Page 145 of The Dominator

“Tommy’s family owns a construction company, some restaurants,” I answered.

“Your father was arrested the day before yesterday,” the female cop said.

I blanched. “He was?”

“Trafficking crack cocaine, methamphetamines, DMT, MDMA. He tells us he’s selling drugs for the Ferrano family, that he has no choice because they are holding you for ransom. He wants to go into witness protection and wants you safe and he’s willing to testify to facts related to illegal activities by...” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small spiral notebook, “Thomas Ferrano Sr., Thomas Ferrano Jr., Dario Ferrano, James Michaelson, Edward Nichols, Nino Rossi, and several others.” She flipped the book closed and looked at me expectantly.

I shook my head. “My father has been acting strangely. We suspected he was using drugs. I really don’t think this has anything to do with my fiancé.”

I felt like I was going to hurl the contents of my stomach all over her shiny black shoes. Luckily, I had nothing in my stomach other than two cups of coffee.

The male officer leaned over and put his hand on mine. “It’s okay, you’re safe. You can tell us the truth.”

I pulled my hand back and shook my head. If this was a test, I wasn’t failing it. Maybe this wasn’t a Tommy test. Maybe this was his father testing me. Seemed like just the sort of thing he’d do. If this wasn’t a test, I was not giving them anything. There was no way in the world my father was selling drugs for the Ferrano family. No fricking way.

“I’d like to make a phone call, please.”

“Why do you need to make a phone call?” the female cop asked.

“To call a lawyer,” I said.

“You aren’t under arrest,” the male cop said.

“Then I’d like to leave,” I answered. My phone was ringing from my pocket, it was Tommy calling.

Tia’s phone rang twice and then went to voicemail. Fuck. I was sitting in the coffee shop across the street from the cop shop. I’d sent Nino away so he and Bee could take their son Joey to T-ball. I called Pop’s lawyer and left him a voicemail. I called Pop and he said he’d try to find out what was going down. And I sat. And sat.

I texted her.

I’m in the coffee shop across the street when you’re done. xxx

An hour passed and I texted her again.

I’m going home. Call me when you’re done and I’ll come pick you up.

Two more hours, nothing. No read receipts on my texts, even.

Pop and I talked, and he told me that he had word Greg O’Connor had been arrested. I knew there had to be a connection.

“Did you do this to O’Connor, Pop?” I asked.

He was quiet on the other end of the phone.

“Pop?”

“Maybe,” Pop answered.

“Fuck, Pop.”

I hung up and hit the wall with my fist. Was Tia gone? Had she been presented with a way to escape me and taken it? No. There was no way. I wanted to believe that what she and I had was real. It felt real. It felt completely fucking real. She wouldn’t leave me. Would she?

For hours, they interrogated me, left me waiting in that room, came back and asked the same questions again with different phrasing. And then repeat. All day.

They started to talk about the rap sheets of some of the people in Tommy’s father’s “organization” as they called it. They talked about murders that they couldn’t pin. They’d said that the Ferrano family was suspected of a lot of different illegal activities. They told me they were even linked with slavery trade overseas, with cocaine crops in South America, with mass murder down in Mexico where Earl Johnson, a Ferrano “foot soldier”, was found with a gunshot to the face and three gunshots to his genitals. At the same site, they’d said, a cartel leader had been found decapitated and castrated, his own genitals stuffed in his mouth. I threw up into the waste basket, just some liquid because I hadn’t eaten, and of course that made them even more suspicious about whether or not I knew anything about that situation.

They also carefully watched for reactions as they talked about how that cartel’s compound had been found with eight murdered men in addition to Earl and Juan Carlos Castillo. Four women had been set free and had ID’d someone matching the description of Tommy Ferrano as having been there with guns, urging them to leave.

They said a woman matching my description was reported as being there as well. I shrugged it off, saying I hadn’t ever been to Mexico, and didn’t know what they were talking about. There had been no record of Tommy landing there or of him leaving the country but there were eyewitness accounts initially. I was told that those had since been retracted.

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