Dominic didn’t know what façade he had put on for Maria, but staring into the gold eyes through the dimmed window, he knew the real Kayne Evans …
And he hadn’t fucking changed at all.
Watching the car drive off with his true love, the boogieman’s voice echoed in his mind.
Kayne still bleeds the same as Lucifer.
Twenty-Three
Maria Will Never Forgive You
Opening the car door, the man slid inside the front seat behind the wheel, only noticing the presence of another when he looked into the rearview mirror.
The man in the driver’s seat didn’t move a muscle. “What are you doing, Dominic?”
Dom had been in the back seat of the dark vehicle for a bit, just waiting for his mark, as he held his Glock pointing at the back of the seat.
Staring down the rearview mirror, his hazel eyes met the furiously glowing blue-green ones. “We’re done, Lucca.”
“Done?” Lucca coldly mocked him, his words slashing the cool air. “We haven’t even begun.”
“You did,” he assured him, keeping his voice as steady as his gun. “You have taken everything from me … Angel … Kat … and now Mari—”
“I didn’t take Maria away from you. I have been trying to help yo—”
“Bullshit!” Dominic’s voice exploded in the car. His gun no longer steady like his voice, he waved the metal piece with each word he spoke. “You could have done something! Like you made me do with Kat!”
“I told you, Maria would never love you if I did that,” the underboss gritted out through clenched teeth.
“Yes,” he agreed. “But you could have kept her away from him, and you fucking know it.”
Lucca went silent for several deadly moments, and then his voice lost the bite it had before, and in its place was disappointment. “I thought she would have chosen better.”
“Well, she didn’t.” It broke his heart to say those words. Both of them knew Maria’s choice was final. She had stopped hiding her relationship with Kayne when she had left publicly in his car.
Making a move, Lucca suddenly stopped when Dom placed the barrel against the back of his skull.
“I need a cigarette, all right?” Lucca slowly continued to reach into his pocket without permission, pulling out a pack, along with his Zippo. “It’s not exactly like I fucking have a chance of outshooting you, even if you didn’t have that gun in your hand.”
Dom actually had a slight burst of laughter, his erratic brain not sure what emotion to feel next. In some way, he felt like, if the two of them hadn’t been sworn enemies, they might have been friends.
Lighting up a cigarette, Lucca took a couple of hard hits before he continued, “You just didn’t give it enough time; you have to keep trying with Maria.”
“Time?” Dominic switched back to his angry tone and feelings of them being enemies. “How much time has she had with Kayne? I’ve spent my days since the wedding too busy, proving to your father that I, nor any of my men, are One-Shot. And while I’ve been fighting for my family’s lives, you’ve managed to let Maria fall in love with someone else.”
“I thought she knew better,” Lucca hissed. “I wanted to see who she would choose.”
“So, what? You wanted to test her?” Dominic’s voice shook the vehicle. “This is Maria’s life we’re talking about here! She isn’t one of your sick, little experiments. You wanted her to choose? Well, congratulations. She chose, and now we both will pay for it.”
“You’re not going to kill me.”
“You should never underestimate a desperate man, Lucca.” Dom’s hazel eyes glowed in the night.
That was exactly where the underboss had pushed him, and that was his downfall. The worst thing to do was back a dog into a corner because, eventually, there’d be a fight.
Seeing he was serious, Lucca’s strange eyes glowed back. “My father will kill you for killing me, and you know it.”
“I actually think he might thank me for getting rid of his biggest enemy. What do you think?” he asked with a tilt of his lips, but Dom wasn’t that naïve. “Even so, he won’t let me off, but I could get him to leave my siblings out of it.”
Lucca stared back at him through the rearview mirror, unafraid. “After everything you’ve lived through, you’re just going to give up?”
“I don’t have anything without Kat, and now especially without Maria.” Dominic said the words with such pain that it rocked the earth itself. “You told me fifty-fifty, Lucca. You lied as you shook my hand and looked me in the fucking eyes.”
Dom couldn’t hide how cornered he was. Lucca could see it through the tiny mirror.
“If Katarina isn’t happily married when I take my father’s place, I will make Drago file for a divorce or let you kill him. It’ll be your choice.”
Dom’s brows drew into a line at seeing that the underboss was fucking serious, and he wasn’t just saying it because he was scared for his life.
Continuing his promise, Lucca blew out a puff of smoke. “And as for Maria, I’ll—”
“Oh, come on, we both know you’re not leaving this car alive,” Dom stopped him. Cocking his Glock, the sound echoed throughout the small space ominously. “You don’t point a gun at the boogieman and live.”
It didn’t matter what the underboss told him, he couldn’t let him live. Dom had a better shot at facing Dante, and the father had way less of an imagination than his son.
Lucca took a long, hard hit of his burning cigarette. “I followed the car that picked up the dead body you shot outside the gas station. I visited that funeral home and told them to give me a call whenever a body needing to be discreetly disposed of was brought in. I knew every person killed by you. Every single one of your kills landed them with a bullet right between the eyes. The only one you shot from behind was the one I saw that day.”
Dominic continued to listen to every word spilling from Lucca’s lips.
“That was also the day I knew I would have to kill you.” He crushed his cigarette in the ashtray without looking away from Dom. “The first real chance I got, I knew I’d have to take it, because no man who only took a life by looking into their eyes and possessed your skill would be happy with the shitty, little piece of this city you were given.”
“Until you met her,” Dominic said the next part of the story, letting him know he knew why he had asked for the fifty-fifty agreement.
“Yes,” Lucca agreed. “The second I saw Chloe, I no longer wanted you as my enemy. What happened to my mother, I will not let happen to her.”
“It was the day of your mother’s funeral that I knew I could kill you.” Dominic drifted his eyes to the loaded Glock in his hand, telling him his own story. “I thought you were like my father, but he never loved a soul. I could see the way you loved your mother when you looked at her casket. I knew you would love again … but I also knew you’d die if you lost her.”
Lucca stared at him fiercely in the rearview mirror, showing Dominic just how right, but oh so wrong, he was. The man he held a gun to might not live long after the death of his soulmate, but the boogieman promised him with evil blue-green eyes that he would burn the city to the ground all by himself, destroying every living thing in its limits before he’d take the man responsible for Chloe’s death to hell with him.
“Relax,” Dom told him. “The gun’s pointed at you, not her. My father already touched her, anyway, and I take no pleasure in hurting anyone Lucifer has marked.”
Taking in his wholehearted answer, Lucca lit up another cigarette, the glow of the Zippo in the dark car lighting up his face. “There will come a day when we will make an enemy, whether its inside or outside of the city, and I’d like to have you on my side. I won’t be able to protect Chloe alone.”
Dom could see he still wanted them to work together, but he had yet to prove it.
“You want me and my men prepared to die for her, not to actually share the city.”
“You’ll want it too, y
ou know,” Lucca warned him. “You’ll want me and my men prepared to die for the woman you love too.”
“The woman I love, your men are already prepared to die for,” Dominic spat behind him, letting him know it wasn’t the same thing.
The underboss taunted him with the cold hard truth. “Their love for Maria will die the second she becomes a Luciano.”
“Well, it’s a good thing she didn’t choose me,” he bit back.
Staring back down at his gun, it was time he decided what to do. “Not once did I ever consider running this city together. I promised myself long ago I would take the throne and become king.” Dominic lifted his hazel depths back to the rearview mirror. “You will always need me more than I need you. You were born for this life, Lucca, but … I was made.” Uncocking the gun with his last words, Dom let the boogieman go free, both with the knowledge of who truly deserved to wear the crown.
“Tell me,” Dominic said, opening the car door, deciding to leave Lucca with some final words before he left, “what is it, do you think, Maria will never forgive you for?” He taunted the underboss, repaying him for the thoughts he had forced upon him. “For not finding out which of your men is One-Shot before Leo lost an eye … or for not telling her who Kayne really is?”
Sitting in his Mustang, Dominic continued watching the apartment with his stomach in knots. Bile rose with each passing hour, knowing what most likely was taking place inside, yet he had to sit out here and just let it happen, no matter how much it hurt.
Once it reached five in the morning, Dom went to open his car door, needing to vomit. It had been a long time since his emotions made him sick. Right before the little contents he had placed in his stomach yesterday were about to come up, he caught a figure leaving the building.
Quietly shutting his car door, his stomach began to settle. He waited until the man in the ball cap and sweats got into his own car and pulled out of the lot before he started trailing him.
Following behind the car, he didn’t use his headlights, even though the sun had yet to rise, depending on his memory, good eyesight, and the lights of the car in front of him to guide him.
He hadn’t expected him to leave this early, thinking he would have had to wait to confront him until he went to work or left later in the day. It was why Dom had decided to follow him, to see where the hell he was going this early.
Not sure what he expected, when he pulled into Kansas City Park, he figured he should have guessed when the man exited the car to pull up his hood over his cap before he jogged off.
This park was much different than the one down the street from his home. Like all the other comparisons, this park sat on the rich side of town, with pretty views that assholes like to jog in early in the morning.
The man he had been watching might’ve been from Blue Park, but he hadn’t lived there for a long time.
Figured.
It was just another way the man pretended to be something he wasn’t.
Jumping out of his car, Dominic ran after him, his fury driving him to catch up with him. Then he waited until he was a few feet away before he let him know of his presence.
“Kayne!” Dom boomed out over the desolate park as the sun began to rise.
The figure in front of him looked over his shoulder before he quickly turned in surprise. “What the fuck are you doing her—”
“We need to talk,” Dominic continued closing the distance between them.
Looking over his shoulder, back toward the way he had been heading before he’d been stopped, Kayne’s tone went serious. “This needs to wait, Dom.”
“It can’t” was all he had said when his fist met Kayne’s jaw. Dominic had waited twenty-something years to do that, and it felt good.
Kayne slowly wiped the blood from his mouth with anger growing in his gold eyes, but his voice stayed even. “If this is about Maria, I get it. But right now, I—”
bRRing …
The phone ringing in his pocket cut him off.
Pulling out his phone in a hurry, Kayne checked to see who was calling.
Dom took one look at his face and knew instinctively who it was.
“It’s her, isn’t it?” he asked furiously.
bRRing …
Kayne held up a hand. “I need you to trust me—”
bRRing …
“Trust you?” Dominic laughed manically. “Why don’t you answer it and tell Maria the truth about you?”
bRRi-
Kayne’s finger slipped, and instead of canceling the call, he unknowingly answered it.
“What do you think she’ll think about you then?” Dom asked harshly with a twisted smile.
Now Kayne finally fought back. “I planned on telling her!”
“When was that? Before or after you got done fucking her?”
Kayne took a threatening step closer to him. “You don’t even know anyth—”
“I know you’ve been fucking jealous of me since the day we met. Was ruining Bristol’s fucking life not enough for you?” Dominic pulled his Glock from his back when Kayne made a move for his pocket.
The old Kayne quickly returned to his golden eyes as words spewed from him like venom. “I should fucking kill yo—”
BANG!
The look that rested in Kayne’s eyes as the phone slipped from his hand, crashing to the pavement, was the same one that had been in Leo’s single eye when that explosion had taken away his other. Only, Kayne wouldn’t be losing just an eye.
Kayne looked down to the hole that had been placed in his chest. Covering the wound with his hand, blood flowed through his fingers as fresh raindrops began to lightly touch their skin.
Dominic caught him before his knees hit the soon-to-be wet pavement as death came to greet him. Then, letting his body fall completely to the ground, his unremorseful hazel eyes unconsciously went to the phone that was lit up with Maria’s name.
He watched the raindrops hit the screen as it sat in a puddle of blood, knowing she had heard it all and now she sat waiting on the other end of the line.
Picking up the shattered phone that had fallen to the ground, he heard her unsteady, “Hello …?”
He gripped the phone with blood-soaked hands that even the rain would be unable to wash away, while staring at the dead body before him. He breathed heavily, trying to catch his breath after that confrontation.
He knew what it would do to her when she heard whose voice it was coming from the other end … but Dominic did it anyway.
“Hello, Maria.”
Twenty-Four
I’ll Kill You
Maria had been sitting motionless on the floor in Kayne’s apartment for what seemed like hours. The only light coming into the bedroom was from the window she stared out of. She had been so irrevocably numb and out of it that she hadn’t even heard she was no longer alone.
“Maria …,” a dark voice spoke from behind her in the doorway.
Knowing who the voice belonged to, she still had to turn to look at him. She couldn’t believe the set of balls that man had on him to come here after what he had done.
“Leave,” Maria hissed at him, giving the brave man a warning that he shouldn’t underestimate her.
“No,” he answered simply.
“You have five seconds to leave, or so help me God”—Maria glowered at him, promising she’d make her next words true—“I’ll kill you, Dominic.”
Standing in the doorframe, Dom crossed his arms. “I’m not leaving without you. We need to get out of here.”
Maria moved like a flash of lightning. Grabbing one of her heels from where Kayne had placed them beside the bed that he had held her all night in, she stood mere inches away from Dominic as she pressed the end of her stiletto lightly into his neck.
“You just couldn’t see me fucking happy with Kayne, could you? You couldn’t handle that you lost, that I fell in love with him and not you.”
“What you felt for Kayne wasn’t love, princess.” Dominic’s hazel eyes bore i
nto hers, unafraid.
“And you suppose I felt it for you?” She snickered evilly. After their dance, Maria had one fucking dream about the man standing before her and she was more interested if Dominic really did have the dimples when he smiled, over anything else that happened in that dream. “I never felt a thing for you, Dominic Luciano, and I never fucking will.” Pressing her pointy heel deeper into his tanned skin, she continued, “I won’t even feel hate for you when I get done killing you. You don’t even deserve that after what you’ve done.”
“I deserve to die,” Dom told her wholeheartedly, pressing his own neck into her heel. “But not for this.”
“You lied,” Maria whispered, feeling disbelief that she had ever believed a word out of his mouth. “You lied when you told me you were nothing like your father. You’re worse.” Her words lashed him like a hot whip across his face. “At least Lucifer knew he was a monster … You act so fucking righteous you’ve let yourself believe you’re not.”
“Probably so.” Not even Dominic could hide the slight hurt in his eyes at her words. “But the only thing I regret is ever thinking you could love me.”
She lifted her eyes to the single drop of blood trickling down his neck as she came to a decision. “I’m not going to kill you. I want you to suffer with the thought that I’d rather love a dead man and be alone for the rest of my life than ever love you.” Releasing the heel from his neck, she lifted her lashes back up for her eyes to meet his once more. “Now get the fuck out of here and out of my life, because I swear to God, Dominic, if I ever see you again, I’ll take the thing you love most and kill it … just like you did me.”
If Dominic and the rest of the world thought she was cold before … they haven’t seen nothing yet.
With one last look, Dominic didn’t even look at her the same. It was as if he was suddenly void of any and all emotion for her.
“Good-bye, Maria.”
Watching the Luciano boss walk away, a part of her hadn’t believed the words when he had said them before. This time … she knew he fucking meant them.
Dominic (Made Men Book 8) Page 18