Chapter 23: Sacrilegious Love
The silence after the screen went black was thicker than the alpine snow piling against the windows. It was a physical weight, pressing the air from the room.
On the small phone screen, now dark, was the ghost of their father’s face, contorted in a revulsion so complete it had felt like a physical blow. His final words, ‘They’re abominations,’ seemed to echo off the chalet’s wooden beams, mingling with their mother’s muffled sobs before the connection severed.
Mia let her arm fall to her side, the phone slipping from her numb fingers to clatter on the tile. She stared at the spot where it landed, her body trembling with aftershocks.
Catalina was the first to move. She turned slowly, her movements deliberate, as if swimming through tar, and walked to the incubator. Leo had quieted, his tiny chest rising and falling with rapid, shallow breaths. She placed her hand on the clear plastic, her palm over the warmth of his fragile body. A single tear traced a path through the dust on her cheek, but her face was set in hard, clean lines.
Dominic watched her. The muscle in his jaw worked, a constant, tense rhythm. He looked from Catalina’s stoic back to Mia’s shattered form, then to his parents’ empty, dark phone on the floor. The condemnation hung in the air, a poison they’d all breathed in.
“Satisfied?” Letty’s voice cut through the silence, sharp as a scalpel. She was still holding Mina, who had cried herself into a hiccuping exhaustion against her shoulder. Letty’s gaze, usually so loyal and warm, was fixed on Mia with a cold, unfamiliar anger.
Mia looked up, her eyes red-raw. “They had to know.”
“Why?” Letty took a step forward, her voice low and dangerous. “So you could feel better? So you could share the ick? Congratulations, Mia. You got your answer. Now what?”
“Now what?” Mia repeated, a hysterical laugh bubbling in her throat. “Now… I don’t know! I leave. I get the hell out of this… this nest you’ve all built.” She waved a hand around the room, at the Christmas decorations, the crackling fire, the family photos that were now just layers of a lie.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Dominic said. His voice was flat, devoid of its usual commanding rumble. It was a simple statement of fact, cold as the iron in a vault door.
“You don’t get to tell me what to do. Not anymore.” Mia stumbled toward the hook where her coat hung, her movements jerky.
“The road down the mountain is iced over. Blizzard’s fully here. You’d wrap your car around a tree before the first switchback.” Jesse spoke from his place by the door, his voice surprisingly steady. He looked at Dominic, then at Mia, his young face older in the firelight. “He’s right. It’s suicide.”
Mia’s hand paused on the thick wool of her coat. She was trapped. By the weather, by the reality of the dangerous road, by the collapse of her entire world. A sob racked her frame, this one born of pure, helpless frustration.
Catalina turned from the incubator. Her eyes were dry now, a frightening clarity in their blue depths. “You wanted a reaction,” she said to Mia, her voice eerily calm. “You got one. You wanted to know what they’d say. Now you know.” She walked toward her sister, stopping a few feet away. “Do you feel cleaner now? Purged?”
“Stop it,” Mia whispered, wrapping her arms around herself.
“No.” Catalina’s calm broke, a crack appearing in the ice. “You don’t get to drop that bomb and then just… leave to process your feelings. You brought them into this room. You look at me. You look at your niece and your nephew, and you tell me what you see now that you’ve heard him say that word.” Her voice rose, trembling with a terrible, wounded fury. “Are they abominations, Mia?”
“Cat, don’t,” Dominic warned softly, but he didn’t move.
Mia’s gaze was dragged, against her will, to Mina in Letty’s arms. The little girl’s dark lashes were wet on her cheeks, her thumb stuck partway in her mouth. She was just a child. A beautiful, sleepy child who called her ‘Auntie Mia.’ Her eyes flicked to the incubator, to the tiny, sleeping form of Leo, fighting so hard just to exist.
Her father’s voice reverberated in her skull. Abominations.
A fresh wave of nausea rolled through her. She squeezed her eyes shut. “I don’t… I can’t…”
“You can,” Catalina pressed, relentless. “You have to. You made this. So look at it.”
“I see my sister’s kids!” Mia finally shouted, her eyes flying open, spilling tears. “I see my brother’s kids! I see my family! And it makes me want to tear my own skin off because it’s wrong! It’s so fucking wrong it hurts!” She was screaming now, her voice ragged. “How do you not see that? How can you look at them and not feel sick?”
Something in Catalina snapped. The calm shattered completely. In two quick strides she was in front of Mia, her hand flying up. It stopped an inch from Mia’s face, trembling violently. She didn’t slap her. She held her hand there, a threat and a plea combined.
“Feel sick?” Catalina’s voice was a low, venomous whisper. “You think I wake up every day to sunshine and rainbows? You think this is easy? It’s a prison, Mia. A beautiful, precious prison we built for ourselves because the world outside had no room for what we are.” She dropped her hand, her shoulders slumping. The anger bled out, leaving only a profound exhaustion. “But they,” she said, pointing a trembling finger first at Mina, then at Leo’s incubator, “are the one thing in it that is pure. They are love. Not a sin. Not a mistake. Love.”
Dominic moved then. He came to stand beside Catalina, not touching her, but a solid presence at her shoulder. His gaze on Mia was complex—a storm of disappointment, pity, and a brother’s lingering, instinctive protectiveness. “You think we didn’t fight this?” he asked, his voice gravelly. “You think we woke up one day and said, ‘Hey, this sounds fun’? We ran from it. For years. We dated other people. We tried to hate each other.” He shook his head, a short, sharp motion. “It doesn’t work like that.”
Mia stared at them, these two pillars of her life, standing together against the world—against her, against their parents, against everything sane and normal. The unity was absolute.
The unity was absolute. It was a wall Mia couldn’t scale, a language she couldn't speak. She stood on the outside, shivering in the warmth of the room.
Dominic’s eyes held a dark, weary knowledge. He let out a slow breath, the fight leaving his shoulders. “You wanna know how bad it got?” he asked, his voice dropping so only those in the room could hear. He glanced at Catalina, a silent apology in his look. “After I left for a year. After we tried to just… not be.”
Catalina closed her eyes, a flinch of memory.
“She called me from the Ventura bridge one night,” Dominic said, the words blunt and heavy. “Three in the morning. Said she was sorry. For everything. For loving me, for making it impossible.” He paused, the memory tightening his throat. “The static on the line… I could hear the wind. The cars below.”
Mia’s breath hitched. Her anger faltered, replaced by a dawning, cold dread.
“I talked her down,” Dominic continued, his gaze locked on Mia, forcing her to see the truth. “Drove seventeen hours straight. Found her sitting on the guardrail, shivering. Not from the cold.” He looked at his twin, his voice softening to a ragged whisper. “Catalina wanted to kill herself, Mia. Because we tried to hate each other. Because living without it hurt more than living with the shame.”
A sharp, pained sound escaped Catalina’s lips. She wrapped her arms around her stomach, as if holding herself together.
Letty, still holding Mina, nodded slowly. Her eyes were wet. She’d been there. She’d seen the aftermath, the hollow shell Cat had become that year. “It’s the truth,” she murmured to Mia, confirmation and accusation in one.
The confession changed the air in the room. It wasn't a justification. It was something darker: a measurement of cost. Mia’s revulsion was suddenly mirroring her father’s, and the reflection sickened her. She took a step back, her heel knocking against the fallen phone.
“You don’t get to use that,” she whispered, but her voice lacked conviction. It was a feeble defense against the brutal image now seared in her mind: her sister on a bridge ledge, her brother’s voice through a phone the only tether.
“I’m not using it,” Dominic said. “I’m telling you the price. Of your judgment. Of his.” He nodded toward the dark phone. “That’s what ‘wrong’ looks like when it wins. You got your phone call. You got his verdict. You happy?”
Catalina slid down the wall beside the hearth, her strength finally giving out. She landed on the cold tiles with a soft thud, drawing her knees up. She didn't cry. She just stared at the flames, her face a mask of exhausted defeat.
Mia looked from Catalina’s crumpled form to Dominic’s unyielding one. Her moral high ground was crumbling, dissolving into a morass of grief and impossible choices. The words ‘sick’ and ‘wrong’ felt small and hollow now, meaningless next to the word ‘survival’.
“So what then?” Mia asked, her voice broken. “You just… live like this? In secret, forever?”
“We live,” Dominic corrected, his tone final. “That’s the only deal we got. We take it.”
The phone on the floor between them vibrated, skittering a half-inch on the tile. A new notification glowed on the black screen.
Then another.
A message preview appeared: Call me NOW.
It was from the same number. Their father.
A second later, the screen lit up fully. An incoming call. The generic ringtone sliced through the silence, abrasive and demanding.
Everyone froze. Dominic’s eyes dropped to the device, then flicked to Mia. His expression hardened into something protective and fierce. “Don’t answer it.”
Mia stared at the buzzing phone like it was a live wire. Her hand twitched at her side.
“He’s just going to yell,” Letty said, shifting Mina’s weight. “Hang up on you again. What’s the point?”
But Mia was already moving, bending down. Her fingers closed around the cool metal. She looked at it, then at her brother and sister. “He’s still our father,” she said, a weak plea in her voice.
“He stopped being that five minutes ago,” Dominic stated, but he didn’t move to stop her. It was her choice. Her consequence.
She swiped her thumb across the screen and lifted the phone to her ear. “Dad?” Her voice was small, childlike.
The voice on the other end wasn't the rage-filled blast she expected. It was lower. Colder. Precise. “Put your brother on. Not a word from you. Just give him the phone.”
The command left no room for argument. It was the voice he used before someone disappeared, before a business deal went violently south. A chill that had nothing to do with the blizzard outside crawled up Mia’s spine.
She held the phone out toward Dominic. Her hand shook. “He wants you.”
Dominic looked at the offered phone. He looked at Catalina, still on the floor by the fire. He looked at Letty holding his daughter, at the incubator holding his son. He walked forward, took the phone from Mia’s trembling hand, and put it to his ear.
“Yeah.”
He listened. His face, already hard, didn’t change. It just settled deeper into itself, like stone sinking. He didn't speak. He just listened as their father’s voice, a steady, venomous stream, came through the speaker.
Catalina watched his eyes. She saw the minute flicker, the almost imperceptible tightening around them. She pushed herself up from the floor, a new fear cutting through her numbness.
Dominic finally spoke, his voice a flat monotone. “You don’t get to make that call.”
He listened for another ten seconds. Then he ended the call without another word. He lowered the phone, his knuckles white around it.
“What?” Catalina asked, her voice barely a whisper.
Dominic met her gaze. The protective wall he always wore was fully up, but behind it she saw the cold, tactical calculation. “He’s coming,” he said.
The two words dropped into the room like stones in a still pond.
“Here?” Jesse breathed, his eyes going to the snow-whited windows.
“He says he’s getting on a plane.” Dominic’s voice was chillingly matter-of-fact. “Says he’s going to handle his family. Personally.”
A different kind of silence fell. This wasn’t about disgust or morality anymore. This was about threat assessment. This was about perimeter defense.
Letty’s arms tightened around Mina. “Handle how?”
Dominic didn’t answer directly. He looked at the fire, then at the tools hung neatly by the fireplace—the iron poker, the shovel. His mind was already elsewhere, miles ahead, on a snow-covered road, on exits, on weapons, on safe houses.
“He’s not coming for a talk,” he finally said. He turned his head, looking at Catalina. The unspoken truth passed between them. Their father wasn’t coming to save them from their sin.
He was coming to erase it.
The words hung in the air, a death sentence draped in paternal authority. “Handle his family.” They all knew what that meant coming from him. It wasn't about a spanking. It was about cleaning up a mess. Permanently.
Catalina’s breath hitched, a sharp, pained sound in the quiet room. She looked at Mina, then at the incubator where Leo slept, oblivious. Her composure, that hard-won shell of calm, cracked completely. A raw, wounded noise escaped her lips, and she turned sharply, stumbling out of the living room toward the hallway.
The bedroom door slammed shut with a soft, final click.
Dominic watched her go, his own face a rigid mask. He stood perfectly still for a count of five, the phone still crushed in his hand. The others were frozen, waiting for his move. Jesse glanced at Leon, a silent question about bolt-cutters and engine blocks. Letty just held Mina closer, her jaw set.
Then Dom moved. He dropped the phone on the counter and followed Catalina without a word.
The bedroom was dark, lit only by the bluish glow of snow-light through a crack in the curtains. Catalina stood in the middle of the room, her back to him, her shoulders shaking violently. No sound came out. It was the silent, body-wracking shaking of absolute despair.
He didn’t speak. He crossed the room and wrapped his arms around her from behind, pulling her tight against his chest. His chin rested on top of her head. She collapsed into the embrace, the sobs breaking free now, harsh and guttural into the quiet dark.
“He’ll take them,” she choked out between breaths, her hands gripping his forearms. “He’ll say they’re not… not human. He’ll make them disappear, Dom. He’ll make us disappear.”
“No, he won’t.” Dom’s voice was low, a vibration against her back. He held her tighter, as if he could physically shield her from the future. “Listen to me. Letty and Tej get the kids away. Mina, Stella, and Leo. Far away, so he doesn’t find them. Okay?”
He felt her nod, a frantic movement against his chest. Her tears soaked through his shirt.
“Catalina,” he said, his voice softening just for her, stripping away the leader’s command. “Don’t forget. I love you. We will get through this.”
He turned her gently in his arms. Her face was streaked and shattered in the dim light. He wiped a thumb roughly over her cheek, then leaned down and kissed her. It wasn’t passionate or hungry. It was an anchor. A promise sealed against her salt-tasted lips. A temporary bulwark against the coming storm.
When he pulled back, her breathing had evened, the panic receding into a terrible, clear-eyed understanding. She nodded again, her hand coming up to touch his face. “Okay.”
He kissed her forehead once, hard, then released her. The switch flipped back. The Dom who walked out of the bedroom thirty seconds later was not the man who had gone in. This was the planner. The strategist. The one who built engines and escape routes with equal, ruthless precision.
Letty was waiting in the hallway, Mina now drowsy on her shoulder. She took one look at his face and knew. “Where?” she asked, no other questions needed.
“The Zürich safe house. The one with the clinic access. Take Tej, the SUV with the winter tires. Go now.” His words were clipped, efficient. “Don’t use the main road. Take the service pass. Call me when you’re clear of the canton.”
“Dom,” Letty started, her eyes flicking to the bedroom door.
“They’re the mission,” he interrupted, his tone brooking no argument. “Nothing else matters. You protect them. With everything.”
She gave a sharp, single nod. “With everything.” She turned, already pulling out her own phone to call Tej, her voice dropping to a urgent whisper as she headed for the nursery to gather Leo and Stella.
Dominic walked back into the living room. Mia hadn’t moved. She stood by the shattered mug, looking small and lost. Jesse and Leon were waiting, their earlier shock replaced by a focused readiness.
“He’s not landing in this,” Jesse said, jerking his head toward the blizzard outside the window. “Not for hours, at least.”
“He won’t come to the front door,” Dominic said, his mind already mapping the property. “He’ll come up the old logging road from the east. He knows it.”
“So we block it,” Leon said, already thinking. “The plow truck. Bury it.”
“And then he walks in,” Mia whispered, her voice hollow. She looked at her brother. “He’ll still walk in.”
Dominic met her gaze. There was no forgiveness in his eyes, but there was a grim, shared purpose now. “Yeah,” he agreed. “He will.”
He walked to the heavy oak cabinet by the fireplace and opened it. Inside, amidst spare blankets, were two long, oilcloth-wrapped parcels. He pulled them out and laid them on the table, unrolling the cloth.
Inside were rifles. Clean, cold, and serious.
The room’s atmosphere shifted again, the tension crystallizing into something sharper, more lethal. The family drama was over. The siege was about to begin.
“You don’t have to be here for this, Mia,” Dominic said, not looking at her as he checked the action on one of the guns. The click-clack of the mechanism was loud in the silent room.
She stared at the weapons on the table, then at her brother’s hands, which had fixed her bike and made her birthday pancakes and now calmly prepared for a war against their father. The last of her anger seemed to drain away, leaving only a cold, stark fear.
“Where else would I go?” she asked, her voice barely audible.
A log shifted in the fireplace, sending up a shower of sparks. Outside, the wind screamed against the windows, a relentless white noise. Somewhere down the hall, a car seat clicked, and Letty’s murmured reassurances blended with the soft rumble of Tej’s voice arriving from the garage.
They were splitting up. The kids were being evacuated. The adults were digging in.
Dominic looked up from the rifle, his eyes finding Catalina as she emerged from the hallway. She had washed her face. It was pale, but set. She walked to the table and picked up the other rifle, checking the chamber with a familiarity that spoke of a past she’d tried to leave behind.
She walked to the table and picked up the other rifle, checking the chamber with a familiarity that spoke of a past she’d tried to leave behind. The metallic snick-click was a sound from another life, a gear engaging in a machine she’d thought dismantled.
“You know how to use that?” Mia asked, her voice thin.
Catalina didn’t look at her. She just pulled back the bolt, saw the gleam of a round inside, and let it slam home. “Yeah,” she said. “I do.”
The front door blew open.
It didn’t burst. It simply opened, as if the lock had offered no more resistance than air. A howling gust of snow and freezing wind rushed in, scattering ash from the fireplace across the floor. The figure that filled the doorway was bulky in a snow-dusted parka, his face obscured by shadow and a pulled-up fur hood.
But they all knew. The way he stood. The sheer contained force of him.
Dominic was already moving, placing his body between the door and Catalina, the rifle held low but ready at his side. Jesse and Leon stepped sideways, fanning out. Mia just stared, frozen.
He pushed back the hood. Their father’s face was sheathed in ice, his beard frosted white, but his eyes were dark, hot coals in the wilderness cold. He didn’t look at Dom, or the guns. His gaze found Catalina, past Dominic’s shoulder, and held.
“Outside,” he said. The word wasn’t a request. It was an order, flat and final.
“You don’t give orders here,” Dominic said, his voice level. The wind screamed through the open door, whipping his hair.
Their father stepped fully inside, kicking snow from his boots onto the mat as if he owned the place. He ignored Dominic, his eyes locked on his daughter. “You. Outside. Now.” He took another step into the room, the warmth already melting the ice on his jacket, making him seem to steam.
“She’s not going anywhere with you,” Dominic said, shifting his weight, a subtle block.
That got his attention. His father’s eyes, those coals, shifted to him. The rage there was a quiet, focused thing. “You did this,” he stated, no question in his tone. “You poisoned her. My son. A coward and a pervert.”
Catalina flinched. Dominic’s knuckles whitened on the rifle’s stock, but he didn’t rise to the bait. “You need to leave.”
“I’m taking what’s mine,” his father said, and took another deliberate step toward Catalina. He was close now, the smell of cold and old tobacco cutting through the room’s cinnamon scent. “You think you’re a family? You’re a disease. I’m cutting it out.”
He moved fast then, a predator’s lunge not for Dominic, but around him, his gloved hand rising in a swift, brutal arc aimed straight for Catalina’s face.
The slap never landed.
Dominic shifted with a speed that blurred, not away, but into the path of the blow. His father’s hand cracked against the side of Dominic’s head, a hard, sharp sound. Dom’s head snapped to the side from the force, but his feet were planted. He didn’t stumble.
He slowly turned his head back, his eyes locking onto his father’s. A trickle of blood welled from his split lip.
“Don’t,” Dominic said, the word low and thick. “Touch her.”
The room held its breath. The fire popped. The wind moaned through the open door.
His father’s face tightened, a fresh, more dangerous fury replacing the first. He looked at his son, really looked at him, and saw a wall. An immovable object. His hand, still raised, curled slowly into a fist.