Page 51 of The Beautiful Dead

Something wasn’t adding up. The sick feeling in my gut had only grown with each dodged call, each excuse Brielle spat out. If I could get inside Hollow Pines, check on Mom, see for myself what the fuck was going on—maybe I could finally get some answers.

A slow crawl of unease crept across my skin, but I shoved it down.

Arti drained the rest of his coffee and stood, rapping his knuckles against the table in a nervous rhythm. “I’ll text you when they’re gone. Will you be able to get there, or do you need?—”

“I’m fine.” My lips curled into something that might’ve been a smile if it weren’t so tight.

“Good. Good.” He grimaced, then left me alone in the suffocating silence, my thoughts spiraling like vultures circling something already half-dead.

I pulled out my phone.

Remi

Are you able to give me a lift to Hollow Pines Care Home later?

Domino

Yes

Domino

Let me know when

Remi

Thanks

A slow breath pushed past my lips, tension bleeding from my shoulders, if only slightly. Domino’s presence in my life had become something inevitable. A force of nature—unrelenting, consuming. I didn’t question that he would come.

With nothing left to do but wait, I pulled out the MacBook he had given me for college and opened up the assignment on trauma analysis. A study of shattered bones, splintered by force.

My life was an interesting dichotomy. By day, I studied the scars left behind—learning to read the silent stories of the dead, unraveling the violence imprinted into their remains.

By night, with Domino, I let the darkness inside me breathe.

And something told me this visit to Hollow Pines would blur the lines between the two even more.

The blacked-outSUV Domino picked me up in moved like a ghost through the dirt track, its heavy tires devouring the uneven terrain with barely a jolt. The suspension worked overtime when we hit a pothole, but I hardly felt it.

Dusk bled into the sky, that strange in-between time where night hadn’t fully arrived but daylight had already fled. Thick clouds churned above, restless and heavy, like they were waiting for something—like they knew something I didn’t.

I exhaled, turning to Domino. “Will you stay here and wait for me?”

Possession flickered in his dark green gaze, wrapping around me like invisible chains. This wasn’t my choice. I knew that. Everything Domino did was by his own design.

He tilted his head, studying me like I was something he already owned. “Only if you don’t take too long.” His lips curled at the edges, something dangerous lurking beneath the surface. “I don’t like sharing my things.”

I should have recoiled. Should have told him I wasn’t athing. But that part of me—the rational part—had been eroding since the moment I met him. Instead, something inside methrivedunder his attention, twisted itself into knots at the idea of beingkept.

I swallowed hard. “I won’t be long.”

As we approached the care home, Domino veered off onto a narrower track, hidden between the trees. I hadn’t seen this path the night I arrived with Mom, but it provided the perfect cover. Far in the distance, I spotted small homes dotting the hilltop—staff housing, if I had to guess.

One house stood apart from the others, larger, isolated, watching the rest like an outcast refusing to acknowledge its own kind. It was bigger, grander than the others. There was no doubt in my mind it was Brielle’s.

Once I’d seen Mom and rifled through Brielle’s office, I’d be heading there for answers. Not just to suffocate the unease curling around my throat but to understand why Mom had spent her life avoiding the only family she had left.

She never spoke about them—ever—apart from that one time.

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