Lightly biting her bottom lip, she pressed her luck again, wanting confirmation on her suspicions. “Cassius is like your father, isn’t he?”
“You mean, like Lucca ….” His eyes bore harder into her emerald ones. “And you.”
Knowing it wasn’t a question but a factual statement, she flipped it on him. “What about you …? Are you like him, too?”
“Princess, I’m nothing like my father.”
That nickname she hated. Except, for some reason, when it came out of his mouth.
Feeling the hand at her waist grip her ever so slightly closer, she wondered if their eye contact was ever going to break. Both were clearly too compelled by the other to look away… “Then, how did you know I was heartless? And, what does that have to do with the last time we saw each other?” … until he did, breaking their connection as easily as he twirled her in the desolate room.
“I still can’t believe you don’t remember.”
“Sorry, but I don’t.” Maria’s apology was said like she wasn’t really sorry at all, and she wasn’t. “I’m dancing with you like you wanted, so tell me already.”
The room fell silent at the precipice point where one song stopped before another began. The only thing they danced to in that split-second was their weighty breaths. Their bodies touched, leaving no space for air between the two. It was something Maria wasn’t aware of until right now.
She seemed to subconsciously inhale deeper, wanting that burning scent he carried to be inside of her.
When the new song replaced their breathing, he finally revealed to her what she had forgotten over all these years. “Your mother’s funeral.”
From those words alone, the clear memory finally escaped from the deep recess of her mind, flooding her with an image of a young Dominic in an old, brown suit that was a size too big on him. However, Maria didn’t understand how he had known what she was like even all those years ago. The only one who had truly believed that something was wrong with her had been her psychiatrist, because then, not even her parents wanted to accept that their precious daughter was evil.
Seeing the confusion on her face, he continued, “I knew you were heartless because you didn—”
BANG.
Her first dance might just be her last.
Nine
You’re Drunk
Hearing the gunshot fire, she went for the swaying door, wanting to make sure her family was okay.
“Are you fucking crazy?” Dominic wrapped his arms around her, getting to her before she could open the door to the mass hysteria in the other room.
“We can’t just”—she tried fighting him off—“stay in here and do nothing!”
Lifting her off the floor, he started dragging her back through the safety of the kitchen. “If I let the boss’s daughter go out there and get hurt, then my family and I are as good as dead anyway.”
He wasn’t necessarily wrong, but to her, he was. Fear wasn’t in her vocabulary, and she thought it wasn’t in his, either.
Fighting him harder when he opened the deep freezer in the back of the room, Maria couldn’t believe how wrong she had been about him.
“Please, Maria.” He set her back on her skinny heels in the chilly metal box. To stop her from trying to escape again, he firmly grabbed a hold of her face, wanting her to look at him. “You’re drunk.”
“No, I’m—am not.” Well, fuck.
“You are,” he stated the obvious of why he got her to dance with him in the first place. “And, if I don’t protect you—”
“I don’t need protecting, Dominic. Why can’t anyone understand that!”
He studied the soft, perfect face in his hands, from her jeweled eyes to her pouty lips. “I don’t think you do, princess, but we both know, if I let you walk out of here like this, I’m dead, my brothers are dead, Kat’s dead.”
Maria stared up at his pleading eyes, understanding that she may have been the one captured at the moment, but she was also the one who held his fate in her hands. “Fine.”
Letting her go slowly, finger by finger, Maria wondered who regretted it more. She hadn’t realized until he let her go he was a few inches taller than her even in her heels. It was the type of petty shit girls noticed when they liked someone.
“Here.” Dominic quickly removed his suit jacket. “Take this, and I’ll be back.”
“You’re leaving me?”
“I can’t sit here with my family and my men out there,” he told her, draping the warm material over her shoulders.
So Dominic was who she thought, even if he was making her stay in here. But, if he was guilting her into not leaving, she needed something in return.
“Will you make sure Leo’s okay?”
She watched him nod as he still held tightly onto the jacket around her shoulders. With his knuckles practically turning white, she thought he was going to pull it and her up into a kiss, but he simply let go.