Chapter 4
Chapter Four
It was three in the morning, and Dominic was haunting the upstairs hallways. Maureen had her own space on the first level, so this floor was his for wandering and brooding at all hours of the night.
He couldn’t stop thinking about the pixie with the pink glasses and the oversized attitude. Sylvie.
I don’t usually waste my time on installs.
She might as well have said, I don’t usually waste my time on trash like you. Even though she’d looked at him like she wanted to lick him head to toe. As if he was good enough for an eye fuck, but not common courtesy.
So yes, he’d toyed with her a little. Just to prove he could. It had felt so damn satisfying to hear that sexy little moan, after she’d claimed to want nothing to do with him.
But sexual desire wasn’t the same as respect. Or even basic civility. He might’ve proved that Sylvie wanted his body, but she’d never feel anything more than disgust for him as a human being.
Why did that bother him so much? He didn’t even know the woman, and she didn’t know him. Why did he care what she thought?
Degenerate murderer.
Fine, some people thought he was a degenerate. Sure. But Dominic was innocent of that ridiculous murder charge. Max Bennett knew it, and the district attorney’s office knew it.
They’d accused him of ordering a hit on the victim—which he hadn’t done—and then the police had uncovered a separate conspiracy related to the killing altogether. But the DA and his minions wouldn’t drop the charge unless Dominic agreed to rat on the Syndicate. It was bullshit.
Sylvie’s tattoos and fierce attitude had hinted that she might not view the world in black and white. That she might give him the benefit of the doubt. But he’d thought wrong. Sylvie was as judgmental as most anyone born with the privilege of moral superiority.
Dominic had never had the luxury of being so pure.
He noticed a light blinking. It was the new security panel Sylvie had installed for this floor.
A touch of his finger lit up the screen.
It had various controls for the cameras, a silent alarm, an audible panic button.
Sylvie hadn’t asked him for any further opinions during the set-up, so he wasn’t exactly sure where she’d placed the cameras.
Nor did he really care. He was glad to see that Maureen had armed the system before going to bed, since he’d forgotten.
As he watched, the screen pixilated, then switched to “not armed.” Then back to “armed” again. Weird. It was probably some technical glitch. Not like he understood any of that stuff.
But this fresh reminder of the pixie in pink glasses and combat boots annoyed him. He stalked down the hall, looking for something else to take his attention.
A few minutes later he found himself in an unused guest room. Dominic stretched out on the bed, took out his phone, and video called his younger brother again.
Raymond answered. His dorm room was dark, and the screen lit up his face. “Nic?”
Thank goodness. Dominic sat up against the pillows. “Did I wake you?”
“It’s okay. I fell asleep working on a paper, so it’s good you did. I need to finish.”
“It’s been a while. How’ve you been?”
Raymond had an unpredictable sleep schedule, just like Dominic.
The brothers usually ended up talking at odd hours, usually sometime after midnight and before breakfast. But they’d been speaking even less since Dominic’s arrest and ouster from the Syndicate.
He didn’t know the exact reason, and that made him nervous.
Raymond was Dominic’s half brother. They shared the same father, but Raymond had been born to their dad’s mistress when Dominic was around twelve years old.
His own mom lasted a bit longer in their marriage, but the affair helped explain why his mom took off eventually, unable to stand her husband’s philandering.
It was a bit cliché, a mobster with a mistress and a long-suffering wife.
But the whole drama had given him a younger brother, so while Dominic didn’t approve of his dad’s cheating, he also couldn’t really complain.
Raymond had moved in with them when he was just a baby.
He’d had a special nanny and lived in a secluded part of their L.A.
house. The rest of the family had laughed at Dominic for playing with Raymond in the nursery.
But he’d known, even then, that his brother’s innocence was something precious. Worth protecting.
When Dominic took over the Syndicate, Raymond had just graduated high school.
Dominic had ensured that his younger brother went off to college instead of joining the business.
It was the single accomplishment he was most proud of.
Now Raymond was working on a history degree and planned to become a teacher.
Sometimes, Dominic wondered what he might’ve done if he hadn’t joined the business at eighteen. His father hadn’t given him a choice, really. It was either join or get the fuck out of town, never see his brothers again, and hope nobody was pissed enough to track him down.
But Dominic also couldn’t imagine having some generic day job with a boss and paperwork. Even as a junior member of the Syndicate, he hadn’t been very good at staying focused.
Raymond scratched at his scalp on the screen. “I’ve been busy with school. The usual. How about you? Any news on the trial?”
“They keep delaying it. Which is fine with me for now. I don’t like being stuck at home, but at least nobody’s gunning me down on the courthouse steps.”
As long as he remained alive, a few captains would remain loyal to him as a Crane. His enemies would stand a better chance of taking over if they got Dominic permanently out of the way.
Raymond flinched.
“Sorry,” Dominic said. “Bad joke.”
“It’s going to blow over, right? All this stuff with the business. You and Warren are going to get it back.”
“That’s the plan. It’s all going to work out.” An unsettling thought came to Dominic’s mind. “Have any of the captains been contacting you? Any of our uncles?”
The most dangerous was their uncle Charles Traynor, who claimed he had both a right to run the Syndicate as the husband of a Crane, and the clearest vision for the business’s future success. To Charles, that meant being more merciless than anybody else out there.
“I don’t hear from hardly anyone except you.” Raymond cut his eyes to the side.
Dominic sat forward. “Is someone else there?”
“No. But I better finish that paper. I’ll talk to you later, Nic. Miss you.”
“Miss you, too. Love you.”
Raymond nodded, though he didn’t return the sentiment aloud.
Dominic hadn’t mentioned the DA’s latest offer. He didn’t want Raymond to worry. And it wasn’t important anyway because Dominic wasn’t going to accept the deal.
But if… If.
If he was even going to consider accepting the district attorney’s offer, then he’d have to ensure Raymond’s safety first.
He’d have to get his little brother away from their uncles, who might try to use Raymond for their own ends.
From the time he was a little kid, Dominic’s whole family had talked about “the business.” Yet it wasn’t a store or an office or a medical clinic like any of the businesses his friends’ parents ran. Dominic had no idea that his family’s “business” wasn’t legal until he was in the seventh grade.
That was when he’d overheard some kids call his house the “mob house.” He’d asked his older brother what that meant. Warren had been seventeen, but he’d looked and acted far older. He’d finished high school early and joined the “business” with their dad.
“Some people would call Dad a mobster,” Warren had said. “But who the fuck cares?”
Dominic had cringed at the curse word. He’d never liked to hear his brother or father swear. It made them sound angry. “But what does ‘mob’ really mean?”
Warren had just looked at Dominic with pity and laid it all out.
“Look, Dad helps people with problems. He might take something that somebody else wants. Which might be called stealing, except insurance just pays the first guy right back. Or he helps other people hide their money from the government.”
“Okay…”
“Plus, there are certain neighborhoods that his men protect from really violent guys, gangs, and Dad charges a fee for that service. Stuff like that. Get it?”
These activities sounded vaguely problematic. “But I thought the mob was a bunch of really bad guys.”
“Well, sometimes Dad helps people who want to buy drugs, too. Or people who want to buy sex with an attractive, willing woman.”
“But why? Dad’s a good person. He loves us. Why would he do those things?”
“Because if he didn’t, somebody else would.
There’s always somebody else who’s more cutthroat, more violent, like those gangs that he protects his territory from.
You can’t see the world in black and white, right and wrong, kid.
There’s only better and worse. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you’ll be able to take your place as a real member of this family.
A real man. If you don’t? Then you’ll probably never sleep at night again.
But it won’t make a single ounce of difference because Dad will keep on doing what he does, and the worst people will keep on doing their thing, too.
The only person you’ll be punishing is yourself. ”
A year ago, when Warren had been convicted and sent off to federal prison, there’d been nobody else with the Crane name to take his place. By then, their father had premature dementia. Raymond had only been nineteen.
Warren even tried running their organization from within prison for a while, but it just wasn’t practical. So Dominic reluctantly became the new head of the Syndicate, over the vigorous objections of many of Warren’s captains—like Uncle Charles.
Dominic had told himself he could still run the family business and not be an evil person. There was always somebody worse, just as Warren had said. Somebody who would offer the same services but use more extreme violence or demand more outrageous terms.
Dominic had seen the corruption within governments and corporations, which only made him more convinced that his family’s Syndicate was just as legitimate as the companies that traded on the New York Stock Exchange.
If anything, the Syndicate was more honest about its true nature.
Dominic had to lie, sure, but somehow the lie felt cleaner because it was so bald-faced.
As the Syndicate’s leader, Dominic had ordered deaths only a few times. Like punishing a ring of betrayers who’d engaged in underage prostitution on the sly. Or another guy who’d assaulted and murdered a girl. Dominic absolutely couldn’t tolerate hurting women.
He’d tried to walk a fine line between being ruthless enough to control the Syndicate and holding onto his humanity.
But he saw more clearly now. To the Syndicate, Dominic had always been a joke. A sensitive aesthete who’d never be able to cut it as a real gangster. They’d only been willing to tolerate him for so long.
And to people like Max Bennett and Sylvie? Dominic was a monster in a cage, where he belonged. They stood back, so superior, acting like he didn’t deserve to spit shine their shoes.
So fuck all of them. He didn’t need the Syndicate or Bennett Security. He could solve his problems just fine on his own.
No matter how impossible a task that seemed.