Page 160 of The Dominator

I waited.

And waited.

And I waited…

Finally, I was thirsty and hungry and wondering what was keeping him. I got out of bed and reached into my purse and found the flip phone. I didn’t know if the iPhone was still at the hayloft or not. I texted him.

Hi. Since you’re obviously not in a hurry to finish what you started, can I please leave the bed, Master? I’m very thirsty and hungry and you’ve left me all alone for so very long :(

A few minutes later I got a reply.

Sorry baby! I’d like nothing better than to come and finish! Go & eat. I had to run out for a bit. You’re under 3x security. You’re safe. I’ll be back ASAP. This phone almost out of juice so use my reg. number. We’ll grab your reg phone tomorrow from the farm.

Me: stupid Phone. LOL. <3 U. IDK your reg number off by heart so text it to me. Be safe!

He replied with a happy face and x’s and o’s plus his other number. Sheesh, how long would he have left me here? I had to give him a break; he obviously had a million things on his mind. I found my way downstairs and decided to pop one of Sarah’s frozen lasagnas in the oven. I drank a tall glass of water and then went back upstairs to get a shower.

Tommy hadn’t turned up by the time the lasagna was ready and it was big enough to feed a dozen so I cut off a piece for me, wrapped up a piece for Tommy for later, tossed a big salad and served two bowls out, then put the rest of the lasagna and salad in the fridge in the security team’s break room and stepped out to the patio where Dex was standing, talking on a cell. When he saw me, he put it back to his waistband. “Everything okay?”

“Sorry to bug you…” I started.

He waved his hand. “It’s what I’m here for. What do you need?”

“Nothing, I just wanted to tell you and the other guys that I put a lasagna and salad in the fridge in the staff breakroom.”

His eyes lit up. “Thanks, that’s awesome,” he said.

The other guy who’d been at the gate when we came in was approaching and I could tell he’d heard by how his face lit up. I decided then that I’d continually put food into the staff room fridge for these guys who were working so hard to keep us safe. It couldn’t be easy being in their shoes after knowing guys were killed while on that same job the other night. It was just food, but at least it was something to show my appreciation.

After I ate and watched TV for a bit, I was pretty tired. It was only around 9:00, but I decided to crash early. I texted Tommy from the flip phone.

I’m going to bed. Hope you’re okay. Love you. Xo

I got an almost instant reply.

I’m fine. See you soon. Love you. xxx”

My plan was to go home, make love to my girl, sleep for a few hours, and then find out how Pop was doing. Instead, I had to meet with my PI and my brother, to get more intel on where things were at.

On my way to get Dare from the hospital, I got a returned call back from a connection that helped me get Tia’s father moved. He was safe. For how long, I didn’t know. Did he deserve it? Fuck, no. But, he was her father and I didn’t want her to have to deal with his death on top of everything else so he was on simmer for the time being.

Turned out that Dare talked to Pop, who’d woken up. Pop had Jimmy doing double duty for insight with his enemies related to the group Romero was part of; he wasn’t really stepping out on us. Pop wasn’t coherent enough to get too into detail so we had to guess at a few things. We guessed the thing with my weapons happened because it’d fallen in his lap while he’d been wearing a wire for the other guys when he was found shot so we assumed he’d been dodgy with me because of the wire. The whole wire thing made sense, too. Jimmy had really been keeping his distance the last few days before he was shot. They’d probably told him to leave me a sitting duck.

It seemed like he’d been on his way here, probably to help or warn me, when things went screwy. If that’s what he intended, it didn’t happen because he’d been shot instead. Dare and I planned to talk to our sister and we hoped it’d bring her a little bit of peace that her husband had been loyal, too loyal. Fucking Pop.

She wouldn’t be best pleased with Pop for putting her husband in that position, getting him killed. None of us were pleased with him after the things we’d found out.

Pop was in deeper with illicit drugs than we’d imagined. And it was that depth that had created the whole rift with Juan Carlos Castillo in the first place. Many lives had been unnecessarily lost as a result of Pop moving in on Castillo’s territory. But Romero didn’t have the clout alone needed to take Pop out so at first, he participated in recruiting Earl and they tried to use Tia as a bargaining chip. Not only did Pop refuse to back off but as a result, I’d killed Castillo and worked with Castillo’s arch nemesis to wipe out the Castillo cartel.

This had, of course, trickled back home with Jesse Romero getting desperate to hang onto his business but without the strength of his uncle he had started trying to expand his team, to swell his ranks, bringing in new guys, careless and / or inexperienced guys, making alliances. The whole thing had been a gaggle fuck. Stuff we’d agreed to with Castillo down south had less to do with what we thought we were working toward and more to do with Pop’s drug deals. Now Romero and most of his crew were gone. Castillo was gone. And Pop was in a hospital bed showing signs of improvement. Big moves almost always result in a trickle effect, and I wanted to do some serious damage control.

Pop had plans to move to the islands, yeah, but retirement wasn’t looking like it’d factor into those plans. My PI dug up evidence that he had plans to have me and Dare look after business here while he expanded some seedy business to do with women, drugs, and guns into Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. Pop didn’t want to retire; he wanted more power, more control, and it was out of hand. One of his enemies was doing well in that part of the world and Pop wanted to take it all away from the guy.

Clearly it was out of hand if he had this secret life. Here it was about construction, the bookie business, loans, and that trickled down into a few other areas, like stolen goods, sex, a little weed. And yeah, some was illegal but where he’d sunk to seemed to me and to my brother to be worse than that, much worse than that. We knew sometimes we had to dabble in those areas, but Pop wasn’t dabbling, he was deep sea diving in the cesspool.

What I now had to decide was, how was I getting out without making an enemy of my father? I called Dex to check on things at home and the fuckin’ guy was talking with his mouth full.

“Can’t understand what you’re saying man. What are you doing? Blowing someone? Spit or swallow, man.”

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