Chapter 26
GIA
Ispilled drinks on three customers and dropped two plates of food after Dominic left. I’d never expected to see him again. I’d never thought he’d show up. I didn’t bother wondering how he’d found me. He had resources. He’d probably been keeping tabs on me all these months.
It kind of pissed me off, now that the shock had worn off. How dare he walk back into my life, when I was just getting it back together? Scraping pieces of myself into something resembling some sort of normal.
After the day we’d met with Scava, I’d felt cold for a long time.
Cold and empty. My mom and I had mourned Mateo together.
I was pretty sure neither of us had really stopped grieving, but it had been time to move on.
We sold the house, and she moved back to Italy with her sister.
I moved to New York City and decided I would get my law degree and put assholes like Angus and Victor Scava away.
It was what I could do to honor Mateo’s memory.
I’d kept the flash drive with the phone recording.
I’d only just turned it over a few weeks ago, in fact.
I knew if I did it too soon, Angus would know it was me and retaliate.
I’d sent it anonymously, and it had worked.
They’d gone after Victor, and Victor was now their star witness against the bigger fish: his uncle.
Seeing Victor like that at the restaurant that night, beaten, his uncle threatening to cut out his tongue, it disgusted me.
It made me see without a doubt that this wasn’t who I was.
Scava calling me a monster? I had believed him.
And I guess I would have been one if I’d gone through with what I’d said I wanted.
The bus dropped me off a block from my apartment.
It was almost midnight, and my feet and back hurt.
I’d worked a double today, but I needed the money.
My mom wanted to help me out, but she didn’t have any more than I did so I lived in a shitty apartment in a shittier neighborhood and made my own way.
I climbed the apartment stairs and unlocked the outer door, then went up to the fourth floor.
The hallway light was out, again, so I used the flashlight in my phone to slide my key into the lock and turn it.
When I reached to switch on the lights in the apartment, nothing happened.
I wondered if it was a building-wide outage.
But then I saw the light coming from beneath the door of my neighbor’s unit, and my heartbeat picked up.
My eyes widened and I strained to see into the dark apartment just making out a shape in front of the window sitting on the couch.
Was it Scava’s men already? Did he know it was me who’d turned over evidence? He wasn’t stupid. Maybe I was for having done it.
“Don’t fucking try to run.”
Relief flooded me when I first heard Dominic’s voice. But then, I remembered that afternoon. How I’d sent him away.
“Come inside and close the door, Gia.”
I stood there as goose bumps covered my body at the sound of his voice. His command.
“I said come inside and shut the door.”
He wouldn’t hurt me. I knew that. But his voice sounded strange. Like it had once before on the night I’d found out who he really was.
“I didn’t know you broke into apartments,” I said, going for casual, walking inside and closing the door.
“You’d be amazed at what I can do.”
He reached over and turned on the lamp beside the sofa. That was when I caught sight of the pistol on the coffee table and took a step back.
He stood. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said.
“What do you want, Dominic?”
He stalked toward me, and all I could do was watch him move, remembering how broad his shoulders were, how much space he took up. How being near him made my body feel.
“You owe me something, Gia.”
He stopped when the toes of his boots bumped against my shoes. He wrapped a hand around my head and twined his fingers into the hair at the nape of my neck, making me gasp, making my heart pound.
“Domi—” But I never got the word out because he closed his mouth over mine and devoured the sound.
I’d forgotten the feel of him, of his lips.
I’d forgotten the way he tasted, the way his body felt so hard and powerful, forgot how he tugged my hair and forced my face up to his.
His tongue slipped into my mouth, and I closed my eyes, leaning into his hand as his other one slid up over my hip and waist to cup my breast and squeeze the nipple.
He broke our kiss and turned my head to the side to whisper in my ear.
“You owe me something, and I’m here to collect.”
I pressed against his chest, squeezing the muscle beneath it, then moved my hands to his biceps and curled them around before I kissed him back, liking it when he bit my lip a little, liking the feel of his cock hardening at my belly.
Hearing the door lock behind me, I startled. Dominic’s blue-gray eyes bore into mine, different than they’d been that afternoon. Harder. Like he used to look at me in the beginning at the cabin. Like he looked at me when he fucked me.
I stood there panting, my mouth open like some puppy, my eyes tearing as he tugged a little harder on my hair.
“Aren’t you curious what you owe?”
He walked me through the small apartment and into my bedroom, dropping me on the bed before climbing onto it. It was my old bed from home. I’d had it for more than fifteen years, and it creaked beneath our combined weight.
“Your apartment’s a fucking mess.”
He pulled his shirt up over his head, the moonlight making the white clock face of the tattoo on his chest appear almost ghostlike.
“Shut up,” I said, my hands on his chest, unable to get enough of his heat, his strength. I’d missed him. I’d missed him so much.
He ripped my shirt down the middle and pushed it from my arms. I would have been pissed if I wasn’t so turned-on. He looked down at me and pushed the cups of my bra beneath my breasts. Taking one into his mouth, he sucked and then bit a little harder than he had my lip.
I groaned, arching my back.
He laid his full weight on me and looked at me, his face an inch from mine. Watching me, he took my hand and dragged it to himself, to his back, to where I felt the butt of the pistol I hadn’t noticed he’d tucked into his jeans.
I gasped and yanked my hand away, or tried to, but he wouldn’t let me.
“Take it,” he said.
“No.”
“Take it, Gia.”
I shook my head.
“Fucking take it.” He wrapped my hand around it and together, we drew it out so that I held the gun.
I looked at it, then at him.
“Do you remember what you promised me?” he asked, sitting up, trapping me between his thighs.
“Stop. I don’t want this.”
But he kept his hand wrapped around mine, so I couldn’t let it go.
“I don’t give a fuck what you want. I did, this afternoon, but you had me fucking dismissed.”
“Dominic—”
He brought the gun between us and pressed the mouth of the barrel to his chest.
My heart pounded.
“You promised to kill me. You swore it.”
I began to silently weep, heavy tears sliding from my face onto the bed. Dominic wrapped his other hand around my throat and squeezed. The tears stopped, and my eyes went wide as I gasped for breath. He cocked the gun, never taking his eyes off me.
“Pull the trigger, Gia.”
I tried to shake my head, but I couldn’t move.
“I’m an intruder. It’ll be self-defense. Now keep your promise, and fucking pull the trigger.”
He released my throat, and I choked and gasped for breath, my hand weak around the gun.
“I don’t want to,” I said, my voice coming out thin.
He tapped my face, small slaps that didn’t hurt but that invaded.
“I don’t want to,” he mimicked.
Dominic wrapped his hand back around my throat.
“You didn’t keep your promise!” I cried out.
He kept his hand there, but his hold remained loose. I thought I saw the faintest hint of a smile play along his lips.
“You didn’t fucking keep your promise!” I said again.
He let me pull my hand free from his, and I kept the pistol pointed at him.
“That’s it. Get mad,” he said.
He took the wrist of the hand that held the gun and pinned it to the bed and while he kept his gaze locked on mine, his hands worked the buttons of my pants, opening them, reaching inside to cup my sex over my panties.
“Get fucking pissed, Gia.”
I closed my eyes, the feel of his hands on me again, of my own need, it fucking overwhelmed everything.
“You let him walk away!”
He slid his hand inside, fingers finding my clit, my slick, ready entrance.
“You let me walk away,” I said more quietly.
Fuck. I closed my eyes and thrust up into his hand.
“I couldn’t make you stay,” he said quietly.
When I opened my eyes, I saw he’d leaned down over me.
“It had to be your choice.” His voice came dark and husky. “But that was then and this is now and I changed my mind.”
“Fuck me,” I managed as he jerked my pants and panties down so I worked them off the rest of the way. “I need to feel you inside me, Dominic.”
The pistol lay forgotten beside us as he used both hands to undo his jeans then push them and his briefs off.
“If I fuck you”—
His cock stood ready at my entrance.
“If you say yes”—
I opened my legs as wide as I could.
“You won’t be able to walk away. Not again. Not ever again.”
He thrust. He wasn’t waiting for my answer, not really.
And I wouldn’t have said no.
I cried out, and he held still inside me.
“Open your eyes, Gia. Look at me. I’m right fucking here.”
I did, trying to move my hips beneath him but unable to.
“Hear me, Gia. You won’t be able to change your mind. I won’t let you walk away again. Do you understand me?”
I nodded, arching my back. “Please. I need—”
He pulled out and thrust again, I gasped, biting my own lip, tasting blood. Blood. With him, there would be blood.
“More,” I said.
He smiled, pulled out, and impaled me again.
“You fucking left.”
He was angry and furious and sexy as fucking hell.
“I won’t ever let you walk away from me again. Fucking never.”
I bit my lip again, harder, until I tasted more blood, and I came.
I came with him watching me. I came watching him.
My pussy throbbed around his cock, and he never even blinked until I’d squeezed every drop of pleasure from him, taking from him what he gave, knowing this sealed our pact, knowing that when he moved again, when he fucked me and I watched him come, that I was his.
I was his forever.