BOUND BY OBSESSION

chapter 6

CHAPTER 6: THE TRUTH ABOUT YOU

Maya POV

The speedometer hit 120.

Then 130.

Dominic's hands were steady on the wheel but his jaw was a weapon. Clenched. Dangerous.

Behind us, the SUVs were still there. Still coming. Still hungry.

"Hold on," he said. It wasn't a suggestion.

I grabbed the door handle as we took a turn so sharp my entire body slid sideways. My shoulder slammed against the window. Pain shot through it but I didn't care. I was too busy looking in the mirror.

One of the SUVs swerved into the next lane.

Dominic saw it before I did.

He jerked the wheel hard left.

Our car swerved. For a second I thought we were going to flip. For a second I was certain this was how it ended. In a car that wouldn't stop moving. With a man I didn't even know. Running from people who wanted us dead.

But Dominic didn't lose control.

He never lost control.

He was talking into his phone. Words I couldn't hear over the sound of tires screaming. Orders being given. Coordinates. Directions. Things that meant nothing to me but seemed to mean everything to him.

"Three blocks," he said. "They'll be at the intersection."

I didn't understand what he meant until I saw it.

One of Dominic's black cars was speeding toward us from the opposite direction.

No.

Not toward us.

Toward the SUVs.

"Oh my God," I whispered.

The crash was immediate.

Violent.

The sound of metal crushing metal echoed through the city streets. Glass exploded. The SUV that hit Dominic's car spun sideways and crashed into a storefront.

The other two SUVs had to brake hard to avoid the wreckage.

That's all Dominic needed.

He took a sharp right and floored it.

The remaining SUVs tried to follow but they were too far back now. We were pulling away. The city blocks were getting fewer and fewer. The buildings were getting smaller.

We were leaving the city.

Dominic drove for what felt like hours but was probably only thirty minutes. The adrenaline made time feel weird. Stretched. Impossible.

Eventually the roads got quieter.

Emptier.

Trees started appearing. Then more trees. Then nothing but trees and empty roads and the sound of our car engine.

My hands were still shaking.

My phone was still in my lap showing that text message.

We have your father.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"Somewhere safe," Dominic said. His voice was different now. Calmer. Like he'd shifted back into human mode after being something else for the past twenty minutes.

"Is there anywhere safe?" I asked. "It doesn't seem like there is."

He didn't answer.

We drove for another fifteen minutes through woods and empty roads until the trees opened up to a massive iron gate. Beyond it was a mansion. Not a penthouse. Not a city high-rise. An actual mansion. The kind that seemed to belong to old money and older secrets.

The gates opened automatically as we approached.

Dominic pulled through and I noticed armed men standing at various points around the property. At least a dozen that I could see. Maybe more hidden in places I couldn't see.

This wasn't a safe house.

This was a fortress.

Dominic parked near the front entrance and turned off the engine.

For the first time since everything went insane, we were still.

I could hear him breathing. Could hear my own breathing. Could hear nothing else.

"My mother is inside," he said. "She's been expecting us."

"Expecting us?" I said. "How could she be expecting us? We didn't even know we were coming here."

He didn't answer that either.

He just got out of the car and came around to my side and opened my door. His hand was extended. An offer. Help. Something.

I took it because I was too tired and too scared and too confused to do anything else.

The front door to the mansion opened before we even reached it.

A woman stood in the doorway.

She was tall. Elegant. Maybe in her late fifties or early sixties but the kind of woman who wore age like it was a choice. Dark hair like Dominic's. Sharp eyes like Dominic's. Everything about her said power and control and old money.

She looked directly at me when we entered.

Not at Dominic.

At me.

"So," she said softly. "You're finally here."

Something cold slid down my spine.

"I'm sorry?" I said.

"I've been waiting for you for a very long time, Maya," she said. "My son has been planning this for years."

"Wait. How do you

"Know your name?" She smiled but it wasn't a warm smile. It was sad. "Because my son talked about nothing else. For years. He would show me photographs. Old ones. Tell me stories about the girl with kind eyes. The girl who showed mercy to people no one else would help."

I looked at Dominic.

His expression was unreadable.

"I don't understand," I said.

"I know," his mother said. "That's why we need to talk. Just you and me."

Dominic started to protest but his mother held up a hand.

"No," she said. "This is the only way."

He looked like he wanted to argue. But he didn't. He just nodded and walked toward the back of the mansion, leaving me alone with this woman I'd never met who somehow knew everything about me.

She led me to a sitting room. Everything was old, expensive and cold. Like the penthouse. Like Dominic.

We sat across from each other and she studied my face the way Dominic did sometimes. Like she was trying to see something underneath the surface.

"Do you know who your mother was?" she asked finally.

"Was?"

"Is," she corrected. "Technically. Though she's been... absent... for a very long time."

"My mother left when I was a kid," I said. "My dad raised me. I don't really"

"Your mother wasn't just absent," she interrupted. "She was running. She was hiding. From people. From a life. From a world she never wanted to be part of."

"I don't understand what this has to do with"

"Your mother," Dominic's mother said quietly, "had a very particular set of skills. And a very particular past."

She leaned forward.

"Your mother worked for our family"

Before I could ask what she meant, Dominic's phone rang.

Loud. Sharp. Cutting through everything.

He answered immediately. I could see him from where I sat. Could see his entire body go still.

Could see his expression change.

He slowly lowered the phone.

"What happened?" I asked, standing up.

He looked at me.

Then at his mother's.

Then back at me.

"The East Wing wasn't attacked to kill my daughter," he said quietly.

My heart was pounding in my ears.

"It was attacked because someone stole what was hidden there."

I waited for him to explain. To make sense of any of this.

"What was hidden there?" I asked.

Dominic stepped closer.

His eyes were dark. Seriously. Scared in a way I'd never seen before.

"What they stole wasn't money."

He said it like it explained everything.

Like it explained nothing.

Like everything I thought I knew about myself was about to change.

And standing there in that cold room in a mansion I'd never seen before, surrounded by people who'd been lying to me since the beginning, I realized that he was right.

I didn't know who I was at all.

I never had.