That boy…I stopped breathing.
That’s why I’d felt something, some sort of safety or protection around Dominic at the cabin. That’s why the strange feeling of familiarity.
He’d been there that day. He’d been at my house. At my brother’s birthday party.
Dominic Sapienti was Dominic Benedetti.
Dominic Benedetti had told those boys to take a hike and had given me the envelope back.
He had saved me that day, and later, his father had vowed to keep my family safe. Dominic knew this. If he didn’t, I’d told him on the drive from the cabin to this house, and he’d said nothing. And now, I wore his family’s brand on my hip, forever marked. They’d burned it into Mateo’s chest before they’d killed him. Dominic Benedetti or his family had killed Mateo. They had ordered my kidnapping, sending me to be sold as a sex slave. This from the man for whom my father had given his life.
I went downstairs to confront him, assuming he was behind the closed doors of the one room he’d told me I didn’t have permission to enter. When I opened those doors, though, I stopped dead at what I saw. The splattering of blood on the walls, the residue of red where blood had seeped into the marble floor. The bottle of half-drunk liquor on the table. Glasses with the residue of whiskey and dust as if someone were drinking now. As if that room had been frozen in time.
I realized nothing was covered in the dining room. No dustcloths, nothing. Two chairs lay on their sides, evidence of a night I knew about. Of the night that brought on the decline of the great Benedetti family. The night when one brother had almost killed the other.
I looked around the room and ran a hand through my hair, trying to make sense of this. I saw the large glass case to the side, and inside it, displayed and dusty, sat a book, the large, heavy tome of the Benedetti family. I opened the glass door and took it out, touching the carving of the family crest on the cover made of wood. I traced each of the grooves, every hair on my body standing on end. It took me a moment to open the book.
Generations of Benedetti were pictured inside. I didn’t care about those long gone, though. I turned the pages, working toward the end of the book, noticing the binding, knowing it was a book that would grow with time, adding more and more members as old generations died and new were born. I saw ancient-looking certificates of birth, of marriage, of lineage. I recognized names, unions made to bind families together, making the Benedetti one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful, crime family in America.
At least the most powerful until that night. Until Franco witnessed the battle between his sons and nearly died himself from a heart attack.
That was when things began to fall apart for the Benedetti family.
I turned the book over, laying it so I could get to the later pages. I saw the photograph of Sergio in his parents’ arms. Saw the family grow with Salvatore’s birth, Sergio as a toddler.
Knowing what I would find on the next page, I flipped past it, not wanting to see just yet. I got to the photograph of Sergio and his wife on their wedding day. She’d been laughing so hard her eyes were screwed shut in the picture. Then came the date he’d died. Then the one announcing his son’s birth just months after his death.
He’d never even seen his son.
I flipped back the few pages I’d skipped, my heart racing, blood pounding against my ears, the noise unbearable. I found the page that pictured the third son. Dominic. His parents smiled, but I saw the strain in their faces, the effort it took. They didn’t look like they had with the other two births.
The most recent photograph of Dominic had to be at least ten years ago. He’d have been twenty-five. He stood beside his father at a party, his arm around his father’s shoulder, his grin cocky, everything about him carefree, as if he were the boy who would have it all. The girl by his side stared up at him, enamored with him, when he seemed barely aware of her presence.
Dominic Benedetti with his father, Franco. The man who’d pledged to take care of my family. Did Victor work for him? Was it a sort of rebellion against Angus Scava? He knew Angus didn’t like him. But did that mean Victor did Franco Benedetti’s bidding? It made sense. The brand screamed the truth. Mateo and I had been branded with the Benedetti family crest, not the Scava mark. Franco Benedetti had fucked us over, had promised my father he’d protect us then killed my brother and taken me prisoner. Dominic, a man I thought my ally in some strange way, was his son. I wore on my hip Dominic Benedetti’s mark as if I were branded cattle, a thing owned, not a human life at all.
He’d lied to me.
He’d told me Victor was playing a game, but Dominic was the master game maker.
Fury raged inside me.
I’d been fooled.
I’d been played.
I’d fucked my enemy. I’d slept beside him, clinging to him, and I felt sick for it.
I picked up the first thing I saw and screamed, sending it crashing into the bloodstained wall, watching the glass shatter into shards on the marble.
I didn’t stop.
15
Dominic
Something crashed to the floor in the other room. Gia screamed. I grabbed the pistol and jumped to my feet, running through the living room toward the open dining-room doors, where the sound of something else shattering had me cocking my gun, ready to fire.
Her scream came again, but I didn’t hear fear in it.
I turned the corner and kicked one of the double doors open all the way to find Gia standing in the middle of the bloodstained floor, shattered glass all around her, her face the image of fury.
“You!”
She sneered at me, her lip curled, her eyes hard. No fear, not at seeing me. Not at seeing the pistol I held cocked and ready to kill.
“It was you.”
She picked up the bottle that still sat on the dining-room table from that night. Franco and Roman had been drinking it. She raised it.
“What’s going on, Gia?” I asked, holding out one hand, palm flat, while I de-cocked the gun and slid it into the back waistband of my jeans.
Déjà vu.
Except I hadn’t disarmed the pistol that night.
She threw the bottle at me, rage burning her face as I sprang to the right. Glass shattered at my feet, sticky liquid staining my jeans.
“Calm down. What’s going on?”
“He was your friend.” She looked around the room for the next thing she’d chuck.
I moved toward her slowly, watching her take aim with one of the crystal tumblers on the table.
“My father took a bullet for yours. He was supposed to protect us! He pledged it the day my father died for him!”
She threw it. I sidestepped, and the glass smashed against the wall behind me.
“And you…you were Mateo’s friend.”
“Gia.” I kept my voice calm, moving in closer, trying not to look at the stain on the marble floor, the splatters on the wall I’d ordered no one to clean.
“You like your little masks, don’t you?” she asked, looking around the room, finding nothing left to throw and facing me again. “Tell me, was it you who branded Mateo? Was it you who branded me?” She sucked in a breath and pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. “I never saw your faces. Everyone but Victor wore a mask.” She looked at me again. “You sick fucking asshole.”
“Gia,” I said, close enough now to take her wrists as she tried to hit me. “Gia, stop.”
“Did you kill him?”
“No.”
“Were you there? Did you hold him down? Did you—”
A sob cut off her words, and she bowed her head into my chest.
“Did you chop off his tongue?”
“No.” Christ. She’d seen that?
“I know who you are. I know.”
I let go of her.
She sank to the floor, her face in her hands.
“Gia.” I squatted down.
“Don’t touch me.”
She shoved me away and sat with her back leanin
g against the blood-splattered wall. I sat across from her, watching her come apart.
“Don’t…” she started, but her words trailed off to nothing.
“The brand was a setup. Part of Victor’s plan, Gia.”
“Mateo was trying to do the right thing.”
She shook her head, not hearing me at all, her face scrunched up in confusion.
I noticed the book on the floor beside her then. The book of the great Benedetti family. Our family crest—no, not fucking ours! When the fuck would I get that into my head? When the fuck would I stop calling it mine?
“You knew all along,” she muttered. She looked up, her eyes red and puffy.
But I had to look at the book again. At the open page. At Franco and my mother, standing there holding their second born, Salvatore. Sergio standing beside them, his hand in his father’s. Dark wood paneled the background, and above it a painting of the damned crest. Franco stood taller, straighter, his face beaming, so fucking proud. The perfect fucking family.
“The blood, it’s when you tried to kill your brother.”
Her words broke into my thoughts. Forced me to hear.
“You think no one knows, but we all know. I should have recognized the names.”
I turned my gaze to hers. I had no defense.
“You must have thought me pretty stupid, huh?” she asked.
“No.”
“You’re sick, Dominic. You’re a sick, sick bastard.”
I felt myself go still, my chest tightening. She was right. Every word she said, truth. My guilt must have been etched on my face, because Gia reached out a hand to shove me backward.
“You’re a hate-filled monster.”
She rose onto unsteady feet, and I followed, shaking my head but unable to speak, stepping closer to her as she pounded a fist against my chest.
“Sick.”
I shoved her against the wall and closed my mouth over hers. It wasn’t a kiss, it was to shut her up. I would eat her words, so I wouldn’t have to hear them. Because what she said was true. I didn’t deny the facts. But to have someone say them. To have her say them—
Her hands came to either side of my head, and she tugged at my hair, her body yielding just a little even as she tried to push me off. She turned her face to the side and spit, as if the taste of me repulsed her.
“You’re a murderer.”
I gripped her jaw and forced her face back to mine, looking at her, holding it tight enough she couldn’t speak. I then wrapped one hand around her waist and lifted her, carrying her the few steps to the table, laying her on her back.
“Shut up,” I said as I moved my hands to undo the buttons of her jeans.
“You betrayed your family.”
“I said shut the fuck up.” I tugged them and her panties down.
She grunted, pushing herself upright. Her hand came up, and she slapped me hard.
“What do they do to those who betray their own family?” she hissed. “A snitch loses his tongue. What do you lose?”
Everything. Every fucking thing.
I gripped a handful of her hair, tasting my own blood. I’d bit my lip.
“Again,” I said.
She slapped me again, this time with the back of her hand. She was the only person to speak the truth out loud. To tell me what I was without fear of me.
My cock grew harder watching her, watching the raw fury burn her eyes.
“Again.”
She obeyed, her palm open, colliding with my cheek. Blood splattered onto her face, but she didn’t flinch and she didn’t stop and I stood there letting her. Holding her in place by her hair, letting her slap my face until it went numb, until she grunted with the effort, until her hand tired. She stopped slapping and dragged her fingernails down both cheeks, drawing more blood. I smashed my mouth against hers again, set the pistol on the table, and unzipped my own jeans, pushing them down, trying to get between her legs, unable to with her tight jeans at midthigh.
“I hate you,” she said against my mouth.
I licked her lips, then took one into my mouth and devoured it, devoured her, sliding her off the table to flip her onto her stomach and push her down over it.
“I hate you,” she repeated when I gripped her hips and spread her open, bringing my cock to her wet pussy and thrusting into her.
I grunted, needing this, needing to possess her, desperate to be inside her, connected with her. Her breathing hitched as she said something else, something I couldn’t make out, and with a hand in her hair I turned her face to the side and leaned down over her back, my mouth to her cheek, to the side of her mouth.
“Hurt me, Gia,” I whispered, close to release.
She shook her head as much as my grip allowed. “No. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m going to kill you,” she said, her eyes closing momentarily as her pussy tightened around my cock. “I’m going to fucking kill you, Dominic Benedetti.”
“Do it. Kill me,” I whispered as she sucked my lip into her mouth, then bit, and I held her to me, thrusting hard once more, coming like a fucking volcano erupting inside her, not caring that she didn’t come, not even pulling out, emptying, emptying, my arms tight around her until finally, spent, my cock slid out, semen slippery between us.
I stumbled backward and pulled my jeans up. Gia straightened, turning to me, my pistol in her hand. I watched her and she me, and I knew what she wanted. I saw her hate; saw her need, her desire.
“Were you there? When they killed my brother?” she asked, cocking the gun. “They wore masks. They all wore masks.”
“No.”
“Were you there when Victor had me branded?”
I shook my head and dropped to my knees before her and gripped her hips, tilting them toward me, taking her clit into my mouth and sucking, my scent on her, my taste on her. Her free hand gripped the table at her back, and I spread her open, her pussy dripping, a mixture from both of us. I smeared it up along her opening with my fingers, sucking her clit harder, feeling her knees give away as she cried out, coming, the hand still holding the cocked pistol on my shoulder to keep herself upright, her body shuddering, her breath hitching.
I loosened my hold on her and looked at her face, her beautiful, soft, sad face. She slid to her knees, and we stayed like that, watching each other, enemies, lovers, pawns in a game.
“Kill me, Gia,” I whispered, my voice failing as I took her hand, the one that held my gun, and set the barrel at my chest. “Kill me after I kill my uncle. After I kill Victor.”
She watched me, and for a long moment, I wasn’t sure what she’d do. All it would take was the quick pull of her finger, and I’d be dead. Out of my fucking misery.
I wasn’t even scared.
But she shook her head and set the weapon down beside us and held onto my bloodied cheeks. She ran her tongue up along my face, then brought crimson-stained lips to mine and slid her tongue between my lips before kissing me, the taste of her mixed with that of my own blood.
“I want to pull the trigger on Victor. I kill him. Not you.”
She barely took her lips from mine as she muttered the words.
I nodded and kissed her and remembered how I’d called Isabella my vengeful little bitch once. I grinned behind the kiss, holding onto Gia like she held me. Knowing we knelt on the very spot I’d nearly killed Salvatore, knowing I’d fucked Gia standing on the stain of his blood. Knowing I was truly a monster because I didn’t find it wrong. I didn’t feel guilt. Not anymore. And as I stripped Gia’s clothes off her and spread her legs open to feast again, I felt good. I felt hungry. Hungry for vengeance. Hungry for her.
Gia was my match. My perfect match.
I was right when I’d told her she was like me. She hated like me.
And I trusted she’d do what she promised.
She’d end me once this was finished.
I’d help her get her revenge.
And then I’d be finished.
And I’d take all that was left of the Benedetti
family down with me once and for all.
16
Gia
I kept Dominic’s gun. I laid it beneath the pillow beside me and slept.
I wasn’t sure if Dominic slept that night. I don’t even remember getting upstairs and into bed after what happened in the dining room.
The scent of sex permeated my room. It was the first thing I smelled, his smell, my own, when I opened my eyes. I sat up in bed, rubbed my face, and picked up the loaded weapon.
I’d kill Victor Scava with this gun.
Then I’d kill Dominic with it.
He wanted me to. He’d asked me to. I finally understood him last night. I finally saw him. Really saw him. He’d been at odds all along, at once my cruel captor, then ally, then lover. I knew why now.
I got out of bed and walked through the door that connected our bedrooms. I didn’t care what I looked like, that I was naked, unwashed. That his cum had dried and crusted between my legs. I didn’t care.
I only cared about the gun in my hand.
Dominic walked out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped low around his waist, another in his hands, drying his hair.
“How long have you been hiding?” I asked.
He stopped and looked at me.
“You need a shower, Gia.”
He resumed walking, tossing the towel he used to dry his hair on the bed.
“How long?”
He stopped and turned to me, paused, then walked right up to me and cocked his head to the side.
“Get your facts straight before you walk around demanding answers with a gun in your hand.”
He easily wrapped his hand around the wrist that held the gun.
“You need a shower,” he said again.
“Can’t stand your own smell?”
His eyes narrowed, and he forced the weapon out of my hand.
“It’s mine!” I followed him to the dresser, trying to reach around him to get it when he opened a drawer and set it inside.
He caught my wrists and walked me backward a few steps.
“You need to keep your shit together, and you need to have a fucking shower.”
Dominic: a Dark Mafia Romance (Benedetti Brothers Book 2) Page 13