22. Dominic
Chapter 22
Dominic
I don’t head to my room, but back down to the den where Mack is waiting. She turns to me when I enter, snuggled up on the sofa with Tino, and asks me where her phone is.
“I’ve got it,” I say. “I kept it for you.”
I remove her cell from the desk drawer where I had placed it for safe keeping when we went to bring her and Kirill home and hand it to her.
“Thanks,” she says. “I want to message Lola and let her know I’m okay.”
“Of course. Are you okay, Duchess? Do you want anything?”
She shakes her head and moves her feet for me to curl up on the sofa with her.
“I’ll have to go soon,” she says. “I need to talk to my mom. I don’t want her and your dad getting themselves all worked up. I can’t face it. I’m so tired.” She yawns, hiding her mouth prettily behind the back of her hand.
I watch her as she keys in her passcode—a code I know from when I was spying on her. She seems to be doing surprisingly well. Better than I’d have expected or hoped. I thought Kirill would come back stoic, and Duchess would be a mess. Not that both of them being a mess would have been an issue. They would be well within their rights to go to pieces, but it still makes me think about how much crap she’s been through.
I’ve underestimated her.
Not just once, but repeatedly. The entire fucking time I’ve known her, in fact. Duchess is resilient, and it’s about time we gave her credit for it.
She swipes the screen and then pauses. The blood rushes from her face, and I freeze.
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck .
The message. That damn message from the professor. I want to hit my fists against my head and beat my brains out for being such an asshole.
I forgot to tell her about it. To prepare her for it. Everything has been so crazy.
She glances up at me, and her eyes are wide, scared, but dry. “So now I’ve got this maniac to contend with, too? Does the universe hate me?”
“ We’ve got him to contend with, baby,” I say.
“He’s not getting within fifty yards of you.” Tino tucks a strand of hair behind her ear.
“So long as he’s out there, he’s a risk to me,” she says softly. “I should have finished the job right the first time.”
Pride swells in my chest. Our girl is going to be a fearsome enemy and a great mafia queen.
But who gets to be the king?
Do we have to name just one, or can we do things in a new way?
The fact is, she’s all of ours and we are all hers, and if the world doesn’t accept it? So what? We hardly live by the normal rules. Our parents might not accept it, either. We’re all adults, though. We can do what we want.
I lift one of her feet to my lips and kiss her toes. “You’re ours now. I’d like to see that asshole try something.”
I slide my mouth over one of her toes and suck on it. Mackenzie giggles and squirms, but there’s a smile back on her face again.
Tino’s hands drift down to cup her breasts, and he kisses the side of her neck. “Yes, you’re all ours.” He lightly nips at her skin with his teeth. “Your mouth is ours, your pussy is ours, and these gorgeous tits are ours, too.”
She’s dressed herself in a pair of sweatpants and a camisole top while I was talking to Kirill. She keeps a few clothes down here in our den. Just a few pieces. A toothbrush too. I like it. Makes me feel like she’s really a part of us.
“Tino, I’ve got to go,” she says sleepily.
She doesn’t move, though, and he slips her tits out of her top, her nipples peaking in the cool air. He pinches them, pulling and elongating the dusky pink nubs, and she lets out a tiny groan of arousal.
I smirk and move to her next toe, sucking it into my mouth like it’s a tiny cock and I’m giving it a blowjob, using my tongue to swirl around the tip. She giggles, but then she stiffens. Her eyes go round, and a small squeak of horror escapes her lips.
My head swivels to follow the line of her sight and oh, fuck. My heart goes into double time.
Standing in the doorway, looking as if he’s about to start breathing actual hellfire, is my father.
“What the actual fuck ?”
That’s when I know I’m in a world of shit. He shouts the phrase, and it goes against everything he pretends to be. My father has spent years developing the kind of cool, collected front that he shows to the world. It’s an act he rarely drops. His accent even comes out now, and instead of sounding like an Ivy League dean, he sounds like what he is. A man who would kill you and dump your body in the river for the fishes.
“Mackenzie, your mother wants to see you.”
She doesn’t move. She’s so horrified that she’s frozen.
“Now,” my father roars. “Move your fucking ass, and put your tits away.”
Yeah, he’s lost it. He’s no longer Nataniele the smooth dean, but he’s Nate, the brawler who will cut your dick off for looking at him the wrong way.
“Domenic, I need to speak to you, too. Get upstairs to our rooms now,” he rages.
Am I about to become a eunuch?
I shoot Tino a look but grab my wallet and cell and follow my father. Mackenzie is right behind me, and I fight the urge to reach back and take her hand. The last thing she needs is the wrath of my father right now. I want to protect her, but I also don’t want to make things worse.
He stalks through the school like the fucker who owns the place that he is, and with every step, his mask shifts firmly back into place. By the time he reaches his rooms, you’d never believe he’d let me and Tino see the thug underneath the icy, cultured exterior. He’s like a shapeshifter, and now he’s taken his ultimate form, the one he wants the world to see.
When he opens the door to the suite he shares with Lucia, he speaks to her in the same controlled, cold way he often reserves for me.
“My darling, would you please take your daughter to her room for your talk? I would like some space with my son.”
Lucia hesitates. “We could go into the bedroom here.”
“No,” he snaps. “Go to her room, now, please.”
She frowns and, for a moment, mutinous anger crosses her features, but then she schools them.
“Don’t look so sad, step-mommy-to-be. At least you got a please .” I sneer at her.
The crack is hard and swift. My head whips to the side as my father’s palm makes contact with my cheek.
Mackenzie gasps, and I turn to her, knowing what is coming.
“Leave, now.”
Christ, I sound just like the fucker I hate. But I don’t want her witnessing this. She’s seen enough violence recently.
“You and I need to talk later, Lucia,” Nataniele says.
“Of course.”
She almost bows at him as she scurries out of the room. God, how did someone as magnificent as Duchess come from such a craven woman?
Then again, what choice does Lucia have? She must do all my father demands because he’s the one in charge here, not her. He holds all the cards, and quite literally, holds her and Mackenzie’s lives in his hands.
That needs to change. But how?
I turn back to him, and he’s calmly rolling up his sleeves. My muscles bunch, not in preparation for a fight—I won’t do that—but to prepare for the pain.
It comes in a swift blow to my stomach. I bend double, winded, and try to suck in air.
“Nice. Going for the places people can’t see this time, are we?” I laugh as I force myself upright.
His uppercut to my jaw disabuses me of that idea. My head rocks back, and I clutch the spot where his fist connected. I tongue the inside of my mouth, checking for loose teeth.
“You lied, you little fuck,” he rages. “You told me she was nothing but your sister-to-be.”
Another smack. I don’t try to defend myself because better he takes it out on me with his fists than trying to banish Duchess and her mom or something else insane. Although, I do believe, insofar as my father is capable of it, that he loves Lucia. He at least loves the idea of her. Her beauty and grace. He likes having all of that on his arm.
Grunting, he piles his fist into my side, and I stagger and fall. Holy shit. Blinding pain has me shaking with the intensity of it. I think the bastard hit my already damaged ribs. Nothing new there, then.
With an arm wrapped protectively around my side, I straighten and stare at him.
“Don’t go killing the heir now. Or this will all be for nothing.” I wave my free hand around as if to indicate the entire college. I wince in pain at the action.
“It’s sick. We will be a laughingstock.” His expression changes and he regards me, head tilted to one side. “Is that what gets you off, son? The sickness of it all? You want her exactly because she’s going to be your sister? Like sucking your little stepsister’s perky tits, do you?”
“Oh, you noticed them, then? So, you’re sick, too.”
He sneers at me. “Not in the way you are. I’m not weak. Do you suck your boyfriend Tino’s cock?”
I laugh at that pathetic attempt. “No more than you did with the men you shared with.”
Now he’s the one laughing, except there’s no humor in his tone. “We didn’t share them at the same time . Is that Russian freak in on this, too. Is that why you and Tino were so desperate to rescue her? Because Grigoriy would have given her solely to Kirill?”
He’s looking at me with such rage that his nostrils are flared like he’s running a marathon.
“It’s not sordid like you’re trying to make out it is,” I argue.
“It’s fucking sick and twisted, and the whole world will know you suck your sister’s tits and your friends’ cocks, and then you’ll be shunned for life.”
“She’s not my fucking sister,” I shout, finally losing my temper. “And it’s not fucking illegal to marry a stepsibling in most states.”
His face turns puce. I’ve never seen him that color. “Marry her? Fucking marry her ! No, never.”
“Why not? You’re marrying the mother, and you brought her here when my mother was barely cold in her grave, you bastard.”
He clenches his fists, and I brace, but there’s a knock at the door.
“For the love of Christ, Lucia.”
“It’s Jeremiah Pickman,” a deep voice says.
He’s a math tutor here at the college.
“For our appointment. You asked me to meet you here?”
“Fuck,” Father whispers under his breath. “Yes, of course. One moment.” He says this more loudly. Then he addresses me in a hiss. “Go into the fucking bedroom and don’t come out until I tell you to. This conversation is not over.”
He pushes me roughly in the direction of the bedroom, and I stumble, dazed and reeling down the corridor.
When I enter the room that used to be my parents’, I still get that awful jolt to the stomach when I see Lucia’s things. I used to want her gone as soon as I saw them, but now I know that means losing our Duchess, too, and that can’t happen.
I pace in the bedroom, the door closed behind me. Will I have to do as Kirill has and kill my own father like something out of a Shakespearean tragedy if I want to be with Duchess?
The closet door is open, Lucia’s clothes where my mother’s once were. I’m drawn to them even though they make me sick. I put one to my nose and inhale, but the perfume is all wrong. It’s not the floral scent my mother used to wear, but something musky.
I move away, my stomach like a block of ice at the sense of loss.
My father’s side is as anal as it’s always been. I pull out his sock drawer and smirk at the rolled up, color coded Hermes socks. Fucking asshole.
The ties are next, and I resist the urge to throw them all over the room like silk streamers.
Then his cufflinks. What a fucking peacock. So many of them.
I pull out his handkerchief drawer and can’t believe one man can own so many pocket squares. As I’m pushing the drawer back in, it catches on something. I frown and pull it farther out and see in one of the very back slots, instead of a handkerchief, there’s a folded piece of thick paper.
Three words are visible. Three words that make my throat run dry because they are in the familiar, sloping hand of my mother.
Fingers shaking, I reach for the paper and unfold it. My eyes scan the page, and I sit heavily on the bed behind me as I read.