She didn’t know if the flash in his eyes from her admission was more from his pain or anger, but both knocked her breathless that she didn’t even realize she had somehow plastered her back to the wall.
“You don’t know me at all.” He furiously spoke the words that held such sadness. With his fist, he lightly hit the wall closest to the door beside her, blocking her in and keeping her from escaping. Shaking his head over hers, he gave her a pitying look. “And you’re not the woman I thought you were at all …”
Maria’s body cried out, why? finding disappointment even harder to take on Dominic’s face than on Lucca’s.
There was no sadness in his next words, only anger. “… not if you’ve chosen Kayne Evans.”
She should have screamed bloody murder from the top of her lungs while she lunged at what men held most precious, but hearing that name come out of his mouth stunned her, having her softly ask, “You know him?”
“I own Blue Park, princess … Or did you forget that the second you left my worthless home?” Watching her shake her head he didn’t wait for the white lie that was about to come out of her mouth. “Kayne and I went to the same high school, and I know the real him. I’ll know him more than you’ll ever know.”
It was true, then. If his pinky hadn’t been proof enough, she knew now. Kayne Evans had been just as bad as he told her.
“So, what then?” Maria tried to speak sarcastically, but she wasn’t sure it was coming out that way. “You’re telling me Dominic Luciano is the better choice?”
Reaching up, he caressed her face with a curved hand, using the front of his fingers and letting the tops of his nails lightly graze her perfect skin, while his eyes danced over every inch of her face. It seemed like he was memorizing it, just like he had in her dream. “I know I am.”
Maria had never made a mistake in her life, so why did it feel like she might have? The only thing that told her otherwise was her heart had yet to beat around Dominic and only around Kayne. The rest of her body, however, told her that she did.
Looking up at him, she wasn’t even sure that, if his lips came in for a kiss, she would stop him. Truthfully, she didn’t think she would. She wanted to know if he tasted just as hot as he smelled and if he kissed like he had in her dreams.
He removed his fingers from her skin to pick up the strand of hair that was covering the top of her breast. Unlike Kayne who had wrapped it around his finger, Dominic rubbed the spun gold between three fingers. It were as if he wanted to see what it felt like or if what he held was even real. “You’ve haunted my dreams every night, Maria.”
Again, her body wanted her to scream, I have, too. If he had been wondering if her hair felt the same in his dreams, she wanted to beg him to smile… wanted to see if that slight indent in his cheeks would turn into dimples when he did. She hated herself for not paying enough attention when he had smiled at her; she’d been only able to picture him smiling from her dreams. Close to asking, she thought better of it, knowing if she saw those dimples, she wouldn’t be happy until her lips touched them, until her tongue filled the perfect holes that Lucifer created.
Dominic leaned down over her even farther, letting his nose whisper over the supple skin of her neck. He took his time inhaling deeply, drinking in her sweet, vanilla scent that held a drop of bourbon. “For weeks, I have dreamed of you ….”
She closed her eyes when he finally trailed his lips to hers. She wouldn’t have waited if his hand wasn’t holding her face firmly in place, waiting, torturing her to death—she was sure—when he whispered his lips over hers so lightly that she had almost not felt them.
“And you didn’t even give me a chance to show you what we could be.” He brought his lips close to hers once more. “Now …” Little did she know that would be the last time, as he pulled away and took a step back. “You will never know.”
Staring up at a deadly serious Dominic, who was a step farther back than her body wanted him to be, she was sure this was how Todd and every other man under her father’s thumb who had wanted her felt.
There was only one thing for sure in this life.
Payback
Was
A
Mother
Fucking
Bitch.
Falling on the edge of her bed after watching Dominic’s back leave, Leo entered. Her brain, body, and heart were all in a jumbled mess.
“Maria, are you all right?” he asked, narrowing his eyes at her the same way Lucca always did.
“Yes.” Clearing her throat, she finally looked from her door to Leo. “Why aren’t you in school?”
“I missed my alarm this morning, and figured I could get out of a couple of classes and have Jerry drop me off on the way to taking you to school.”
“Okay.” Maria had to fake a smile. “We better go, then.”
Leo looked at the door and empty hallway. “Why was he—”
“Don’t ask.”
“All right.” Leo laughed, shaking his head that sent his blond hair falling around his face. Even he knew Maria was becoming more confusing every day.
This time when she got up from her bed, she didn’t have to fake a smile. “Thanks.”
Grabbing her purse off the bed, they headed out the door and down the hall; she’d hoped she had given Dominic enough time to have left by now. Her bubble burst, however, when she made it to the top of the steps and saw Dominic talking to Lucca. As much as she told herself not to look at him, she couldn’t help it.
Their heated whispering ended the second they saw her coming down the steps.
Reaching the landing into the foyer, she flipped her blonde hair that he had held in his fingers just moments ago behind her shoulder. “Please don’t stop on my account.”
“I’ll be in the car, waiting with Jerry,” Leo politely and quickly excused himself, opening the front door to leave
Dominic turned from Lucca. “I was just leaving.”
She gave her brother her own heated look, secretly promising him that she would have words of her own with him later. Then, flipping her hair again, now that she knew Dominic liked it, she practically whipped him in the face when she turned to leave. “Me, too.”
Grumbling something unintelligible under his breath, Dominic followed behind her.
Lucca watched the two as he went to close the front door.
If Leo hadn’t been only a few steps in front of her and Lucca only a few steps back, her next thought would have been said out loud to the Luciano ….
How about you go—
The engine in Jerry’s car clicked off.
--fuck yourself.
BOOM!
Twenty
By the Grace of God
It was true when people said time stood still during a near-death experience. Before that fucking boom, time and space crept like every clock on this Earth had paused and every planet in the solar system had stopped orbiting.
As soon as her thought finished, telling Dominic to go fuck himself, the joke had been on her when he had wrapped his arms around her from behind.
Maria got a bare second to look at Leo before the bomb went off, sure that last image of her perfect baby brother was her last. It was a sick snapshot that her brain had taken, like it was a fucking precious Kodak moment that she would have wanted to hang on the wall.
Only seconds after the bomb went off, she was already replaying it a hundred times in her head. Hearing that dead sound of the engine cutting off over and over, she would never, not in a million years, understand it, but somehow, someway, the men’s instincts knew what it meant. Even now knowing what the lack of sound indicated, to her it sounded like any other time a car gave out—that didn’t have a fucking explosive attached to it.
While she had walked toward the rigged car out of ignorance, Dominic and Lucca both walked toward it to save her. The sole reason it had been Dominic’s body shielding her was because Lucca had been too far out of reach. What hurt the most, however, was that her baby brother d
idn’t have a soul to save him.
“Leo!” Maria yelled the name that she held most dear, with a pain she had never heard escape from her throat before.
Seeing that he tried to shield himself similar to the way Dominic shielded her, Leo slowly rose from the ashes like a phoenix.
Every bone, muscle, and tendon in her body relaxed, melting into the tensed, hard body that still held her as Leo turned, showing her his perfectly untouched profile. Somehow, by the grace of God Himself, the only thing she could see was the smudge of black dust on the right side of his face. Unfortunately, she didn’t have to look into the car to see her suit didn’t get off so lucky. Poor Jerry.
Leo’s face looked like he had seen the great, vast void as he finally turned to show the left side of his face that had been impaled by a piece of debris shooting into his eye.
“No!” Maria screamed, her cry echoing throughout all of Kansas City.
Shoving off the man who tried to hold her still, she ran, catching his precious body before it fell to the ground. She didn’t let him go, holding onto Leo tightly as they both collapsed to the littered fragments scattered across the black pavement.
Staring down at him, she saw that he was still conscious, staring back at her with one frightened deep blue eye. “I’ve got you,” she promised him with a shaky voice, wiping the tears that had fallen on his cheek. The only liquid to spill from the other eye socket was blood. “Everything will be all right,” Maria lied with a brave face that was only for him.
Each minute passing felt like an eternity in hell. The only thing giving away her terror that she had tried to hide from him was her violent shaking that got worse upon hearing the sirens’ approach.
Watching his remaining eye slowly close when the ambulance finally pulled up, she felt her own eyes burning, threatening to spill the tears that her psychotic brain had never allowed her to spill.
The arms pulling her back let the paramedics get to him. She only let Dominic hold her, because not only was she numb, but she didn’t trust herself not to get in the paramedic’s way.
Dominic held her tightly, trying to get her violent shakes under control while the ambulance pulled away. “Maria, I’m so sorry.”
Maria shoved him off her, pushing him back as she beat on his chest with all her force. “Don’t you dare act like you care or give a fuck about me after how you just talked to me.”
He stood there, letting her hit him as the tears fell upon her cheeks.
“Maria …,” Lucca called out sympathetically, trying to calm her down.
Suddenly, she stopped. “You pretending to care about Leo is an even bigger joke than Dominic.” Turning to face her brother, her voice cut him as cold as the tears she furiously wiped away. “You better find who did this to him and kill him before your men get smart enough to find out the boogieman is just a myth after all.”
Looking down at her flawed baby brother covered in a white sheet … if her heart hadn’t already been black, it was certainly dead now.
The beeps of the monitors was white noise; she’d grown so used to it after a week of being there, she didn’t even hear them anymore, much less care.
It turned out that that last image of her perfect baby brother … had been her last. The debris lodged itself in his left eye, taking his eye from him for life. He still looked almost perfect lying there sleeping; the only thing reminding her otherwise was the freshly applied white gauze and tape covering the wretched hole underneath.
Life before the boom drastically changed … after.
The ding of her cell phone had her spinning to grab the monogrammed LV duffle bag that she brought when she had first come in.
For the both of us.
Going back to Leo’s hospital bed, she leaned down to give him a kiss on the forehead before her heels hit the sterile white tiles as she left the room.
Her oldest brother was sitting outside the door in a waiting room chair. “You leaving?”
“Yes. You can go in there and sit with him now.”
Lucca reached into his pocket for his phone. “I’ll get Nero to come pick you up and take you home.”
“No.” Maria fiercely spoke the word that she had been dying to say for years. “You don’t get to protect me anymore.”
It seemed as if his blue-green eyes dared her to say it again, but then he took his hand out of his pocket, empty-handed and stood.
She had never seen anyone defeat the boogieman, but she felt his admitted defeat when he coldly walked past her.
Or he simply gave up.
Either way, Maria had gone through enough suits, seen too many people die, and now her beloved brother taking a fucking sharp object to the eye. If One-Shot, or anyone else out there, wanted her, she prayed for a quick end and wished their asses good luck.
Leo getting hurt was her one and only straw … Maria Caruso was done. With the suits, the family, all of it. Absolutely done with the men telling her how to live her life, only to give her nothing in return. She could run circles around the Caruso soldiers, and if they couldn’t see what she was capable of anymore, then fuck them.
Maria walked through the eerie hospital, heading toward the entrance where she could not only see but hear the pouring rain through the glass doors. The Kansas City weather couldn’t make up its mind this week. The only good thing about the pouring rain and sunny skies switching between each other was that the flowers would grow beautifully.
When the sliding glass doors opened, Maria’s gold-colored hair violently spun around, whipping the air and her angelic face. Stepping under the awning, it was the only thing that saved her from getting soaked … unlike him.
Her green eyes landed on the man who stood on the opposite side of the cover, dripping wet like he had been waiting right where he stood for a whole week, just waiting for her to leave.
As the navy blue Dodge Charger pulled up between them, she carefully watched his face, not finding him surprised in the least at the car that separated them.
Putting her hand on the door handle, she was about to pull it open but couldn’t find it in her to do so.
“You never finished telling me how you knew I was heartless,” Maria yelled over the car and over the raging storm for him to hear her.
“Don’t get in that car, princess, and I’ll tell you,” Dominic said with pleading eyes.
Staring at the devil’s son, she started to let her fingers—
The sound of the passenger side window rolling down, followed by her name, had Maria looking in to see Kayne.
The thud of her heart had her gripping the door handle and pulling it open.
Getting quickly in the car, Maria had to keep her face straight forward.
Watching Lucca be disappointed was enough for one day. She wasn’t sure if she could handle Dominic’s heartbreak after seeing it the last time.
Her face forward had her missing one thing, though …
The threatening stare each men gave the other … both promising death.
Twenty-One
My Last Name isn’t Caruso
Maria clutched the door handle in a life-and-death grip as Kayne drove away from the hospital. She needed to get as far away as she could from the two families. Fury had beaten at her every day for a week to find the one responsible for hurting Leo.
Both families had felt the painful whiplash of One-Shot, but it was the Carusos who were feeling the lash the most. Dominic’s claim that the none of the Lucianos were responsible were beginning to fall on deaf ears with the Caruso family, except for Lucca.
Maria still remembered the devil coming to her mother’s funeral, pretending to give lip service in the face of their father’s grief.
Dominic asking her to dance right before the moment that Todd was killed: Was it just a coincidence? Or was it a clever plan carried out by one of his minions just to cast a shadow of doubt that it was someone else?
Or could it be the scariest thought of all … a Caruso?
A Caruso trying to t
ake her father’s throne ….
Maybe she was missing the obvious, and it was Lucca himself. Lucca didn’t hide the fact that he hated their father; he’d told her himself. She just thought, if he wanted to do it, he would fucking do it.
Sleep deprived, Maria rubbed her tired eyes as she tried to gather her sluggish thoughts to figure out who was responsible for putting Leo in that hospital gown.
Whoever had rigged the SUV had known it was used to transport Leo and her to and from school. So, had the bomb hit its target, or did it miss it?
If it was a family member, not only did they come for a child of Dante’s, they broke one of the most heinous family rules—not to hurt children. Anyone under the age of eighteen was off limits, no exceptions. It was a rule brought in under her father’s order. Before then, the mafia always did what they had to do, taking a child’s life if needed, no matter the cost to their souls. Whoever One-Shot was, he was no different than Lucifer and would be punished no differently either.
Thinking about her brother’s face brought on an anguish that she hadn’t felt before, not even when her mother had died.
“Where do you want me to take you?” Kayne’s quiet voice broke through her furious thoughts.
“I don’t care, as long as it’s not home.”
Laying her head back on the headrest, she watched the rain pour down the window as she listened to the windshield wipers in motion, as fast as her fury. She shut her eyes, wishing and wanting and praying for the last week of her life to disappear. Then she could stop Leo from ever going near that car.
A hand on her shoulder had her lifting her lashes to see Kayne staring back at her.
“Come on.”
She should stay put, not get out of the car, and ask him to take her back home … but she wouldn’t. Maria needed him tonight like she had never needed anyone.
Maria (Made Men Book 7) Page 13
