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“What?” Was Garin’s hearing going now, too? They’d been pinned down in the server room for hours upon hours, which was longer than he’d have liked to go without proper medical treatment, but he hadn’t noticed that much of a deterioration in his faculties.
“I think I should negotiate opening the door at least.” Dom tapped his finger against his knee. “Offer them something in exchange for bringing in a doctor for you or taking you to a medical facility.”
So Garin hadn’t heard wrong. That was even worse. He didn’t have the energy to couch his opinion in kind words, so he went for blunt honesty. “That’s a terrible idea.”
“What?” Dom’s eyes blazed, and he lifted his chin. “It is not.”
“Yes, it is.” Garin didn’t wince when stretching his legs out in front of him sent pain lancing through his abdominal muscles, but it was a near thing. “Best outcome is they kill us both quickly. Worst, and way more likely, outcome is that they kill me first, then torture you until you’ve regurgitated everything you know about the data you just wiped from existence, and then they kill you. You ever been tortured before?”
Dom paled.
“Yeah, it’s not fun.” Garin had been lucky in his career. Most of his torture experience had been in training. But he still knew more about withstanding it and inflicting it than he wished he did. “I’m proud of you for what you’ve done here. Destroying that information. But make no mistake, you’ve put a target on your back for the rest of your life. People will do anything to learn what’s in your head.”
Dom took a shuddering breath and nodded. “I didn’t consider that when I made this decision, but I understand.”
Garin grimaced. Hadn’t considered it. Dom’s naïveté surprised him sometimes.
Dom dropped his head. “I’m sorry for dragging you into this.”
Garin huffed a laugh shallow enough to avoid jarring his injury. “I’m pretty sure I forced you to.”
“But I’m still sorry.” Dom curled his shoulders in.
“Hey, chin up, we’re not dead yet.” Garin knocked the outside of his boot against Dom’s outer thigh. “We’re in a solid position, actually. We just gotta wait for your dad to come save us.”
Dom snorted a bitter sound and lifted unimpressed blue eyes from the floor to meet Garin’s gaze. “We both know my father has no interest in saving me.”
Garin sighed. “No, we don’t know that.”
“I signed my own death warrant with him when I deleted my work from the Turner databases.” Dom shifted from his kneel to sit cross-legged on the floor. “The only thing I could have done to make him hate me more is gift-wrap it for Andrew Wate. Which, hell, maybe I’ve done by coming here, anyway.”
“He’s your father. He doesn’t hate you,” Garin chose the words because they sounded right and because he hoped they were true, more than because he strictly believed them.
Dom scoffed, clearly not believing them any more than Garin. “Yeah. Right.”
Garin pushed himself up the wall to sit a little straighter. “On the topic of your father and family, and because I’m possibly at death’s door?—”
“Garin!” Dom snapped his head up. “You said?—”
“Possibly.” Garin waved a hand at him. “I said I’m possibly at death’s door. And given that, I want you to promise me that if I die, you’ll make up with Oliver.”
Dom’s expression darkened immediately. Years of resentment, animosity, and hostility gathered like storm clouds in his handsome face.
“He’s your brother, Dominic.”
“Yeah, and Alistair’s my father, and Victoria’s my mother, and all we’ve ever done is fuck each other over and make each other miserable.” Dominic looked away, staring at the door shielding them from dozens of Wate Group guards.
“You and your brother have both suffered under your parents. You have more in common with each other than not.” Garin leaned his head against the wall as the fuzz around the outside of his gaze crept toward the center. “Family’s important, Dom, and he’s the last good bit you’ve got.”
“You would say that.” Dom sighed and looked back at Garin. The fury and indignation drained away to leave behind the vulnerability and sadness Garin had come to understand really lived in Dom’s heart. “Your family’s more important to you than anything.”
Garin nodded. “That’s right.”
“I don’t blame you.” Dom drummed his fingers along his thighs. “Your family seems great.”
Garin nodded again. “They are.”
He’d been confused, at first, about why Dom knew so much about his family. He’d assumed it was about control, but he realized now that it was more like a little boy peering into the windows of the house across the street where the nice family lived, marveling at how different it was for other people and wondering why it wasn’t like that for him. It was fucking sad and Garin knocked his boot against Dom’s knee again, in too much pain to hug him like he wanted to.
