Chapter 23
SAMAIRA
D ominic had returned to the office after four long hours and was busy working on his computer.
I grabbed lunch from the kitchen and flagged a few conversations from the state attorney for the Wildcats to review.
That man was shady as fuck. Even if his son was found innocent of the crime against Sophie, these were not innocent men.
There was something in his occasional conversations with the “boss” that raised my hackles.
I needed Tara to put some sort of tracker on them.
I chatted in my Wildcats group, asking about updates on other cases. Lena had decided to pause on taking up a new case until we found the person who ordered a hit on Dominic. She was fairly certain that I'd also become a target if the person discovered I’d saved the Park siblings.
I was looking into the phone when I felt Dominic’s eyes on me. I turned to him and gave him a quick glare, then looked around the glass walls of his office. Without moving his eyes off me, he clicked a button under his desk, and the glass walls turned opaque .
“Fancy.” I looked at him, finally not worrying about people’s eyes on us.
“Necessary.” He winked at me.
“You have any more meetings?”
He shook his head. “No. Just some work to finish before we leave. You bored?”
I dragged my eyes over his suit and his broad chest. “I have a nice view.”
A growl tore through his chest. “Careful, Maira. The office door has locks too.”
Heat rushed to my cheeks at the nickname. “Have you ever done it here?” The question slipped from my lips before I could stop myself.
His eyes widened for a second, and an infuriating smile came over his face, making me regret asking the question. “You jealous, baby?”
I scowled. “No. Why would I be jealous? It would’ve been in the past.”
His finger lightly rubbed his lips as if trying to hide the smile. “Hmm. I’ve never done anything sordid in my office, Maira. You’d be happy to know that you’re the first woman I’ve slept with in three years.”
“Three years?” How was that possible?
He chuckled and looked away as if embarrassed. “I’ve never seen you smile wider, baby.”
I tried to school my expressions, but it was impossible. My heart was skipping to a stupidly jolly tune and dancing in delight. “How? Why? Look at you, Dominic. You’re fucking hot.”
His lips lifted in a smile as he shook his head.
“Well, I guess, as years passed by, sleeping with someone just for the sake of a physical release stopped being fun. I felt even emptier and lonelier after sleeping with a random stranger, so I just stopped. I prefer to connect with someone emotionally first. I’ve dated long enough, and I've never found someone with whom I genuinely connected, someone I wanted to share my life with. So after a point, I just stopped trying.”
My heart squeezed in my chest at the thought of Dominic feeling empty and lonely.
Not everyone understood the loneliness that plagues your soul in the middle of the night when there is nobody to wrap their arms around you.
Nobody to whisper secret nothings in your ear, nobody to share a laugh with, nobody to hold you when you cried.
“Believe it or not, I understand better than most.”
His eyes widened at that, and he instantly straightened in his chair. “Maira, I’ve been meaning to ask you. When you came to meet Sophie that first time, you said something very similar to Sophie. Believe it or not, I understand better than most. Did…uh…did something happen?”
My heart stopped. Fear paralyzed my body as my mind was transported to the past. To a time when I was a different Samaira.
To a time when I lost everything. Memories flashed behind my eyes, one horrendous moment after another, striking my heart with vicious blows.
I could see Dominic move across the room to sit on his knees, but I was somewhere else.
I thought I was over it. I thought I’d fought through that time.
I knew I would have to share my history with Dominic someday.
I just didn’t know it had to be today.
A strong grip on my knees and soft murmurs of my name in my ear pulled me out of my spiral, only to find Dominic’s worried gaze on me. His eyes were rolling clouds of thunder. “Maira, baby. I’m so sorry for bringing this up out of nowhere. I should’ve been sensitive.”
I squeezed his hand on my knee, my own hand trembling. “It’s okay. Uh…it was a very long time ago.”
“What the fuck happened?” he gritted out, his words dripping with fear and borderline anger.
I caressed his hand with my thumb, trying to stay in the present with him. He looked at me with so much worry that it made me want to protect him from further pain. But for once, I knew he would be able to handle it.
I looked at him and gently caressed his cheek.
“It was thirteen years ago. I was a nineteen-year-old college student in a small town in Texas. My parents were immigrants from India. They’d moved to Texas on a work visa.
My younger sister, brother, and I were born in America.
We grew up moving a lot. My dad was a software engineer and worked contract jobs.
So, every few years, we would change towns and cities until he finally landed a permanent job when I was seventeen.
We’d moved around so much that I accepted admission to a community college to live in the same town as my family.
I wanted to have a steady life with my family for once, you know? ”
When he nodded, I continued, “Anyway, life wasn’t always easy when you were a brown girl in a predominantly white small town in Texas. Especially not when you’re interested in dance and drama school.”
Dominic’s eyes widened, and I couldn’t help but chuckle. “I know, right? Young Samaira was obsessed with Bollywood and wanted to become an actress in Hollywood. Can you imagine that?”
His eyes were serious, but he had a small smile on his face. It was that smile that softened the jagged edges of my old wounds. “I can imagine it, baby.”
My cheeks warmed, and I rolled my eyes playfully.
“Anyway, it wasn’t easy. I was already dealing with a few mean girls in the drama club.
I wasn’t this well-built and strong then.
I was just a tall brown girl with too many curves in a class where the standard was white girls who were a size 0.
But I danced well. And not all boys thought curves made me fat.
“It sucked that it was the wrong kinda boys who noticed me. Being a naive fool who was finally getting some attention from a popular boy, I couldn’t tell right from wrong.
I was just happy to have the attention of the football jock.
But as much as I loved the attention, my parents had drilled into me that I wasn’t allowed to have a boyfriend until I graduated.
So I was terrified of being intimate. I’d never even kissed a guy before the jock.
But with each passing day, he grew increasingly impatient, and his impatience made him irritable.
His words became harsh. Every word started to sting my soul.
I was fat one minute, and I was sexy another.
Word started to spread around that I was a prude.
An uptight bitch. That I thought I was too good for him. So I obviously broke up with him. But…”
“But what?” Dominic’s voice brought me back to the present. His voice was the warm honey to the open wound that Jack’s words had inflicted.
I gave Dominic a soft smile and clutched his hand, reminding myself of the man that he was.
“But weak and insecure men can’t handle a girl’s rejection.
They especially can’t handle rejection from a brown girl, an outcast. Well, things just got worse for me.
He turned the entire college against me.
He labeled me a slut. A bad lay. A frigid bitch.
Girls bullied me while boys called me the worst names.
Words that sliced away so much of my self-confidence, severely affecting my performance.
Be it drama club or dance, I just couldn’t perform.
“It was my birthday. I still remember I’d gotten a new dress.
It wrapped around me so well that my curves looked perfect.
My mom had prepared my favorite breakfast for me.
Dad had booked a family vacation trip for us for the next weekend.
I was thrilled at the thought of getting away from everything and spending time with people who loved me.
I was running late for some reason and was walking to the bus stop.
I still don’t remember whether the streets were empty or not, but three guys grabbed me from behind and pushed me into their car. ”
Dominic’s hand tightened on me as an anguished whisper escaped his lips. “No.”
My eyes filled with tears as I whispered back, “Sound familiar? You want me to keep going? It’s all more or less the same.”
“Keep going, baby.” His voice trembled, and his eyes glistened with tears.
“I won’t go into much detail because I can’t.
But they raped me. Multiple times. I was missing for two days.
I don’t think they planned to kill me. They were trying to teach me a lesson.
But they did kill that Samaira. I was in a coma for three days, then in the ICU for seven days after that.
I read Sophie’s medical reports. It was all the same and more.
I have uterine scarring as well, which might impact my fertility. ”