5. Dom
FIVE
DOM
I dropped Fitch off just after seven in the morning on my way to work. I wasn’t in the habit of having anyone stay over, but he was different.
He was different to anyone I’d ever been with.
He was the perfect boy.
He was also at Nolan’s house when I turned up unannounced, and he was the last person I expected to see. The jealousy that burned me when I assumed he and Nolan had—the idea that Nolan had touched my boy burned red hot through me. He was mine. My boy, no one else’s.
Then the realisation that he was a rent boy—a boy to anyone who paid for him—doused me like a bucket of ice-cold water.
Reality and emotions I hadn’t been prepared for collided spectacularly.
Terribly.
Emotions there would be ramifications and consequences for, I was well aware.
And yet . . .
And yet I was powerless to resist him.
I need you to show me that you know what’s best for me. That’s what he’d said, and any attempts at me going home without him were nil.
I prided myself on keeping my emotions in check. It’s what I did. It’s how I lived, in my job and in my personal life. Control the narrative, reduce the damage.
It’s what made me a damn good lawyer.
People called me cold and ruthless, but that wasn’t the case. Not really. I could compartmentalise and remove the emotions. It certainly strained my attempts at relationships, but it was a self-defence measure.
Control the narrative, reduce the damage.
Except I wasn’t that way with Fitch. He was controlling me, and for the first time ever, I was ready to let him.
When he looked at me with those big sorry eyes and pouty lips and begged me to show him how I knew what was best for him...
God help me.
It didn’t help that he was sitting on my lap in the confines of my car, his tiny arse perched nicely against my crotch.
So yes, I gave in.
I let him win.
I took him back to my place and showed him exactly what was good for him. Once last night, and again before work this morning.
And I still wanted more of him.
I wanted all of him.
I could suddenly see why Nolan took two days off work to stay home and fuck his boy non-stop.
His boy . . .
There was something about him too. Something familiar, but not really. Maybe I’d seen him hanging around with Fitch outside club 180. That was, after all, where I’d first met Fitch.
But his eyes . . .
Dark, haunted.
Familiar.
Gail came into my office, her arms full of files. “Judge Barnhardt moved the arraignment date in the Oldfield case,” she said, dumping the files on my desk.
Fuck.
“To when?”
“Today. We’ve got two hours.”
Two hours?
I checked my watch, doing the math.
“Didn’t they request an adjournment?”
She shrugged and opened the top file. “Barnhardt denied it.”
Barnhardt was an old-school judge who liked the power of keeping people on their toes. Or on the backfoot. He was a hard-arse, gruff old guy who ate young cocky lawyers for breakfast. And the Oldfield case was an insurance negligence fight, which Barnhardt made no attempt to hide his disdain for. This was not going to be a fun day.
But on the bright side, at least I’d be busy and focused enough to stop thinking about a certain boy...
And his milky white skin, his boyish smile, and the way he begged me to come?—
“Dominic,” Gail said. “You with me today?”
I shook my head, clearing all thoughts of Fitch out of my mind. “Yes. Yes, I am.”
It was late by the time I finally called it a day. Like after nine, kind of late. I grabbed take out on the way home, sat my arse on my sofa with a beer and a bowl of cao l?u, and let my mind decompress.
Of course my filthy mind went straight to Fitch and the way he’d whimpered and pleaded on this very couch when I’d bent him over, pulled his jeans down, and showed him what was best for him...
I wondered what he was doing tonight.
Was he working?
Was another man touching him? Fucking him?
Or was he not working tonight and instead hanging out with his friends? Not likely, given Benji was at Nolan’s...
I itched to text Fitch. Just to ask him if he was working tonight, maybe torture myself some more when he didn’t reply.
Or spiral completely when he said he was.
This whole scenario was ludicrous. He was mine for just one night a week, nothing more. Except it’d been two nights this week...
And it still wasn’t enough.
Christ. How had this one guy taken up so much real estate in my head?
Before I could do something stupid like actually text him, I tossed my phone onto the coffee table and decided a hot shower was in order. And when I was lying in bed, the only way I could get my mind to not think about how Fitch was probably working tonight, or about Nolan and how he got to have his boy in his bed when I did not get to have mine, was to have the TV on until I fell asleep.
Nolan, the lucky bastard, and his beautiful boy with the haunted eyes...
And just as I was drifting off to sleep, in that peaceful place between awake and dreaming, it hit me.
Where I’d seen those eyes before.
I sat upright and grabbed my phone, searching the internet for pictures.
It couldn’t be . . .
Surely not.
Until I found a photo. It was old, and I’d seen more recent ones. And I would definitely have to double-check. But there he was...
Benecio Barbieri.
A boy of maybe six years old with his mother, now deceased. It was a paparazzi photograph in a newspaper article; they were crossing a street. He was in a school uniform, a small kid for his age. His dark curly hair was longer now, but his eyes.
The eyes don’t change.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Needless to say, I didn’t sleep much, and I was in the office early, digging through the Barbieri files. Files that Nolan had worked on. Admittedly, he only did admin and data correlation on this case, but still...
This wasn’t good.
This compromised the entire fucking case.
I knocked on Nolan’s door, case file in hand. “Got a second?”
He looked up and smiled when he saw me, oblivious to the truth bomb I was about to drop on him. Unless he knew already? Oh fuck. Did he know his Benji was Benecio Barbieri?
I sincerely hoped he didn’t. For his sake.
“Sure,” he replied. “Come in.”
So I did. I closed the door behind me so no one else could hear. I needed to know what he knew... because if he did know who Benji really was... well, it didn’t bear thinking about.
After some initial small talk about Benji and Fitch, I cut to the chase.
“What do you know about him?”
“Benji?”
“Yes.”
He seemed confused, defensive. “That he’s twenty years old. Been in his line of work for two years.”
“Anything about his family?”
“Only that they weren’t good people, and he spent his whole life dreaming of leaving them.” He was past confused and defensive now, approaching angry.
But not guilty.
“Do you know his last name?” I asked.
He made a face. “He told me it was Smith, but I highly doubt that’s true.”
Smith?
Jesus Christ.
He glared at me. “Hardly surprising to not give actual names in his line of work, is it?” He shook his head, fire in his eyes. “What’s going on, Dom? Why the questions?”
I thought it was better to show him, so I put the manila folder on his desk and opened it. “I thought I recognised him, but I couldn’t be sure,” I said quietly. “It took me a while to place him. He’s older, thinned out a lot, but his eyes...”
And I watched for his reaction, something I’d been trained to do. The smallest of signs, cues. This is where the truth often hid, in the smallest tells of a person’s reaction.
I’d seen it on the stand a hundred times.
And Nolan’s reaction was no different.
He saw the photograph of a twelve-year-old Benji standing at his mother’s funeral, and he paled, his breath leaving him in a sorrowful rush. And that was an honest reaction if I’d ever seen one. Shock, disbelief, and finally hurt.
He didn’t know.
And it was also pretty clear to me that he had genuine feelings for this boy. Sure, he’d said as much the other day when I’d turned up at his place.
But I could see it written all over him now.
“Jesus Christ,” he whispered.
“I’m sorry,” I replied. Because I was. Sorry for the hurt he felt and for the pain I was about to add.
“He’s been off radar for years,” I added gently. “Went to boarding school, apparently, and never went home. Not during school holidays, not when he graduated. He just... disappeared.”
Nolan nodded. “He said he grew up wanting nothing else but to leave them,” he whispered.
“The cops don’t know where he is,” I said. “Couldn’t find him. When Bruno Barbieri’s case got blown wide open, he was questioned about everything, including the whereabouts of his youngest son. No one had seen him in years and, at first, they speculated if Bruno had offed him. You know they’d always questioned whether he’d killed his wife...”
Nolan looked about ready to puke.
But much like ripping off a Band-Aid, I had to get to the end. “But Bruno had laughed and said Benecio was... a string of homophobic words I won’t repeat, and that he wouldn’t have wasted a bullet.”
Nolan went a shade of grey. “I need to go home,” he said, about to stand up.
“Nolan,” I said, stopping him. “This is... this is not good.”
“No. He’s at home, by himself. I should be with him. Or something. I don’t know.”
“You’re implicated,” I said flatly. “This case is now in jeopardy. Every file, anything you’ve touched, which is all of it.”
He blinked, stunned. “No . . . no.”
“He’s the son of Bruno Barbieri. The man we’re trying to put away for some very serious crimes. The son, who is currently living at your house, and you’re paying him for sexual?—”
“No. I’m paying him for loss of income when I hit him with...”
“With your car,” I finished for him. “Can you see how this looks?”
“He ran out in front of me,” he countered weakly. “He was being chased... Oh fuck.”
Oh goddammit. “What is it? He was being chased?”
He nodded, licking his lips as if his mouth was suddenly dry. “Who did you tell about this?”
“No one. I wanted to speak to you first.”
He stood up and grabbed his jacket. “Come with me.”
“Where are we going?”
“To speak to Benji.”
I stood up but raised a hand. “Wait. I can’t. I can’t see him now that I know. I’m lead counsel?—”
“You said his father wouldn’t have bothered killing him because he’s gay,” he said, grabbing his keys and phone.
“Right.”
“But he’s been trying to find him, sending men to find him and chase him. He’s staying at my place to lie low from the two men who were chasing him the night I hit him.”
“What are you saying?”
“So Bruno wouldn’t kill him for being gay,” Nolan said quietly. “But maybe he would kill him for being a witness.”
Witness?
What the hell?
I scooped up the photos and folder, adrenaline rising. “Witness to what?”
Nolan’s eyes met mine, wide and scared. “That’s what we need to find out.”
Nolan drove far too fast, fingers strumming, borderline panicking. There was no trying to reason with him, no talking him down.
I tried to reason that this case was bigger than what they had together and what was at stake. I tried to remind him about priorities, and he looked me dead in the eye and told me Benji was his priority.
Not the case.
Not his job.
Not everything we’d worked for, the police had worked for, the whole legal team, none of it.
The only thing that mattered to Nolan was Benji.
And as much as that angered me, frustrated and downright pissed me off, it also made me understand.
What he felt for Benji was real.
The way he collected that boy in an embrace of relief and love was real.
So was the fear that washed over Benji.
In front of me wasn’t a twenty-year-old man, but a twelve-year-old boy, the boy in the photograph, who was scared, resigned, and defeated.
It broke my heart to see.
But I had to remain steadfast. For the sake of this case. To see justice served, and to see the terrible Bruno Barbieri behind bars for the rest of his miserable life.
So I pushed. Pushed for answers, for the truth.
I pushed Benji. I pushed Nolan, and he chose sides.
He chose Benji.
He pointed to the photo on the table. The one of the twelve-year-old boy crying alone at his mother’s funeral and told me in no uncertain terms that was who he chose.
Then he pointed his finger at me, unbridled rage in his eyes.
“I will not let you or anyone else hurt him, do you under-fucking-stand?”
Nolan left me standing there while he followed Benji out of the room, and I understood.
He would protect his boy no matter the cost.
Part of me was livid, frustrated, and wanted to shake some reason into Nolan.
The other part of me understood.
Benji was upset and Nolan wanted to comfort and protect him. I didn’t want to be the arsehole. I didn’t want to hurt either of them, but I also didn’t want to see Bruno fucking Barbieri walk free because our legal team fumbled the ball.
So I did the only thing I could think of doing.
I took out my phone and called the one person who I knew could help.
“Hello?”
His voice was soft and sleepy, and I wondered if I’d woken him. But god, just hearing him speak made me feel better.
“Fitch, I need you to come to Nolan’s place. Now.”
There was a pause, then the sound of movement as if he was getting out of bed. “Why? What happened?”
“I’ll tell you when you get here.”
“You’re there? I thought you were going to work?”
“I did. Look, I know who Benji is, and I can only assume you do too. He needs his friend. How soon can you be here?”
It sounded as if he was putting on shoes? “I’m on my way.”
“Hail a cab. I’ll pay.”
Fitch arrived with Ky, and they collected Benji in a hug. Nolan’s eyes met mine, his appreciation clear.
“We need to talk,” I said to him.
He nodded, and the boys left us to speak in privacy. I knew he’d do the right thing—Nolan was a good man—but personal reasons aside, I needed him to see reason.
And we needed a plan.
The truth was, a sound plan was ultimately for Benji’s safety. That wasn’t a ploy to get Nolan on my side, and he knew that. Once I’d explained that Benji’s safety, his life, was the priority in seeing the case through, Nolan understood.
We’d need to notify the police. We’d need to tell our bosses. We’d need to come clean about the whole thing. Not just him, but me too. It wouldn’t be easy, but if he wanted to keep Benji safe, the best and only way to do that was to ensure that Bruno Barbieri never saw a minute out of prison again.
He knew I was right.
“It’s up to Benji,” Nolan said. “I can explain the legalities, but at the end of the day, it’s up to him. I won’t force him. I can’t. I won’t.”
I met his eyes and conceded a nod. “I get it, Nolan.”
Maybe more than he realised.
But in the end, he didn’t have to convince Benji to do anything. Benji offered. He wanted to see this through.
And he had evidence.
It changed everything. New information would change the entire case.
Benji was pale and clinging to Nolan, and even though he knew it wouldn’t be easy, I needed to make it clear. “Benji,” I said, “before I make some calls, I need to know if you’re one hundred percent certain you want to do this.”
Benji looked at me, teary and scared. “I’m scared shitless right now,” he said, looking up at Nolan. Nolan nodded and it seemed to bolster something in Benji. “But yes. I need this to end. And it will never end unless I do this.”
Yes, yes, yes.
Thank fuck.
I stood up. “Good boy.”
Fitch gasped. “Hey. None of that from you to him, mister. That’s for me only.”
The little punk.
It did lighten the mood, and I had to remember what Fitch had said the other night. That he thought he was safe to be himself, to be bratty and cheeky with me, even in front of our friends, because he should be safe to do so.
And he was right.
So this was me learning from him, taking his cues, and appreciating that he wanted to feel safe with me.
I needed him to feel safe with me.
So I pretended to be mad and gave him a little huff as I left them to make some phone calls.
It didn’t help that I could hear Fitch’s voice, singled out as if my ear was trained to hear only him, despite the phone conversation I was having with my boss.
Fitch was talking about Nolan... “He has the big apartment, and the big bed, and the big dick. I’d take it too. Actually,” Fitch craned his neck to look at Nolan. “If you want another?—”
I knew he was joking. He was the funny, bratty one, after all.
But still.
I didn’t like that.
And if I had to learn cues from Fitch, then it was only fair he be expected to learn cues and boundaries from me.
And that included joking about being with other men, another daddy figure, especially in front of me. He could joke and be bratty like he had when the three boys were in bed. He’d joked about how it was unfortunate they were still fully dressed. I could appreciate that. It was cute and funny.
But him talking about another man? Especially one I knew. I didn’t like that at all, and I’d need to open a discussion on boundaries with him later.
But then he did it again.
Fitch gave Benji a squeeze. “You have us. And you have Mr Big Apartment with the Big Dick.”
And my feet were in motion before I could stop myself. I stalked over to where he sat on the sofa, gripped his chin, and put my finger to his lips.
“Enough,” I mouthed.
But then of course, Fitch moaned and melted, his eyes glazing over with lust.
He was such a fucking brat.
I wanted to do obscene things to him...
Then, of course, Ky whispered, “Damn.”
And I remembered where I was, who was watching, and that my boss was giving instructions in my ear.
I would deal with Fitch later.
I went back to the far corner of the room by the dining table and, after that phone call, made another. This time to the police inspector in charge of the Barbieri case.
There was no going back now.
All wheels had been set in motion.