Page 38 of Hold On

Dominicdidsmile then.

“Why did you decide to tell me?” Ren snapped a grass stalk and pulled off the seeds.

“Because you’ll either give me a chance or you won’t. I’d rather find out now which way you’re going to jump.”

“Well, not that way.” Ren glanced at the river.

“Maybe you’ll change your mind when you hear all of it.”

What the fuck did you do?

“It’s your choice. Listen or walk away.”

“Tell me.”

There was such a long gap before Dominic spoke that Ren wondered if he’d changed his mind.

“I spent almost sixteen years inside.”

Ren widened his eyes.

“I started off in a Young Offender Institute, then went to prison, but I also spent time in Marsden.”

Ren made sure he didn’t react but—fucking hell!Marsden?Even before Dominic said anything else, he knew it was going to be bad.

“For Col’s sake, I have to ask you not to tell anyone. Theo knows, as does his father and his father’s partner. But I don’t want them to get pestered by the press or those who might want to know what I’m doing now I’m out.”

The press?“You think people would care?” Ren hadn’t heard the name—Dominic Hammond—though he did remember the hesitation when Dominic had told him.I should have googled.

“Possibly the press but there are others who’d like to know where I am.”

“Did you do what you were convicted of?” Was Dominic going to be like so many who were convicted, in denial about their crimes?

“Mostly, yes.”

Ren frowned. What the hell did that mean? “But not completely?”

“No.”

“I could look it up, assuming you’ve not changed your name, but will you tell me what youdiddo?”

Dominic turned to look at him. “I killed my parents.”

He said it in a matter-of-fact tone that Ren found disturbing, but when he looked at Dominic’s hands, they were clenching and unclenching.

“Deliberately?” Even as he asked, he knew it was a stupid question. Dominic wouldn’t have spent that long inside if it was manslaughter, nor would he have been put in Marsden, a place for the criminally insane.

“They’d abused me from when I was nine years old. Mentally. Physically.” He paused. “Sexually.”

“Christ.”Both of them? Fucking hell.Ren swallowed hard at the lump in his throat.

“On Col’s tenth birthday, they decided he was going to become part of their sick games. He ran to my school because he was frightened. I wasn’t going to let them do to him what they’d done to me. I’d kept him safe until then by my…cooperation, but the only way I could continue to do that was by killing them. Col was all I had to love. The only thing in my life that was important. I had to protect him at any cost.”

Dominic was pulling at the grass, twisting it in his fingers. Ren wanted to say—you could have told someonebut that wasn’t helpful now. Maybe he had told someone.

“I admit that I’d thought about it beforehand, how I’d kill them when they were…” He let out a shuddering sigh. “I had a plan. Not that I ever dreamed I’d use it, but it helped me to have it. That day, when Col told me what they’d said to him and that they’d touched him, I just flipped. They were not going to do to him what they’d done to me. Ever.”

Why hadn’t he gone to the police? But Ren stayed quiet.

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