“Dominik,” I call, but his long legs make him fast. “Dom, wait.” He still doesn’t answer, but this? This he has to hear. “I’m leaving." My voice rises above the chatter in the hall. He stops in his path, students walking around us. “I have to go home. It’s too crazy here. I can’t be here any—”
“Please meet me in my office, Mia.” He turns around, his eyes locking on mine as he gestures to the door next to him.
Did they give him an office?
Students pass us, eyeing Dom and me. He's right. A private conversation is better. But if he’s the one thinking straight between us, that scares me.
Moving inside his small office, he locks the door behind me. After lowering the curtains on the door window, he faces me. “Come again?” he asks, his wolfish eyes narrowing.
“I-I’m leaving.”
“That won’t work.”
“What do you mean, that won’t work?” My brows furrow. “It wasn’t a question. Where’s Feliks?”
“Never thought you’d care about him more than me.” That’s his response?
Fucking narcissist.
“That’s bullshit, Dom. You know I care about you.” My hands clench at my sides, in the school blouse and pants Dom gave me. “That’s why I’m leaving. My dad won’t stop. And I know you guys won’t either, and I can’t have more blood on my hands.”
“But having me locked up was fine.” His chest pins me against the door, the office behind him. It looks empty. Impersonal. Everything Dom is, or at least tries to be.
“Like the goons coming after you, that was my dad, not me. You of all people should know—”
“But you didn’t stop him!” His fist punches into the door, my shoulders rising to my ears as the wood cracks under the pressure. His hands slap on either side of me. “You didn’t stop him, Mia. I went to jail for you. For you! And now? And now my man is hanging on to his life. For fucking you! And you think the answer is to leave? You selfish fucking whore.” Dom’s face is so close to mine I can smell the tobacco off his warm breath.
“If you think I’m selfish, you don’t know me like you think you do, Dominik.”
“I know you, Mia Merlo.” His forehead comes an inch from mine, his heated skin so close I can feel it. “I know your cunt drips for my men even though it belongs to me.” His eyes drop to my lips and I want to tell him to stop. I want to push him back from invading my space, but I’m frozen, captured by his dominating presence. “I know you don’t give a fuck about me. You don’t give a fuck about us. You don’t give a fuck about you. If you did, you wouldn’t be threatening to go back to Daddy.”
There’s so much I want to say. There's so much I want to prove but with heat on my skin and my voice trembling, all I can muster is, “Fuck you, Dominik.”
“Yeah, you fucking wish,” he growls. “Never again, Mia.” His lips are the closest they’ve been since that day at the penitentiary. And I hate when my lips fall open, welcoming them. “Never again.”
POW!
Dominik stiffens, the loud sound of a bang coming through the door. A scream follows. Then another.
“The fuck,” Dominik mutters. He moves around me, his finger grazing my cheek as he looks beyond the curtain.
More bangs bellow through the door and I’ve heard those sounds enough to know what it is.
Gunshots.
“Mia Merlo!” My name hollers through the halls, my eyes widening. My real name. “Has anyone seen Mia Merlo? If we can all cooperate, I promise, no one gets hurt. God’s honour.”
“Shit. Oh, shit.” The words fall out of my trembling mouth.
“Get down,” Dom demands.
POW!
“They have guns!” My head pops beside Dominik and when it does, three men in suits stand in the middle of the hallway, guns in their hands. Big guns. The one in the middle turns around, catches my eye, then smiles.
“Get down!” My body flies to the floor, Dominik’s heavy frame landing on me.
“They’re here for me.” It all starts making sense. “My dad. He—”