Page 140 of The Dominator

“It’s okay,” I whispered and kissed her forehead. “You’ve been through a lot.”

We lay still together for a long time and neither of us spoke. Finally, when it was obvious we weren’t going to sleep, she looked up at me and ran her thumb across my lower lip.

“Tell me about your trip.”

I leaned sideways and shifted and then reached into the sheets and pulled off three or four sticky pieces of puffed wheat cereal that was stuck to my thigh. I gave her a funny look.

She laughed, cackled even. Laughed for so hard and so long she made me remember her age. Barely an adult, still young enough and still Tia enough to giggle uncontrollably like that. It was cute.

Maybe all was not lost. Not yet. I tossed the cereal on the nightstand and when she regained her composure I dug into my story.

“Dare and I went to see his mother.”

Her expression went serious.

“She wouldn’t tell us shit. We tried to dig into the past and she wouldn’t talk. She was like a cornered animal. Dare got pissed. But then as we were leaving, her husband stopped us, and we went for a drive with him. He knew what my father had put her through, he knew a lot of shit. He said it took him years to earn her trust and that she was that broken from Pop. The guy’s just headed into end stage Cancer so he told us he has nothing to lose and that it’d give him some degree of peace to tell us things that might mean change for the family, for Annette’s kids and grandkids. My father was looking responsible for the death of his third wife. He almost killed Annette, too. Annette escaped with the kids because he was a sadistic psychopath. Used to beat her. Used to tie her up during sex.”

I stopped and swallowed, letting that sink in for her, before continuing.

“And because she got the real idea of what he got up to in his business life she decided to run. He tracked her down in Italy, hauled the kids back and left her there threatening to kill her if she turned back up. He allowed her to see the kids once a year but that was it. He’s responsible for the death of your uncle, too. It was a power play. It got him Joe’s end of the profits and let him take the business to the next level and it was supposed to get him your mother, too. They split because of his temper and because of what he was getting up to in business. But then he sweet-talked her into leaving your father and somehow she found out about Joe and that’s when she left and had the abortion, an abortion she chose to have, not was forced to have. Your father might not even be aware of it.

She confided in Annette that the pregnancy by my pop was a product of rape. They traded war stories, stayed in touch almost until your mother died. It was like therapy for the both of them. I still don’t know if he killed her or not. We know the doctor who did the abortion was killed in a car accident after my father found out, too. Pop had a thing for killing people in their cars. I’m out, baby. I’m out of this life. I just need to make a few moves and it’s over.”

She was quiet. All traces of her comical outburst gone. Way gone.

“Babe?”

She looked contemplative. “Are you confronting him, are you–”

I cut her off. “No fucking way. He would not hesitate to snuff me out.”

“Tommy, surely not…”

“Yeah, Tia. Surely so. My father believes that without 100% loyalty, you’re an enemy. Blood means nothing in the face of betrayal. I found out he killed his cousin a few years before Joe, too, over a stupid business disagreement. He knows I’m digging around. I’ve found out more shit than I wanted to even know. Stuff that would make your stomach turn. What I do about it is what’ll be the ultimate test. You know how I’ve tested you a few times? Guess I learned that from him; learned too much from him. You have no idea how many times he tempted and tested me and my brother over the years to make us prove ourselves. Would you trust your father after all you’ve found out?”

“Point taken.”

“I’m gonna try to get him to retire. Dare and I are making a few key moves, and then we’re out of 30% of the lines of business we’re in right now. That’s the stuff that has risk, anything illegal whatsoever. Pop’s moving outta the country. He doesn’t like what we’ve done, we deal then. This is gonna take time, but we’ll be working our exit strategy pronto. We’ll end the shady relationships as soon as is feasible.”

“Dario’s on board?”

“Yep.”

“The idea of you without the crime, Tommy? That’s just…it’s amazing.” Her eyes were glistening with happiness.

I gave her a squeeze. “It won’t be overnight but it will happen. I don’t need the risk. The business can be run without it. And if Pop can’t deal, I have enough dough put away to do something else, without him.”

She snuggled into my shoulder and traced my tattoo lines with her fingers. I loved when she did that. We were quiet for a while. I ran my fingers up and down her arm. Then I heard her breathing even out.

She’d passed another test, one I didn’t really realize I’d been giving her at first. I lay there most of the night, absorbing the feel of her, knowing bone deep that even if she’d started to run when I got even to two or three, I’d have stopped her. As much as I wanted her safe, her pain gone, there was just no way would I have ever let her go. I was too fucking selfish. That she didn’t wanna go was a soothing balm for my pain. That she wanted me to chase her down and show her I’d never let her go made my heart sing. I knew that soulmates were real. I had rock solid confirmation that she was made for me. Pop got one thing right, even if it was pure evil that he’d done it at all and even if I was wrong to take it.

My brother wasn’t as surprised as I expected him to be when I had finally talked to him about my findings. Turns out he had been noticing things over the years, too, things that didn’t add up. He had an okay relationship with his mother but said she was always on edge whenever they saw each other. He said that it wasn’t a natural relationship, and he knew Pop had her afraid of her own shadow. I needed to make sure that I didn’t become the man Pop was. I was worried I was close. Dario felt the same.

The night we got the truth from Annette’s husband, Tony, we sat and got drunk and talked all night about it. My brother said he saw Pop backhand his ma one night when me and the girls were asleep. He’d come out for a glass of water and saw Pop send her flying across the room. Dare said that when Debbie had cheated on him his first instinct was to beat the shit out of her, but instead he beat the guy because he’d decided as a little kid that he’d never hit a woman.

My brother was closer to me than anyone in the world and I couldn’t believe that with all the talks we’d had about how we’d run the company once Pop retired that we never once sat and talked in any depth about Pop’s violent streak, about how demanding of a prick he was, about suspicions that the man was darker than anyone knew. We were raised to be loyal to him and that always seemed to win out.

Dare said he thought Pop was running some side businesses underground and had thought it for years, thinking it was because he didn’t wanna jeopardize some of his important relationships with influential people so kept shadier stuff secret. Dare thought Pop was too greedy to not profit off the heavier drugs. He didn’t need the money, but he wanted it. I hadn’t noticed some of the things Dare had noticed because I was too busy trying to prove myself to the megalomaniac.

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