38. Dominic
38
DOMINIC
When I walk into the Don’s house in the late afternoon, Bruno isn’t lying in wait for me as usual. With a pang of disappointment, I follow the security guard’s hint that the women are in the kitchen with my dog.
My dog.
What the actual fuck. When did I make this mind shift?
With a shrug, I make my way to the kitchen where Ariana immediately looks up as I come through the door. She’s pale, and although she musters a smile, it’s clear she’s drained.
Portia is at the kitchen island, grating cheese. Bruno is pert and alert at her feet, gazing blindly up at her to where his nose leads him. Pancetta. A whole pile of it cubed. I bet she gave him some…and not just a taste.
“Nicky,” Portia says in greeting as she drops a thick slice of Pecorino Romano cheese to the floor for Bruno.
The dog is on it like a starved beast.
“Portia…” I groan. “Bruno is only supposed to have raw bison. I’ve stacks of it in the freezer, and the guys know to feed him nothing else.”
“Raw bison ?” Portia says, offended. “This dog?”
“Yes! He’s been farting for over a decade, and I can’t take it anymore. All the other shit people feed him messes with his gut microbiome. So I decided to go back to his origins and first foods to see if it helps. Bison. Or deer. Rabbit. Nothing else. All raw.”
Portia cusses under her breath. “Have you lost your mind? Bruno is Italian! Why would he eat anything raw? Least of all American wild meat! Full of worms and parasites!”
“It’s farmed organic bison,” I retaliate, equally offended. “And he hasn’t fart-bombed me out of a room for weeks. But now—” I cut myself short. It’s going to be a proverbial shit show what with the raw bison deep cleanse he’s had. That cheese smells like trouble already. Bruno is going to have to sleep outside tonight.
Portia looks like she’s been through the wringer, too, and it strikes me this homey scene in front of me has been staged. Portia as always in the kitchen, Ariana measuring out flour on a scale, but something is off.
“What did you find?” I ask, going straight for the target. “Tell me you found something?”
“Nothing,” Portia says with a sigh that sounds a bit forced as she keeps grating. “Dominic, this house is humongous. The housekeeper hasn’t been here for weeks to do a proper job, and without oversight, the staff is lazy.”
“So you cleaned instead?”
“Just a bit—” She shoots me a glance before she looks down at the cheese grater again.
“You know we have a missing sister out in the world?—”
“Yes, Nicky, we’re all fully aware.” Portia gives me her back as she turns to the stove, and my heart sinks.
It’s been twenty-two years. For all we know she’s dead, and a few more hours won’t matter. And I’m still waiting for the DNA results. Apparently, I’m getting them in the morning.
I’m annoyed that a whole day has passed without a shift in anything or any new information. Except for this fucked-up situation with Ivan Petrov, or his dad, Igor. I don’t know either of these men, and the whole fucking day, it’s been eating at me that there will be a retribution, that Il Consiglio doesn’t have anything we’re willing to give up, and that Matteo is going to see Ariana as an easy solution. If she isn’t a blood relation, he’d give her up if Ivan would have her without a blink if it means we don’t take a slice off our territories.
Over my dead body.
With a quiet sigh, I shut the door on my workday and close the gap between us. “What are you making?”
Ariana looks up at me. “Fresh pasta. Fettucine. Portia got all the ingredients delivered for a carbonara, so…”
“So she can technically go home? As I rather like making pasta,” I ask sotto voce as I take hold of the backrest of her stool.
“Thank God,” Portia huffs, already at the strings of her apron. “It’s been hot today, and I need to water my garden, otherwise those beans will be good for nothing but compost. I’ll leave you to Bruno and his farts.”
She’s over-exaggerating her movements as if her words weren’t enough. I soften immediately. She is, after all, the woman who stepped onto the battlefield when Mom died. Portia tried her best. Not that she was allowed much, but she never gave up on us.
“Thanks for coming in,” I say, padding over to give her a side hug. “And for being here at the crack of dawn, and for dusting, and for vacuuming, and for looking after Ariana.”
She harrumphs as she glares up at me in mock anger. “You’re welcome, Nicky. Dr. Wong was here. All is good with Ariana’s wound. But you need to feed her, therefore the carbonara.”
I smile at Ariana, and she blushes right on cue. If it weren’t for the drained look on her face, I’d say she already looks better since Portia’s been feeding her.
“Of course I’ll make sure she eats.” I drop a peck of a kiss on her grey curls. She’s so much shorter than me, I have her completely under my arm. “I owe you one.”
“Yes, you do,” she teases with a quirked brow.
As I let her go, a silent exchange passes between the two women which I don’t miss at all. Portia hands me the apron, grabs her purse where she parked it this morning, and waves herself off.
“I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Thank you, Portia,” Ariana calls to her back as she rushes out of the kitchen.
Someone is way too eager to leave. Portia’s running from something, and it isn’t Bruno’s flatulence.
Right on cue, Bruno slumps to the floor, rips his first pancetta-and-cheese-induced fart, and I drop my head back with a groan. “Fuck me. I need a drink.”
“Oof.” Ariana hops off her chair and goes to the stove where she puts on the extraction fan. “This will help.”
“The only thing that helps is having him out of the house.” I call for a guard down the corridor, and the man comes to lead away the reluctant dog. I give Bruno a hard stare as he gives me those eyes. Yep, it’s been more than a month of raw bison, and clearly, Bruno was enjoying having Portia and her tidbits too much, but— “I’m not cooking with you in the kitchen.”
I strip my suit jacket as I watch the dog slink off. I’ve long ago lost the tie and now take off my shoulder holster and safeguard the gun before I put it all on a side counter then walk over to the wine fridge. “Red or white? I always feel carbonara can swing either way.”
Ariana shrugs. “White? You know I don’t drink?—”
“When in captivity. I know.” I reach for a bottle of chardonnay and get two glasses. It’s been a long day, and from what I’ve seen, she needs to loosen her tongue. “So you two got along?”
“Portia and me? Yes, totally. Especially since she didn’t wield a gun at me.”
“Ha. She takes no prisoners, that’s for sure.”
I place the wineglasses in front of her and search for a corkscrew in a drawer. I get busy uncorking the wine, overly conscious of her gaze studying my hands, homing in on my pinkie, which for once, molds to the object I’m holding. I can still feel her touch as she traced the ring around it in the dark, asking what happened. My response of how she’ll need to earn that answer.
She could have guessed it already, with everything that happened this morning at the swimming pool. I still feel her hand on my side, my fingers resting on the scars on her lower belly. It was a level of intimacy I’ve never experienced with a woman before. Nobody who has crossed my path over the years had been through this exact thing.
I can’t afford to get close to her. Intimacy on that level isn’t my thing. It’s too dangerous. I’m too needy. It will weaken me and make me lose focus on what I’m here to do: protect my family.
With a sigh, I pop the cork, and to reel myself back to reality, I tally the things that have been off with this woman from the start.
One: Randazzo’s seal for his prostitutes on her body but shy as a virgin.
Two: knows how to use a gun and as alert as gazelle getting a whiff of lion.
Three: has a need to run away, even though she knows it’s futile and that she’s stuck, which she knows because…
Four: clearly, she’s from a Mafia background, but not keen to talk about it. This one is protecting someone or something.
After this morning’s work, I’m not in the mood for another interrogation, but here we are.
“You’re back early,” she says as I pour her a glass. “Portia hoped to have everything ready by the time you got home.”
I top up my wine and hold the glass up to her for a toast.
“After Matteo’s, I went to the office.” I needed a reminder that I’ve got some control over something after getting rid of the last of the Ukrainians in our care. “Everything’s going smoothly so I came back early to see if you two were productive.”
I watch how she picks up the smooth crystal, leaving perfect fingerprints right where I want them.
“Office?” she asks as she tips her glass to mine with a soft salute .
“ Salute .” I take a sip. “I own a security company which I run outside of Il Consiglio .”
Her eyes widen. “A real one?”
“Yes, sweetheart, a real legit company with a physical street address and an office folks can walk into. Not just an obscure postal address. It even has thousands of reviews on Google. The whole nine yards.”
“Oh, wow. How did you manage that?”
It’s the easiest thing to answer in the world. Maybe not the easiest answer to stomach, but it’s the truth. “When you’ve done what I have, your biggest fear is that someone you care for, someone you love, falls into the hands of someone like me. To protect my brothers became a bit of an obsession after Alex—our brother who came just after Matteo—got killed in a shootout. The Don knew where to channel my fears, and I have a knack for tech, so…”
“So…”
I smile at the way she teases me. “So I started a security company to protect them, over and above the usual protection we have, but I’m not client-facing. I have a back office at our premises and have a team in place who runs the show.” I reach for the bowl of flour she had measured out on the scale and the eggs. “When things are going well, I spend a lot of time there.”
“And when things are not going well?”
“You already know what I do when things aren’t going well.” Which brings me to the real reason why I’m early. “Are you going to tell me what you and Portia discovered, or am I going to have to tease it out of you?”