Chapter 6: Confessions in the Dark
The streetlamp outside Dominic’s window painted a pale stripe across the floor, stopping just short of the bed. Catalina slept beside him, her breathing shallow and uneven. She had drifted off maybe an hour ago, after the last muffured laugh from downstairs had faded and the house fell into a watchful silence. He lay on his back, one arm behind his head, staring at the ceiling’s shadows. The weight of her along his side was the only real thing in the dark.
He could feel the heat of her through the blanket between them. He knew every shift, every hitched breath. She was dreaming. Her fingers, resting near his forearm, twitched.
Dominic’s own mind was a cracked engine, racing and going nowhere. The word from the stick—PREGNANT—blinked in his thoughts like a faulty neon sign. He saw it on the sink. He saw it in the dark behind his eyelids. He tried to imagine a shape, a face, a future. He came up against a wall of pure static.
He looked at her profile, faintly lit by the sliver of external light. The elegant line of her nose, the stubborn set of her jaw even in sleep. He had memorized her in sunlight, in lamplight, in the harsh glow of a garage fluorescents. He had memorized other faces too, in fleeting, frantic moments in stranger’s beds or against alley walls.
The confession climbed his throat like bile. It was a truth so ugly he’d choked on it for years. But the darkness and the terrible, shared truth sleeping next to him squeezed it out.
“I can’t remember their names,” he whispered to the ceiling, his voice a raw scrape in the quiet room.
Catalina’s breathing didn’t change. She was still asleep.
“The women,” he continued, as if giving testimony to the shadows. “I pick the ones that look nothing like you. Taller. Blonder. Louder. It never matters.” He swallowed, the sound loud in his ears. “I close my eyes and it’s just… you. Every time. I try to drown you out with them, and I just end up choking on your name.”
He turned his head on the pillow to look at her. A strand of dark hair stuck to her slightly parted lips. He had the insane urge to brush it away. He didn’t move.
“I say it,” he murmured, the shame hot and metallic in his mouth. “When I… finish. I whisper ‘Cat.’ Every goddamn time. Like some fucked-up prayer.”
He expected her to stir, to wake and recoil. She slept on, trapped in her own bad dreams. He felt exposed and foolish, his secret hanging in the air, unheard. Yet saying it aloud, even to her sleeping form, had punctured something. A strange, sick relief bled into the shame.
He rolled onto his side, facing her. He studied the faint, healing lines on her forearm where the sleeve had ridden up. A ledger of pain he couldn’t share. His own failing was quieter, dirtier. A betrayal she hadn’t even witnessed.
“I’m sorry,” he breathed, the words finally finding their target. Not for the love, which was as intrinsic as his own heartbeat, but for the clumsiness of his escape from it. For the stupid, brutal ways he’d tried to carve her out of his skin.
He must have slept, because the next thing he knew, the pale stripe on the floor had softened into the gray wash of pre-dawn. Catalina was awake. He knew it from the quality of her stillness. Her eyes were open, fixed on the same patch of ceiling he’d been talking to hours before.
“You talk in your sleep,” she said quietly, her voice husky from sleep and crying.
Dominic went still. He didn’t reply.
“You said my name,” she added. She turned her head to look at him. In the dim light, her eyes were dark pools, unreadable. “You said, ‘Every goddamn time.’”
He held her gaze, caught. He had no defense.
“I know,” she said simply, turning back to the ceiling. “I hear you come home. I hear the shower after. I know what it means.” She let out a long, slow breath. “I do the same thing, Dom. Not with people. With the driving. With the cutting. Trying to outrun the feeling. Trying to feel something else, anything else, for just five fucking minutes.”
The admission hung between them, a twin to his own. Two sides of the same ruined coin.
“It doesn’t work,” he said.
“No,” she agreed softly. “It doesn’t.”
They lay there as the room grew incrementally lighter, the details of the dresser, the chair, the framed photo of their father’s car coming into focus. The world was reasserting itself, ordinary and relentless.
“What do we do today?” Catalina asked, the question practical and terrifying.
Dominic thought about it. He thought about the crew, about Brian’s easy smile, about Mia’s oblivious cheer. He thought about the garage, the smell of gasoline and grease, the solid certainty of tools in his hands. He thought about the life they’d built around this secret, a honeycomb of lies holding the weight of their truth.
“We get up,” he said finally, his voice gravel. “We make breakfast. We take Mina to the park.”
Catalina was silent for a long moment. Then she nodded, a small, sharp movement. “Okay.”
It was a plan. The smallest of plans. It didn’t solve the pregnancy. It didn’t heal the cuts or erase the whispered names in the dark. But it was a next step. A shared direction.
The door to the bedroom creaked open a fraction, and a small, sleepy face peeked in. Mina, her dark hair a tangled mess, clutched a worn stuffed rabbit.
“Mama? Daddy?”
Catalina sat up quickly, pulling the blanket up to her chest. Dominic didn’t move from his position facing her.
“Hey, mija,” Catalina said, her voice forcibly bright. “You’re up early.”
Mina pushed the door open and padded in, climbing onto the bed with the unselfconscious certainty of a two-year-old. She wormed her way between them, a warm, small barrier. She smelled of sleep and baby shampoo.
“I dreamed ‘bout ducks,” Mina announced, settling her head on Dominic’s pillow.
“Yeah?” Dominic rumbled, his arm automatically curling around her small form.
“Big yellow ones,” she confirmed, yawning. She looked from one parent to the other, her big brown eyes taking in the unusual circumstance. “You sleep here, Daddy?”
“Yeah,” he said, his throat tight. “I slept here.”
Mina seemed to accept this. She snuggled deeper, her back against Dominic’s chest, her feet pressing into Catalina’s side. Catalina looked down at their daughter, then her eyes lifted to meet Dominic’s over the top of Mina’s head.
A silent communication passed between them, wired through years of twin-like intuition and recent, shattering intimacy. This. We do this. For her.
“Ducks, huh?” Catalina said, smoothing Mina’s hair. “Maybe we can go feed the ducks later.”
Mina smiled, content. The mundane miracle of her, here and now, was an anchor. The future with its impossible choices loomed on the horizon, a storm cloud. But for this moment, in the quiet morning light with their child between them, they could pretend to be just a mother and a father, planning a day at the park.
Dominic watched Catalina’s hand stroke Mina’s hair. He saw the pale scars on her wrist, the faint shadows under her eyes. He saw the fierce, fragile love in her gaze as she looked at their daughter. It was the same love, he knew, that she locked away for him. A love that had no place to live except in the dark, in whispered confessions, and in the terrible, burgeoning fact of a new life growing inside her.
The sun was fully up now, golden and ordinary, filling the room. It was time to get up. To make breakfast. To build another day on top of the fault line.
The morning sun felt like an accusation, too bright and full of ordinary promise. Catalina slipped from Dominic’s bed, leaving him and Mina in a tangle of sleep-damp sheets. She moved quietly down the hall, the old floorboards familiar beneath her feet, each step taking her further from the temporary peace of his room. The house was silent except for the low hum of the refrigerator and the faint sizzle of something cooking downstairs.
The smell of frying bacon and coffee hit her halfway down, a comforting scent that now churned her stomach. She paused on the bottom step, gripping the banister. From the kitchen doorway, she saw Mia at the stove, her back turned, humming softly along to a radio. The scene was so normal it felt like a mockery.
Catalina took a steadying breath and walked in. “Hey. Need a hand?”
Mia jumped, turning with a spatula in hand. “Shit, Cat. You scared me.” She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. There was a tension in her shoulders, a carefulness in her movements as she flipped the bacon. “You’re up early. Or… late?” Her gaze flicked over Catalina, taking in her rumpled clothes from yesterday.
“Couldn’t sleep,” Catalina said, her voice rough. She busied herself getting a mug, her back to her sister. The coffee pot felt heavy in her hand.
“Where’s Dom?” Mia asked casually, too casually. The bacon popped in the pan.
“Still upstairs. With Mina.” Catalina poured the coffee, watching the black liquid swirl. Her hands were surprisingly steady.
Silence settled between them, thick and loaded. Only the sounds of cooking filled the kitchen. Catalina leaned against the counter, sipping the bitter coffee, waiting for the other shoe to drop. She could feel it coming, a pressure change in the room.
Mia turned the burner off. She didn’t face Catalina, speaking to the window over the sink. “Can I ask you a question, Cat?”
“Sure,” Catalina said, the word dry in her mouth.
Mia turned around slowly. Her face was pale, her knuckles white where she gripped the spatula handle. “Tell me the truth.” Her voice was low, trembling slightly. “About Mina’s father. Is Dom… our brother, your twin… is he her father?”
The air vanished from the room. Catalina’s coffee cup halted halfway to her lips. All the practiced denials, the evasions she and Dom had constructed over three years, turned to ash on her tongue. She looked at her little sister’s face, saw the dread and the desperate hope for a different answer there, and knew the game was over.
She set the mug down softly on the counter. The ceramic click was deafening. She looked Mia directly in the eyes, all her defenses gone, leaving only a bleak, exhausted truth.
“Yes,” Catalina whispered.
For a second, Mia just stared, her mouth slightly open as if the word hadn’t fully computed. Then her face shattered. The spatula clattered to the floor.
“You both are sick!” The scream tore from Mia’s throat, raw and piercing. She backed away, hitting the edge of the sink. Her eyes were wide with a horrified, tearless shock. “I want nothing to do with you anymore. I move out. Today. I’m moving in with Brian.”
She shoved past Catalina, a sob finally breaking loose as she fled the kitchen. Her footsteps pounded up the stairs. A door slammed shut, the sound echoing through the suddenly hollow house.
Catalina stood perfectly still. The smell of burnt bacon began to curl from the forgotten pan. From upstairs, she could hear the muffled, frantic sounds of drawers opening and closing, of things being thrown into a bag.
A wave of nausea, sudden and violent, rose up from her gut. It was different from the morning sickness that had been flickering at the edges of her awareness. This was a sharp, sickening lurch of pure loss. She stumbled to the sink, gripping the cool stainless steel edge as her body convulsed.
Nothing came up but a thin, acidic bile. She spat, her eyes watering. The shaking started in her hands, a fine tremor that spread up her arms and into her core. She looked at the back door, at the sun-drenched yard beyond. The fault line had finally ruptured, and she was standing alone in the wreckage.
The porcelain of the sink was cool and hard against her forehead. Catalina stayed there, breathing in the scent of burnt pork and her own sour failure, until the shaky tremors in her legs solidified. She turned the faucet, splashing cold water on her face. The droplets tracked through the salt of earlier tears like new, indifferent paths.
A garbage bag appeared from under the sink. She moved on autopilot, dumping the blackened bacon and grease into it, knotting the plastic top with a sharp, efficient twist. She scrubbed the pan, the wire brush scraping away the evidence of the interrupted morning. The clatter of the pan in the drying rack was the only sound besides the rushing in her ears.
Footsteps descended the stairs, slow and heavy.
Dominic appeared in the kitchen doorway, his big frame filling the space. He held Mina on his hip, her face smooshed sleepily against his shoulder. He took in the scene: the sterile clean counter, the single cold mug of coffee, Catalina’s rigid back facing him. His eyes scanned the room for Mia. “Where’s—”
“She knows,” Catalina said, her voice a low, monotone hum. She didn’t turn around. She kept wiping the already-dry counter with a blue dishcloth, her movements tight and circular. “Mia knows. She knows that you are Mina’s father.”
Dominic’s hand on Mina’s back went still. He said nothing.
Catalina finally looked at him over her shoulder. Her face was a closed door. “She called us sick.” The word landed between them with the dull thud of a judged gavel. “And that she is moving out. Moving in with Brian.”
Mina, picking up the static in the air, lifted her head. “Auntie Mia?”
Dominic absorbed the information. His gaze flicked to the ceiling, toward the sound of drawers slamming shut above them. A muscle jumped in his jaw. He shifted Mina’s weight, his other hand coming up to cradle her head almost protectively. “Did you…”
“I told her the truth,” Catalina interrupted, throwing the dishcloth into the sink. It landed with a wet slap. “She looked at me and asked. I couldn’t lie to her face anymore. What was I supposed to do, Dom? Give her another story about a sailor who never came back from sea?”
The bitterness in her voice was acidic. He flinched.
“Okay,” he said softly, not to her, but to the situation. It was his default, his way of claiming control when the world was fracturing. “Okay.” He looked down at Mina, then back at Catalina. “We need to talk to Brian. Before she does.”
Catalina barked a short, sharp laugh. “To do what? Give him a heads-up that his new roommate’s siblings are committing a felony of the heart? Warn him we’re contagious?” She walked to the kitchen table and braced her hands on the back of a chair. The wood groaned. “It’s over.The family act. It’s done.”
Mia thundered down the stairs then, a bulky duffel bag slung over her shoulder, a suitcase bouncing behind her. Her eyes were red-rimmed and furious. She didn’t look at either of them as she dragged her luggage toward the front door.
“Mia,” Dominic said, his voice a command. He took a step forward.
“Don’t,” Mia hissed, spinning to face him. The hatred in her gaze was a physical force. “Don’t you say one word to me.You liar. Both of you.” Her eyes cut to Catalina, full of a pain that looked like it might actually kill her. “My whole life. You let me love her.” She jerked her chin toward Mina. “You made me an accomplice.”
“You are her aunt,” Catalina said, finding her voice, though it was cracked. “That love is real.”
“It’s built on a sewer!” Mia screamed, the suitcase tipping over. She left it. She hefted the duffel bag higher, her breath coming in ragged gasps. “I’m telling Brian everything. And then I’m going to the police. Because this… this is wrong. It’s a crime.”
The word ‘police’ cut through the domestic tension like a shiv. Dominic’s posture shifted, subtly but completely. The protective curl around Mina became something more defensive, a fighter’s stance. The atmosphere changed from one of familial implosion to something with legal, concrete consequences.
“Mia,” he said, and this time his voice was different.Low. Calm. Utterly devoid of brotherly warmth. It was the voice he used on the street, right before a deal went bad. “You don’t want to do that.”
“Watch me,” she spat, parroting his own words from the night before with venomous accuracy.
She yanked the front door open. Morning sunlight poured in, outlining her in a blinding halo. She didn’t look back. The door slammed shut with a finality that shook the walls.
In the ringing silence, Mina began to cry, confused by the noise and the palpable dread now choking the house. Dominic hushed her, bouncing her gently, but his eyes were locked with Catalina’s.
The wreckage was no longer just emotional. It had a street address now, and it was heading straight for an FBI agent.
The slam of the front door still seemed to vibrate in the floorboards. Mina’s confused cries echoed in the suddenly cavernous kitchen. Dominic stood frozen, the threat his sister had hurled hanging in the air like gun smoke.
“Police,” Catalina whispered, the word a dry rustle.
It acted like a trigger. Dominic moved. He crossed the space between them in two strides and gently transferred Mina into Catalina’s arms. “Hold her,” he said, his voice low and stripped of all inflection.
Catalina accepted their daughter’s weight, clinging to the solid, warm reality of her. She watched, numb, as Dominic turned and took the stairs two at a time. His footsteps were heavy, purposeful, pounding through the ceiling above.
He was in their rooms for less than three minutes. She heard the sharp rasp of zippers, the thud of a duffel bag hitting a floor, drawers opening and shutting with violent efficiency. He wasn’t deliberating. He was executing.
He reappeared on the stairs, a large black duffel in each hand, a smaller backpack slung over his shoulder. He dropped them at the foot of the stairs with a solid thump that made the pictures on the wall rattle.
“What are you doing?” Catalina asked, her voice barely audible over Mina’s subsiding whimpers.
Dominic didn’t answer. He walked past her into the living room. He opened the false panel at the bottom of the bookshelf, the one she pretended not to know about. He pulled out a metal lockbox and a thick, sealed envelope stuffed with cash. He tucked the envelope into his waistband and slammed the box onto the coffee table.
“Dom.”
He flipped the latches on the box. Inside, nestled in foam, were two handguns, boxes of ammunition, and several passports. He took one of the pistols, checked the magazine with a practiced click-clack, and tucked it into the back of his jeans. He tossed a passport to her. It landed on the couch beside her.
She looked at it. It was a Canadian passport. Her picture. The name was different.
“We’re leaving,” he said, finally meeting her eyes. His gaze was like polished stone.
“Right now?”
“Right now.” He picked up the smaller backpack and began walking toward the kitchen, toward the back door.
“Where?” The question was a plea.
He stopped, his hand on the knob. He didn’t turn around. His shoulders were a tense line under his white t-shirt. “Somewhere Mia won’t think to look. Somewhere they can’t just knock on the door.”
He pushed the door open. The morning light streamed in, too cheerful for the moment. He walked out into the yard, toward the detached garage where the cars slept.
Catalina stood in the middle of their broken home, Mina heavy on her hip, the foreign passport cold on the couch. She heard the garage door groan open on its tracks. Then she heard the deep, guttural roar of an engine coming to life. Not just any engine. The unmistakable thunder of the Charger.
He was taking the ’70 Daytona. The car was a part of him, an extension of his will. It meant he wasn’t planning a quiet, hidden drive. He was planning an escape.
She moved then. She ran upstairs, her breath coming in sharp gasps. In her room, she saw the open, half-empty drawers. He had packed for her. Practical clothes, jeans, sweatshirts. On her dresser, he’d left out her toothbrush, Mina’s favorite stuffed rabbit. He had thought of everything, and the thoroughness of it terrified her.
She grabbed the rabbit and the toothbrush. She looked at the photo on her nightstand—a picture of the three of them, her, Dom, and a newborn Mina, taken before the lies had fully hardened. She left it there.
When she came back down, Dominic was loading the last bag into the Charger’s trunk. The car’s sleek, black form crouched in the driveway like a predatory animal, its engine rumbling with a low, impatient growl.
He saw her standing in the doorway. “Get in.”
She didn’t move. “The crew. Brian… what do we tell them?”
“Nothing.” He walked toward her, stopping a foot away. The smell of gasoline and his own sweat clung to him. “We tell them nothing. We disappear.”
“They’ll come looking.”
“Let them look.” He reached past her, into the house, and flipped the deadbolt on the front door. It locked with a final, heavy click. “Get in the car, Catalina.”
She walked to the passenger side, her legs unsteady. She buckled Mina into the car seat already installed in the back, her fingers fumbling with the straps. She slid into the passenger seat, the worn leather cool against her skin. The door shut with a vault-like solidity.
Dominic got in beside her, filling the space. He turned the key, and the engine’s idle deepened to a powerful vibration that thrummed through the entire frame of the car. He pulled a baseball cap low over his eyes and put the car in gear.
As they backed out of the driveway, Catalina saw the curtain in Brian’s house twitch. A figure stood there, watching. Her heart hammered against her ribs.
Dominic didn’t glance over. He turned the wheel and they sped down their quiet, sun-drenched street. Past the park where they’d talked about taking Mina to feed the ducks. Past the market, the church, all the landmarks of a life that was no longer theirs.
They hit the freeway on总之ance, the Charger merging into the flow of anonymous traffic. The silence in the car was dense, broken only by the roar of the hemi and the soft babble of Mina playing with her rabbit in the back.
After twenty miles, Dominic spoke, his eyes fixed on the road stretching out before them.
“We’re going to Rhode Island,” he said, his voice flat.
Catalina stared at him. “What’s in Rhode Island?”
He glanced at her, just for a second. The morning sun glinted off the chrome trim of the dashboard, lighting the hard planes of his face. “Nothing. And everything.” He shifted his grip on the wheel, his knuckles white. “It’s a state where it’s legal.”
The meaning slammed into her. Not legal for marriage. Not legal for society’s blessing. Legal in the cold, clinical eyes of the law. No crime. No threat of police. A place where their specific sin had no name.
Her breath caught. She looked out the window at the blurring landscape, at the other cars carrying people to ordinary jobs and ordinary lives. She looked at the man beside her, her brother, the father of her children. She looked at the reflection of her daughter in the rearview mirror.
He had packed their bags. He had chosen a destination. He had mapped a route away from ruin. It was the most violent act of love she could imagine.
The Charger accelerated, pushing her back into the seat. The future was a straight, open road, and he was driving them straight into it.