Page 35 of The Dominator

I was about to tell her that Tommy said my belongings were downstairs, so I didn’t need any more clothes, but her phone rang and she picked it up.

“Yes, Sir?” She mouthed the name Tommy at me.

I backed away from her and walked through the kitchen to the dining room where there were more patio doors. I took my coffee outside to the patio.

A moment later she came out. “He says I should bring you grocery shopping. We’ll go after your coffee and breakfast. He had this delivered for you.”

She passed me an Apple iPhone box. The shrink-wrap was loose. I put it on the table and held my lips tight together.

“What do you want to eat? I’ll make you something. At least have some cereal? Open it. There’s a message.”

“Cereal’s fine; thanks.”

She disappeared into the house.

There was a black iPhone and when I turned it on, there was a text message alert. I opened the text, which said it was from “T”.

“Keep this phone with you at all times in case I need to reach you. It only dials to me and won’t make any other calls. I’ll be home @10-11. Behave.”

I said ‘whatever’ aloud then I put it down. I liked my phone. I didn’t know where my phone even was. Why did I have to use this phone? I wanted to throw it in the pool accidentally-on-purpose.

Sarah came out with a bowl of cereal for me.

“Sugar Crisp?” I asked.

She smiled. “Is that okay?”

I hadn’t had a bowl of Sugar Crisp since my mom walked the earth. I started to bawl. Hard. Ugly cry. She sat down and wrapped her arms around me and let me howl it out. Damn, but it felt good to wail. I think I went on for fifteen minutes until I was doing that stuttered breathing thing. She just let me. She just sat with me and patted my back and stroked my hair and let me cry it out. She was about the age Mom would’ve been if she hadn’t died. God, I missed having a mother.

Rose was amazing and I’d had some other amazing women help raise me, but I really, really wanted my mom. Mom wouldn’t have let Dad sell me to the mafia. If that’s what he’d done.

By the time I let her go, my cereal had gone soggy. She got me another bowl, telling me that she always kept it on hand because it was Tommy’s favorite. I told her through the last of the tears that I wouldn’t hold that against the Sugar Crisp and she laughed at me and rubbed big circles around my back with her palm. Mom used to rub my back like that.

My phone rang, interrupting a meeting – a meeting that was dragging on enough as it was, and I didn’t need something else slowing it down. It was Sarah. I declined the call. Then I got a sinking feeling about Tia. I had seen her in my bed that morning and it’d stirred something in me that I couldn’t put my finger on. She’d been asleep in my shirt, the blankets kicked off, giving me a raging hard-on.

She’d been on my side of the bed, snuggled in to my pillow. I wondered if the only reason she stayed cuddled up against me at night instead of rolling away was because I was on her preferred side of the bed. But seeing her in my shirt just hit me hard. I had to stop myself from climbing on top of her. I got a quick shower and had left before she woke up. I was about to call back and then Sarah called again.

“Excuse me,” I said to Dare and to the three men I was sitting with, brokering a deal for a very lucrative upcoming construction project. I answered and stepped away, asking, “What is it?”

“That girl just spent twenty-five minutes crying on my shoulder like her life was over. She won’t talk, just keeps crying. What are you doing to her?”

The fuck?

I ended the call without a word. For fuck sakes. Few people in the world dared talk to me that way. Unfortunately, Sarah was one of them.

My head was barely in the rest of the meeting. Thankfully, Dare picked up the slack. By the time it was over I knew that Sarah and Tia would be out shopping. I called Earl to check in and make sure everything was okay.

Grocery shopping with a six-foot-six mean-looking Black guy in a suit along with a sweet Latina woman who never shut her mouth for more than five seconds was interesting. It broke up the boredom of lying in my torture chamber (a.k.a. his room), at least.

I was quiet, just pushed the cart while Sarah filled it and talked about recipes, about prices, about what was in season, while she asked me questions about whether or not I preferred crunchy or smooth peanut butter, about whether I liked fruit bottom or stirred yogurt. She told me what Tommy liked to eat, like I cared. But this was a diversion, at least, from the pit of despair I’d been in.

Earl was on the phone, saying, “Yes, Sir. No, no problems, Sir. Yes, Sir. Right, Sir. Fine, Sir. Bye, Sir.”

Fuck off and die, Sir, I thought to myself, or so I thought, but guessed I had actually muttered it aloud because Earl was staring at me with a funny little smile.

I tried to smile back; I definitely blushed. I was grateful I wasn’t being babysat by burly number one or burly number two or Tommy’s very intense angry brother. I guess I kind of liked Earl so far. He seemed nice. He had kind eyes. As kind and nice, I guess, as a guy can be who’s helping another guy hold me prisoner.

As my neck was coming around to face forward after smiling at him I saw my foster mother push an empty shopping cart past me. Rose! She made eye contact briefly, and then kept going. This wasn’t her neighborhood. She glanced back at me and subtly made the sign language sign for toilet.

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