The Sterlings

Dominic pushed his weight against the heavy oak doors, the imposing architecture of the Sterling manor looming in the darkness like a silent, dark predator. The heavy brass handles felt cold beneath his palms as he pushed forward. The polished marble floors echoed beneath his heavy footsteps, each click sounding like a ticking clock counting down to inevitable conflict. For him, dinner in this house was never a warm family gathering; it was a highly calculated, tense performance that he strictly endured solely for the sake of protecting his fragile mother, Eleanor, and his deeply damaged brother, Lucius.

He had barely stepped foot into the grand dining room when the cold, unforgiving voice of his father, Silas, sliced sharply through the stifling air.

“What’s this nonsense I hear about you and Genevieve?” Silas demanded aggressively, not even bothering to look up from his plate.

Masking his internal exhaustion, Dom slid into his designated seat with a practiced, fluid ease. “Good evening, Father,” he replied smoothly, deliberately ignoring the question.

Beside him, his mother Eleanor immediately began to fret. Her soft features were pinched tight with worry, the heavy diamond necklace resting against her collarbone doing nothing to hide her frailty. Her anxious eyes locked onto the fresh, jagged cut on his temple—a souvenir from his latest underground fight the night before. Dom gently brushed off his mother’s frantic, whispered questions, but Silas’s attention was now drawn to the injury.

Silas sneered openly at the wound, his face twisting in disgust. “I told you to postpone your fights. Investors are flying in tomorrow, and you’re looking like some street thug. Do you realize the stakes? We could lose millions!”

Dom continued to stare straight ahead, his demeanor completely unfazed by the outburst. “And yet I made sweet money last night,” Dom replied coolly. “Your priorities are not mine, Father.”

Silas’s gaze instantly darkened, a dangerous glint flashing in his eyes. Moving with shocking, unprovoked speed, Silas reached out, violently snatched Lucius’s wrist, and slammed it hard onto the heavy mahogany table.

Dom’s entire body went instantly rigid.

Lucius, who was once Dom's fierce protector and hero, now sat as a hollowed-out, medicated shell of a man. He let out a sharp intake of breath but quickly bit the inside of his cheek to stifle any further sound. His shoulders hunched inward, bracing against the polished wood as if he had long forgotten how to fight back. He winced visibly from the sudden impact but forced himself to swallow his pain in complete silence.

This sick tactic was Silas’s favorite weapon of control—whenever Dom dared to push back, the tyrant always ensured that either Lucius or Eleanor was the one forced to pay the physical price.

“Do you think this is a game, Dominic?” Silas hissed maliciously, bearing down his heavy weight onto Lucius’s trapped hand.

A violent, murderous rage boiled intensely beneath Dom’s perfectly calm exterior, his knuckles turning white as he gripped his own thighs under the table. He wanted nothing more than to reach across the white linen, grab his father by the collar, and make him feel a fraction of the pain he inflicted on this family. The urge to destroy the pristine setting was overwhelming. But catching his mother’s terrified, pleading gaze across the table, he forcefully commanded his muscles to relax and forced himself to yield to the tyrant.

“I’ll handle the investors,” Dom said in a slow, deliberate cadence. “It won’t affect the meeting. You’ll get the contract.”

Satisfied by the total submission, Silas finally released Lucius’s hand with a smug smirk.

“Fix whatever mess you’ve made with Genevieve,” Silas added icily, shifting back to his initial grievance. “Her father and I are already discussing the wedding date. I won’t have your antics ruining our alliance.”

“Of course, Father,” Dom murmured mechanically, though his mind was actively drifting far away from the toxic dining room.

He knew he couldn't exactly tell Silas the absolute truth—that his thoughts were currently stubbornly occupied by Wilder, the fiery, impoverished server girl who had so brazenly and flat-out rejected him at the bus stop. Most women in Havenbrook would have tripped over themselves to accept an offer from a Sterling, easily bought with a single glance. Yet Wilder had looked at him as if he were nothing more than dirt beneath her worn-out sneakers.

Her bold dismissal had stung his massive ego, getting under his skin in a deeply irritating way that he absolutely hated to admit to himself.

Snapping back to reality as Silas barked another sharp order, Dom stood up abruptly, pushing his chair back. “Loud and clear, Father. Enjoy your dinner, Sterlings.”

Without looking back at the massive estate, he turned and strode swiftly out of the oppressive house and into the biting cold of the night air.

The frigid wind felt like a physical slap across his face, a sharp contrast to the suffocating heat of his suppressed anger. Seeking a moment of clarity, he leaned heavily against the cool metal of his sleek car, letting the chill cool his boiling blood.

Suddenly, the silence was broken as his phone buzzed sharply in his pocket. He pulled it out, and his heart executed an unexpected, heavy drop in his chest as his eyes read the glowing message on the screen. It was a text from Wilder.

The message was short and decisive.

*‘I’ll do it.’*

Dom stared completely transfixed at the text, his heart inexplicably thudding hard against his ribs. For a long, suspended moment, he didn’t move a single muscle, didn’t even breathe.

He was a man who naturally loved challenges and thrived on chaotic games, but getting genuinely entangled with a Wilder was a highly volatile game he suddenly realized he had absolutely no interest in playing.

Closing his eyes against the glowing screen, a singular, intrusive thought crossed his mind.

He wished she had said no.