It wasn’t too long before he felt the repercussion of his actions. She came at him with an open palm across his face. “You stupid little boy!” she screamed, anchoring a hand through his hair and tugging his head back to look into her sneering face. “God, I knew I should’ve killed you when I had the chance!” She dragged him behind her by his hair and Dominic raised his hand to hers to lessen the pain.
“Mom, I’m sorry…” Panic began to settle in when he saw exactly where they were headed. This was worse than the closet. “Mommy…Mommy, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it,” he pleaded with raw desperation as she thrust open the basement door, and tugged him down the stairs. “Mommy…Mommy, please!”
“You’re just like him!” she screeched, battling to pick him up as he struggled to free himself. But as much as he tried, his seven-year-old body was only capable of so much. “You’re horrible, just like your father!” She shoved him in the crawl space and yanked the metal door shut just before he could run out. “You ruined everything. You ruined my life!”
“Mommy, I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I won’t do it again! Mom! Mom, it’s dark! It’s too dark!” Dominic sobbed, banging futilely against the metal door. He couldn’t breathe. He was suffocating. He banged and scrapped his nails raw, bleeding and crying into the enveloping, stifling darkness until finally he succumbed to the darkness itself.
“I believe the last time you were here we came to the agreement that the sum of money we gave you would take care of the little issue, thereby permanently removing you from our lives.” Winston Virgil Armstrong stared his imperious nose down at the haggard woman standing unsteadily in front of him. She oozed of degradation; the stench of her addiction permeated the air in his office. She was someone he’d believed he’d dealt with years ago. One of his son’s proclivities having spun out of control, he’d written a substantial check to the woman who’d come crying rape because Gregory had gotten a little too physical. Winston had done so to keep their family name out of the papers, but mostly to preserve his son’s future. He and his father and his father’s father had toiled for far too long to build their enterprise.
The name Armstrong was synonymous with trust, respect, and upstanding family values to the thousands upon thousands of consumers who purchased their products. To have had such a scandal threaten to tarnish that good name would’ve been mayhem. Furthermore, with ’Gregory’s impending nuptials to Millicent Wentworth, heiress to one of the largest cosmetic lines in the country, the scandal would’ve shattered that possibility. The union presented a lucrative opportunity for a merger between their companies; it’d been quite imperative that nothing interfere with the wedding. Therefore, Winston had dealt with the problem in the manner befitting. Unfortunately, it appeared he’d been foolishly optimistic in believing the situation could’ve been so easily rectified.
“Well, I didn’t get rid of it.” She sniffed indignantly, folding her tattered cardigan over her emaciated form.
No, she certainly had not. Winston’s gaze drifted down to the gangly child at her side. He could no more deny the child’s paternity than he could ignore those unmistakable sharp, green eyes that were an inheritable trait in his family .Although he would have a definitive answer before the day was out. Then there was also the fact that the boy bore a startling resemblance to Gregory when he’d been that young. Much as he wanted to, Winston knew that the boy was his grandchild. His brow furrowed further as he carefully assessed the child. There were bruises covering his pale face, and the clothes he wore hung off his disturbingly slight figure. He looked malnourished, the gauntness of his features making him appear close to death.
“What will it take to get rid of you permanently?”
“How much is the child of a rapist worth?” she countered nastily, shrewd, despite the glassiness of her coal black eyes.
“You’re willing to part with him?”
“You can have him and my silence, for a price.”
“Name it.”
“Two million dollars.”
“Done. In turn, you will never step foot on this property again. If you return, make no mistake, I will have you shot for trespassing.”
He cut her the check and the instant she had it in her hand, she stepped away from the boy, who quickly reached out to grab her sweater. “Mommy…” he called softly.
“You’re not my problem anymore,” she said coldly, wrenching the little bit of her sweater he held in his small hand. She turned her back to him and walked out the door, leaving Dominic behind in an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar faces.
He’d seen Sheila Swanson only once more after that when he’d been eighteen. She’d been a shell, more so than what he’d remembered her to be, and Dominic had been grateful for his upbringing in that his indifference had been able to help him cope with her perpetual contempt for him and the unforgettable way he’d been conceived. When he’d finally heard of her passing some months later, an overdose or some such, he’d already shut himself off from everything and had barely given her a thought until this evening. He raised a hand to the bartender for another shot, his fourth now, but Dominic had only just begun to drown the memories. God, he hadn’t gotten this drunk in quite some time now, but it seemed his demons were in quite the mood, gnawing away at Dominic’s soul with avaricious frenzy.
I hope you’re prepared to rape me, Dominic, because that’s the only way you’re going to touch me.
Ah yes, there it was again. He noticeably shuddered at the statement that continued to replay unendingly in his mind. Dominic closed his eyes, but there was no finding peace there as eidetic memory detailed the gravity of her solemn expression when she’d uttered those damning words. The irony of the situation was not loss on him he realized as he tipped another shot down the hatch. He couldn’t fault her for thinking he was capable of such a reprehensible act. But being a product of that act himself and being so unknowingly reminded of it sickened him. Dominic was many things, his vices were quite numerous, and he was the first to admit he was his own worst enemy, always toeing between that line of what was appropriate and what was not. But even he had limits. There weren’t many, but physically accosting a woman, using brute strength to force himself on her, was something he could not do.
But then his father had been such a man, hadn’t he? His mother, as twisted and loveless as she’d been, had certainly not been the first. Just another on a long list of paid off names. Dominic had never been close to his father and while Gregory was instructed to mind his new wife and the impending family that would come, Dominic had been sent abroad to boarding school and had rarely seen his father. Growing up in his grandfather’s home, it’d been Winston and the mansion staff who’d welcomed him when he’d chosen to come home for the holidays. His grandfather had been the one to raise him, and even then, that relationship had been subpar at best. When Winston had finally passed, Dominic had finally been forced to go live with his biological father. But not before he’d discovered the truth about the things his grandfather had covered up for his son. In the documents he’d hidden in his safe behind the Degas in his office, there’d been documents detailing Gregory Armstrong’s felonies, countless as they’d been Dominic had been sick from learning the truth.
When he did finally meet his father, it’d been with a very low opinion of him, one that had only plummeted in the ensuing years. Gregory had been an ornery, egotistical brute who had not only relished pitting his two sons against each other, but had made it a point to completely disregard the increasingly repressible behavior of the youngest, while continuously lambasting the eldest. Dominic had always been the outcast, the black sheep…the bastard. He’d learned very early on to stop seeking validation from Gregory, who had seen him as nothing more than a constant reminder of his mistakes. Dominic was far past the age of begrudge his father or even the cards that fate had dealt him. But what did bother him more was the increasing concern that he’d somehow predisposed to behave as his father had. From the moment Dominic had made those discoveries, to his own gradual descent into immorality, the question of whether he was like his father had never been too far from his mind.
I hope you’re prepared to rape me, Dominic…
No. He certainly had not been prepared to force himself on her. God, but the avowal had shaken him to the core, and to think, it’d all began because she’d once again dared to defy him. He’d been punctual; arriving at the restaurant with renewed focus, Dominic had been ready and willing to return a morsel of what he’d taken from her. He had even foolishly asked his personal assistant to pick out something from Eden’s favorite jeweler. He had examined the diamond tennis bracelet with an appreciative eye on his ride over and had surmised that she would like it. Dominic had waited and waited and waited, his ire meanwhile had only grown increasingly worse as the restaurant staff and patrons alike subtly looked on, spectators to his humiliation. After two hours of waiting, he’d angrily marched out of the restaurant, practically scalding James’s ear off when he’d gotten him on the phone. It had been that same anger that had pushed him to act so irrationally. But then rationality always seemed to elude him when it came to Eden. She’d made a sport out of getting under his skin, he thought morosely.