One Last Rainy Day: The Legacy of a Prince

Years ago, Tobias won so much money at the racetrack that it made him and Dom multimillionaires. Dom loves giving it away. While working at the garage, Dom is accosted by a tearful Cecelia after she accompanied Tyler to deliver checks to poor families in the community. He brushes off her admiration, but she says that he deserves to know that he’s changing their lives. She confides in him about her impoverished childhood and her mother’s alcohol addiction, that she’s in town to get her inheritance and help her mother. Cecelia wants Dom to acknowledge that he’s a good man, but he can’t.

When Dom picks Cecelia up, he gives her a crown he has woven from honeysuckle flowers. He says it’s no big deal, but it is to her. He realizes that no woman has ever been this close to him, that he’s never been so vulnerable before. She praises him, and he thinks of how she reminds him that there is still good in the world. However, Dom is still gutted by guilt for deceiving her. Cecelia rubs his shoulders and asks why he has so much physical tension. He says that she knows he cannot tell her, noting how little regard she has for her own self-preservation. Dom tries to explain the injustices he sees in the American economy, way of life, and various institutions. He says that so many things about Cecelia were decided even before her birth just because of who her parents are. He blames people with economic privilege, the people in power, for dividing everyone else from one another and obscuring the ways in which they manipulate others for their own gain. The working class is so busy with the struggle to survive that they don’t have time to notice or criticize the powers-that-be. Cecelia wonders if America is too broken to fix, but she says Dom can always come to her when he feels this way.

Dom has a flashback to the time Tobias took him to a fancy dinner to celebrate Dom leaving for MIT. Tobias told Dom to wear nice clothes, which made Dom not want to go. Tobias feared that Dom would be socially out of his depth in the elite school; he didn’t act like he had money by wearing designer suits and so forth. Their dinner cost $3,000, but this extravagance didn’t sit well with Dom. Tobias called him a “chameleon,” a person who changes to blend with his company, but he wanted Dom to understand his inherent worth. He worried that Dom hadn’t “evolved past the limits [he was] made to believe [he had]” (260). Tobias assured Dom that no one else is better than him, that Dom is the “biggest threat” in the room. As they toasted, a congressman approached the table and greeted Tobias familiarly. After several hours and lots of wine, Tobias and Dom went back to Delphine’s. Tobias told her it was “time,” and then he told Dom everything about his “real” history.

Delphine revealed his parents’ pasts, the groups to which they belonged before Dom was born, and Delphine revealed more about her own past. Dom was shocked by how much they had kept from him. He learned that the congressman he met was an original raven (a founding member of the club), someone with whom Tobias had gone to prep school. Tobias revealed his long-term plans. Now, Dom fears that Tobias will never forgive him for his betrayal with Cecelia, and his brother doesn’t deserve that.

Dom gets a text, and he leaps from his bed, takes a quick shower, and goes to put temporary tags onto an old Buick. He’s about to leave when Sean steps in front of him. Sean confronts Dom about what they’re doing and his fears about betraying Tobias. Dom says he can’t do this right now, leading to an altercation. Dom says he’ll never forgive Sean if what he’s doing goes wrong because of Sean’s interference. Sean tells Dom to meet him at the junkyard later.

Dom parks, watching as a man he calls “the fly” (because he is caught in Dom’s figurative web) parks and retrieves something from his backseat. Dom confronts the man, showing his Glock. The fly is dressed in his security guard uniform, and Dom offers the man a big bag of guns for what he’s carrying. The fly makes the trade, and Dom notes the “void” inside his eyes, like a “bottomless pit.” As the man walks away, Dom fires three shots, killing him.

When Dom gets to the junkyard, he burns the Buick, his clothes, and his shoes, then scrubs his hands. Tyler pulls in, and Sean asks what Dom did. Tyler runs up and punches Dom in the face. Tyler says they had a plan, but Dom says the plan included using a “broken system to do [their] job” (275), and that’s not how they’re supposed to work. Tyler turns on the radio, and they hear a bulletin about the shooting and the police search. Dom claims he didn’t have a choice and that he took many precautions to make sure he wouldn’t be identified. Tyler tells Sean to get everyone to the garage. As Dom gets into Denny’s car, he realizes that he’s emotionally numb.

Two days later, Dom is lying on his bed in the same position he took when Denny dropped him off. Tyler enters, and Dom knows he’s been busy cleaning up the mess Dom made. Sean implies that Dom’s actions were heroic, but Dom still feels guilty for “kill[ing] a twenty-year-old kid” (281). Sean says that he saved many more lives in the process because the man was planning a mass murder at a July 4th fireworks celebration. Sean says he tried to break it off with Cecelia, but he couldn’t do it because he loves her. He says he knows Dom saved him when the Miami club threatened his life. Dom realizes that he has to let go of his need to fix everything because it’s killing him. The next morning, Dom is awoken by Cecelia in his bed; it’s raining. She tells him to go back to sleep. Though he would normally struggle to get back to sleep, her presence calms him. When he wakes a few hours later, they make love.

Dom learns that Tobias really is searching for his birth father in France, according to the bird Dom has tailing him. Dom feels his situation with Cecelia is “almost […] prophetic” now; there’s no way it can end well. He knows that Tobias will consider his actions an unforgivable sin because of what Roman did to their family. Dom knows Cecelia doesn’t deserve the blame for Roman’s actions, but she is going to get hurt. He would like to just kill Roman with a gunshot to the head, but his loyalty to Tobias and Cecelia makes this impossible. Dom decides it’s time to let her go, but as soon as he sees her in his bed, his resolve weakens.

Cecelia asks where he’s been, and he says only that he’s been busy. He doesn’t know how to be peaceful anymore, to give her what she wants, because he’s too angry and frustrated by everything else that’s wrong. Cecelia gets frustrated that Dom can only seem to be emotionally intimate during sex. She tells him to stop holding back, and he says that she can go see Sean if she’s unhappy. She threatens to end things if he ever says that again, and the fact that the idea kills him convinces Dom that he must end it. He says more cruel things, and she walks away.

Dom reminds himself of all the reasons he should let Cecelia go. He thinks about how he’s going to manage seeing her around the house with Sean. He feels instantly jealous and possessive, and he goes to Sean’s room. Sean knows what happened, but Cecelia wouldn’t allow him to console her. Sean says he’s already accepted that he is “crossing an uncrossable line,” while Dom hasn’t (305). He says Dom just has to make the decision, that it’s the indecision that’s eating him up. Dom rushes downstairs, where he finds Cecelia. Dom snatches her up and runs to his bedroom, dropping her on the bed. When he says he didn’t mean the things he said, she points out how easy it was for him to demean her, and that makes her not want him anymore. She tells him to give her “something,” some emotion, some thoughtfulness. He says she should get a French bulldog and explains why it would be a good fit for her. This tactic works.

They make love, and Dom realizes how liberating being with Cecelia feels to him. Being with her “revives” him, reminding him of the humanity he felt he’d lost. He remembers Delphine’s warning, that a dalliance with Cecelia would ruin him, and he thinks how he already knew it; “By fire or water,” he says now. “Either way. So fucking be it” (315). It rains every day for a week, and Dom revels in Cecelia’s attention. She is no longer resisting the polyamorous arrangement with Sean and Dom, and this lack of guilt makes their lovemaking even better.

Dom picks up Delphine from the hospital, and she announces that she’d like him to take her to see the sunset. She wants to spend time with him, and she starts to share her feelings for the first time. He takes her to a place called the Pretty Place Chapel for the stunning sunset view. He tells her about a story he read of a woman who had a near-death experience: When doctors revived her, she was disappointed because what happens after death is so much better than being alive. Delphine cries and apologizes for how she treated him as a child; she says she was selfish, and she encourages him to keep an open heart.

When Dom takes Delphine home, he sees that someone has cleaned the place from top to bottom. He correctly guesses that it was Cecelia. Delphine looks at him with guilt in her eyes, and he asks what she’s feeling. Delphine admits that she used to be close to Diane, Cecelia’s mother. After the fire that killed Dom’s parents, Delphine knew that Diane knew what happened and that Roman was involved somehow. So she snuck into Diane’s house and laid a gun, safety on, in Cecelia’s crib. Dom is furious, and he realizes that his own family is just as guilty as Roman of malicious intent. That night, Dom tells Cecelia he loves her.