Page 128 of The Dominator

If giving him justification meant I was fucked up, so be it. There were a lot of fucked up people in the world who had evolved because of what they’d been through. I wanted my happily ever after. Would I get it with Tommy? I sure hoped so.

He’d told me when he first got me here that he looked forward to breaking my spirit. Now he was begging me to never let him break it. I sure hoped I could honor that wish of his. When I woke up, he was holding me close, but he was staring at the ceiling, looking like a tortured soul.

Sadness swept through me at his facial expression. I was no stranger to coming to terms with having a fucked-up father who put his own needs before his kids. The two situations weren’t the same, but I still got it. I was still coming to terms, myself, with what I’d heard on that recording, admission that my dad’s relationship with me was broken because of my mother’s death, and his selfish requests. Things were already screwed with the father- daughter thing so he’d might as well get his lifelong dream of being a wise guy out of it.

When I’d seen Tom Sr. yesterday a part of me wanted to spit in his face, to demand answers. But another part of me just felt numb. I had been forced to face and feel so much in the past several weeks. I didn’t know how to categorize my feelings. I just knew I had to put one foot in front of the other and move forward somehow. At least I had Tommy with me. He’d help me, he’d protect me. And I’d help him and I’d give him what he needed at the end of every hard day ahead of him.

“I’m calling Greg today. I have more questions for him,” he said without looking at me, aware I was awake and watching him.

I snuggled into his side and put my lips to his shoulder and started to trace the outlines of his tattoo with my fingertip.

“I’ll have him here this afternoon. You can decide if you want to talk to him or leave him to me.”

“Kay,” I said, not sure which option I’d choose.

Tommy kissed me on the mouth and then kissed between my breasts, then my navel, then gave me a devilish grin on the way down farther. Sex was a good distractor from our problems. A very good distractor.

I had evidence corroborating Earl’s story. Regardless of why he did what he did, he took her from me and that was unforgivable. His son Michael had stumbled upon the meth situation because Michael was using and selling and spotted Pop leaving the house of his dealer’s dealer.

Earl was dead and gone; I’d shot him after I’d tracked him down, after he told me why. He knew he was a goner when he saw me. He told me that he had a feeling when she was given back to me that I’d be coming for him. He told me he didn’t think, at first, I’d get involved. Never thought I was the type to be a girl’s hero. My father didn’t get involved in these sorts of things since Tia was just a pawn and Earl had known about her father and my Pop’s quest to ruin the man’s life. While he didn’t think I’d come for her, he hoped my Pop might get lured down here due to his connection to Tia’s mother and he’d get his chance for revenge. He told me it wasn’t personal with him and I. Obvious to me or I’d have been dead when he shot near me instead of at me. Didn’t matter. It was him who took her and he had to pay.

I never figured Pop would get heavily into the drug game. Yeah, he’d said he profited from cocaine here and there back in the 70s and 80s, but didn’t bother nowadays beyond weed, which we made good money from, and which I didn’t classify as any worse than alcohol. It was now obvious he’d been keeping it from me.

My PI showed proof that he was moving about two million every few weeks through a few guys locally and with that, who knew what else he was into? He’d financed the start-up of a lab and was making a good chunk of change off it. But my PI also talked to Michael’s girlfriend, who admitted she had told Earl after Michael died about the meth and that Michael had been worried about seeing Tom Ferrano leave his dealer’s dealer’s house. Earl had done some investigating of his own and put the pieces together. The girlfriend died of an overdose a few days after my PI talked to her though my PI Zack said she didn’t seem like a drug user.

My father was set up for retirement. He was set up to leaving all his kids enough money to live comfortably, (although Dare and I had already set ourselves up and didn’t need Pop’s dough) as well as leaving money to set his young wife up for life. He had thriving businesses that were run by his people and that continually brought profit. So why was he in the meth game? It was ego, power, it was all so important to Pop. If there was a business where money could be made, he wanted in, wanted to be seen as a master of all trades.

It made me wonder how on earth he’d retire to the Cayman Islands with Lisa. If he was still in the day-to-day shit of this life when me and Dare practically ran Ferrano Enterprises and the subsidiaries for him, would he really let go for retirement? Or had I gone through all these motions for nothing? It made no sense; he was practically shoving me down the aisle so he could hand me the reins, but why was he dabbling in new business, shadier-than-fuck business, at the same time? Did he have Michael’s girlfriend killed because Zack was hot on his heels?

Signs pointed to evidence that Tia’s Uncle Joe’s death wasn’t an accident. It was brake failure on his car during a snowstorm and he’d been out on this crazy winding stretch of road that was known for being a bad accident area. He was out on an errand for Pop during that storm. Pop gained a fuck of a lot from Joe’s death.

Wife number three, Stacia: she crashed into a tree and died of head injuries. Her airbag didn’t go off. They found drugs in her system and figured she fell asleep at the wheel. But she wasn’t a known drug user. What she was, was a shrew. She was always getting up in Pop’s grill about shit. She was a former model, she was gorgeous, high maintenance. Did Pop get sick of her?

He married Lisa, friends with the girls, just months after Stacia died. Lisa was just as beautiful as Stacia but without the high maintenance. And Lisa got along great with the girls. Stacia and my sisters hated one another, so Pop wasn’t getting his Sunday dinners with his family around him with Stacia. That tradition was back after he married Lisa.

Maybe I’d talk to Annette, mother to Dare and the girls. She was all right to me growing up. I wouldn’t say she treated me like a son, she always seemed a little afraid of me, she never disciplined me; wasn’t affectionate. But she was real affectionate with her own kids. Maybe I needed to get information from her to help put some of the puzzle pieces together.

I hadn’t talked to Dare yet. I didn’t know how he’d take all of this. I knew he’d believe me, I mean the evidence was right in front of us, but spilling my guts would hurt my brother. Laying out the sort of man our father might really be, the man behind the mask, it wouldn’t be a fun conversation. Did I want him to feel what I felt right now? I guess I had to; it was the only way forward.

As for Lita O’Connor: I didn’t know if she’d offed herself or if Pop had something to do with it. Had it been a car accident, I wouldn’t have had a doubt in my mind. But slit wrists in the tub? I found out her tox screen came up clear, so it wasn’t likely Pop could’ve drugged her and then slit her wrists. There was nothing on the coroner’s report that pointed to a struggle.

I’d have a discussion with O’Connor today and then I’d go from there. I didn’t know if he could tell me any more than I already knew, but I also wanted Tia to have an opportunity to put things to rest, too.

When I got downstairs that morning, Sarah was in the kitchen.

“Good morning Chiquita!”

She poured me a coffee and then I watched her put one and a half spoons of sugars in it. That was pretty bold, considering I hadn’t seen her in more than a week and had been putting my three sugars in consistently. I accepted the cup, tasted it, then leaned over and fetched the sugar. She smirked at me.

“Tell me about your trip!” I said and sat down, trying not to blush too hard about what she’d walked in on last night.

I spent the next hour listening to her tell me about her relatives, about her holiday. She asked me about our trip. I told her about the Blue Man Group, I told her I won five grand on the slot machines, and then she asked me why our wedding had been postponed.

“Tommy’s busy. We’re just going to wait until things are less crazy,” I said.

“So, you’re happy with him? You see what a good man he can be?” she asked.

“I am. And I do.” I answered.

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