominic. Marissa.
And Elena, Clear as day—speaking to Lena.
Her chest collapsed.
"This wasn't a mistake," Dominic said. His voice cut like winter.
"This… was betrayal."
Her mouth parted. "No—"
"You lied," he continued. "And now the world will see exactly where your loyalties lie."
He stepped toward her.
And at that moment, Elena understood:
He wasn't trying to cage her anymore.
He was preparing to erase her.
The storm hadn't broken.
But it hovered.
She felt it in her ribs. In the trembling flash drive hidden against her skin. In Dominic's eyes—no longer tender, no longer curious.
Now, he looked at her like a liability.
She had glimpsed the truth beneath the throne.
And now?
She had to live long enough to outrun it.