by Emerson Rose
“Really? I thought being polite earned respect and promoted strength and unity between people.”
“In some circumstances maybe, but running Dominus requires a strong hand.” His voice is laced with that chill I’m not comfortable with.
“Tell me about Dominus.” It seems the root of his alter ego is related to that place so I’d better get to know more about it.
“It’s unusual for an upscale restaurant to be part of a chain. An establishment of Dominus’s stature usually operates individually, but I couldn’t pass on the opportunity to expand when people were practically throwing money at me to open more locations. The food was originally Italian and Greek, but now we serve all kinds of food. The specialties depend on the location. My first was in Italy. It was an instant hot spot; people came from all over the world for the food and entertainment. So, I decided to take the concept anywhere they would have me, which is now just about everywhere.”
“What makes it stand apart from similar places?” I ask.
“There are no similar places, there is no competition for Dominus. What we have to offer is unique. The food is exquisite, we have never received a bad review, and each location has an accompanying club, which is the true draw.”
He’s staring hard at me, analyzing my reaction to this information. He seems nervous and unsettled. There’s more to this story, much more.
“Oh, what makes the club unique? Don’t most restaurants have a bar or club attached?
He’s quiet for a bit as he searches for the right words to explain. Before he finds them the sound of Beethoven’s Fifth rings through the house louder than a fire alarm.
“Is that a doorbell?” Marcus has a knack for going overboard with certain things, and that doorbell is definitely one of them.
“Yes, Elijah is back, and he’s bringing our food from Dominus. Mr. Black will let him in. Do you mind if he comes back here? I have some business to speak to him about and I’m comfortable. I don’t want to have to do all of this again,” he says, waving his hand over the pillows that it took ten minutes to get perfectly arranged around him.
“Of course not, it’s your house. I’ll go to my room so you two can talk.”
“No, no, stay here.”
“I need to put on a robe then.”
“Yes, a robe.” His eyes rake over my scantily clothed body and his jaw tightens. I know exactly what he’s thinking because I’m thinking it, too.
I wish Elijah would go away, for more reasons than one. Marcus was opening up about his business, and that look he just gave me ignited a fire in my body that only he can extinguish.
I pull out a thin full-length red silk robe from my bag on my lap and slip it on while Marcus watches, nodding his approval.
Elijah strolls in, holding a large pizza box and pauses when he sees me sitting in Marcus’s bed.
“I’m sorry, sir. Mr. Black didn’t say, he never mentioned…” he says, stumbling over his words.
“It’s alright, Elijah, I told him to let you back. You remember Imani, don’t you?”
“Of course, it’s nice to see you again, Miss Jefferson.” Poor Elijah doesn’t know where to look, so he concentrates on the pizza box in his hands.
“Call me Imani, please. It’s nice to see you, too, Elijah. How was your trip?” I ask.
“Fine, thank you.” He lifts the box up slightly, silently asking where he should put it. “Just here on the bed,” Marcus says. Elijah hesitates again.
“You want it on the bed?” He repeats himself as if he must have heard wrong.
“Yes, Elijah. On the bed,” Marcus answers with a little irritation.
This must be out of character for the old Marcus. Elijah knows him well, or at least he knew the old Marcus well. I feel bad for him having to struggle in these uncharted waters. It’s not hard for me; this is the only Marcus I’ve ever known, the only one I ever want to know.
Confident that it’s safe after asking twice, Elijah sets the box on the bed.
Marcus turns his attention to me. “Choose a movie. I will be just a few minutes with Elijah.”
Elijah pulls up a chair and produces a laptop. I scoot off the bed and set my bag on a chair, remembering to remove the vase that’s wrapped in my clothes.
The roses I brought from my room are too big, and they won’t work in it. I pad next door to my room to choose another bouquet with shorter stems.
The bear follows me with her diamond eyes looking smug like she has a secret she never plans on sharing with the likes of me.
I roll my eyes and huff back to Marcus’s room with a handful of flowers.
When I’ve finished arranging them in Dax’s vase, I set them on a small table in a sitting area by the window.
Marcus and Elijah are hovering over the laptop, discussing flow charts and graphs and shipping dilemmas. I’m trying not to eavesdrop, but I can’t help but listen when one of them mentions letting someone go. I think it’s a woman. They don’t go into the details of her wrongdoing, but I worry for her.
I grab the remote and switch on Netflix. His personalized account has a wide array of genres and foreign titles. I wonder how many languages he speaks fluently. With business on every continent, I suppose he speaks several.
I have no idea what to choose; I really don’t care what we watch. I don’t plan on seeing any of it anyway as my itinerary for the evening includes filling up on gourmet pizza and getting naked with my patient.
My patient. The thought of him as my employer still nags at me. I am doing nothing a professional nurse would do for a patient. I feel more like a paid girlfriend, which is essentially a prostitute.
I’m going to have to make a change in our arrangement if I plan on keeping my dignity and self-respect. I need to get myself removed from his bankroll. If I’m going to work, I want to earn my money caring for people, not passing a sleeping pill and fluffing pillows for my boyfriend. I want to go back to Seattle Trinity.
Elijah stands to leave, and I return to bed with no idea of what movie to watch… or not to watch.
He glances at Marcus and then at me and back to Marcus. Marcus nods his head.
“It’s fine, Elijah, you can give it to me.” Elijah bends over to retrieve something from a bag at his feet. At first I think it’s a vase but then the realization that it’s an urn hits me like a blow to the chest.
What the fuck is Elijah doing with an urn? And why is he giving it to Marcus? Elijah hands the urn over and exits the room. Now it’s just me, Marcus, and whoever’s charred ashes are in that urn.
I stare at him with wide eyes and my mouth hanging open. Did Carmen or Trinity lose the toothbrush they use for cleaning their station and pay for the mistake with their life? Did Marcus put out a mafia hit, and Elijah is bringing him the ashes to put in a big safe somewhere in this castle?
He holds it in both hands, brushing his thumbs across the nameplate of the person inside.
After a moment adrift, he looks up at me as if he just remembered I was there.
“Ah… who is that?”
“Megan,” he answers flatly.
“The woman that was in the accident with you?”
Thank God it’s not an employee, but why does he have her ashes instead of her family?
“Yes.”
“Was she… special to you?” This is the perfect opportunity to uncover something about his past. Elijah gave him the urn right in front of me after all, so technically I’m not prying.
“Not the way you think. It’s very complicated.”
I move to his side of the bed and perch there next to his legs. “I’d like to know.”
“Why?”
“Because, Marcus, I’m sleeping with you, practically living in your home and I know next to nothing about you.”
He sighs deeply. “I’ll tell you about her but, after I do, no more discussing it.”
“Ok… fine.” My heart picks up the tempo as I wonder if I really want to hear this after all.
“When I was
in college, I found her on the streets. She was a dirty little ten-year-old girl, homeless, hungry, and alone.”
He stares at the urn, turning it in his hands while he tells me her story.
“I don’t know what it was about her, she was crouched next to a dumpster outside a coffee shop I frequented. I’d seen her there for several days before I finally spoke to her. I know how it feels to be alone and hungry with no one to depend on. I learned that she had been in foster care after being abused by her biological parents, and then the parents the government assigned to her did the same. I took her home with me. I was well off living on the money my Aunt Angelica left me. I wanted to help her, something in her eyes reminded me of myself. I home schooled her. It was easy to do online. She was smart, so I paid for her to go to college. After she was eighteen it didn’t matter if she lived with me, she was an adult and foster care wouldn’t be involved anymore. She worked hard, never complained, she was always grateful for my help, stayed out of trouble. When she turned twenty-two she wanted to support herself. I had recently opened Dominus here in Seattle, so she worked as a server all through college and made a hell of a living while she looked for a career in business. My customers have money to throw away, and they tipped her outrageously. She was beautiful, proficient at her job, and it didn't hurt that they thought she was related to me. The money she earned bought her freedom and soon, without school to focus on, she started hooking up with a bad crowd; drinking, drugs, and the whole fucking loser scene I’d worked to keep her out of all those years. She befriended a few of the strippers who work in the club at Dominus and started learning routines, stripping, and - behind my back - she began working in the club. I hired her as a waitress, not a fucking stripper. I was livid. I wanted to kill her, along with the manager at the time for letting her do it. Needless to say, that manager is no longer with us.”
The way he says ‘not with us’ sounds like he wasn’t simply fired from the job… but something more permanent. A chill runs up my spine, and I shiver as he continues.
“She insisted on working in the club, and when I refused to allow it she threatened to quit and work in a different club where I wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on her. I chose the lesser of the two evils and I let her strip in my club.”
He pauses, and I get the feeling he’s done talking but I stay quiet, afraid that if I interrupt he may clam up and stop letting me in, but he continues.
“I was so angry when she threw the life that I had given her away like it was nothing. I wanted to punish her and I did, in the most twisted way I could. I knew it would be easy to make her fall in love with me. She already loved me like a brother or a father so transitioning that relationship into a sexual one was child’s play. I tortured her for years by allowing her to believe there was a future with me, then I began showing her how little she meant to me by dating other women right under her nose. We would argue, she would take me back, and I’d do it again and again. I secretly hated her for wasting my generosity. I made her into something good and pure and she threw it away to be a fucking stripper, and eventually she let men chain her up and fuck her for money.
The night of the accident I was driving her home after closing the club. She told me she needed to take our relationship to another level, she wanted me to stop having sex with other women forever.” His cold glare frightens me, as well as his evil admissions.
“What does that have to do with the accident?”
“We were arguing, I was distracted, furiously yelling at her and she at me. I thought I had control of the car; we swerved a few times when she swiped at me but I righted the car every time. I don’t know how we went over that bridge. My memory between fighting and seeing her floating lifeless in the seat next to me is gone. One minute she was screaming that she couldn't live without me and the next she was gone. She died on impact, the coroner told me her neck snapped, she didn’t suffer. Elena put together a service for her. I don’t know why, she had no family; the only people who showed up were her junkie friends and some of the staff from Dominus. She sent me the ashes because Megan didn’t have anybody who would want them.”
Silence blankets the room. The only sound I can hear is my heart beating violently in my chest. How can I care for a man who would do such a thing?
“When I was in a coma, I wanted to let the darkness take me. I felt so guilty about what I did to Megan. I should have never touched her. She was like my little sister, for Christ’s sake. It was so wrong. I knew she loved me but I didn’t care, she pissed me off.”
I gasp and pull away from him. He closes his eyes and shakes his head back and forth slowly. “This is why we can never talk of this again.”
“Wait… I remember you telling me that you wanted to let the darkness take you but you hung on. Why?”
I already know the answer to my question. He’s told me before that it was my words that kept him anchored to this world. But after hearing that story a reminder of his goodness, of our connection, and even more importantly that he’s not that monster anymore.
“You. You were my savior, Imani. You know you were. Your voice, your words, your music, they called to me and kept me holding on. I had to stay alive so I could get to you.”
His eyes are begging me to understand that he isn’t the man he used to be. He’s asking me to look past what he was and accept him for who he is now.
And I do. There isn’t anything from his past that could drive me away.
He owns me. I am his.
He is my Dominus, the Master and Lord of my heart, but admitting my devotion to him as such could be fatal. He used to be a callous evil man capable of destroying a woman’s heart with no guilt or effort. If parts of the man he just described start to seep through the cracks of his memory, he could ruin me. Men have ruined me in the past. I’m not about to let it happen again.
Twenty-Five
Magically, Maria appears at the bedroom door, knocking lightly on the frame. It’s open, as usual. “You need something, Señor Castillo?” she asks timidly.
“Yes, Maria, take this and put it in my office. I’ll put it away later.” He holds out the urn, and her eyes widen for a split second before she hurries to the bed to retrieve it. I watch her bustle away, carrying the last bits of an abused lonely girl who disappointed the wrong man.
“How did she know you needed her?” I ask, baffled as to where she must keep herself to be at his disposal so quickly.
“She knows,” he answers flatly, as if that were an answer at all.
“What do you mean she knows?”
“Just what I said, she knows.” That’s not the answer I want, and he knows it. He’s testing me by being stubborn. I haven’t given him any indication that I’m OK with his torture story about Megan.
I step away from the bed with all of the information that he provided swimming around in my head. This is not how I expected our relaxing evening in with pizza and a movie to go.
I need to get lost, I need music, I need a book, online shopping, anything normal and familiar to get my mind off all this crap.
“I’m not in the mood for a movie anymore. Can we just eat, listen to some music, and go to bed?”
“Yes, we can just eat, listen to music, and go to bed, Imani,” he says with a sigh and a touch of regret in his voice.
I study my feet and fiddle with the belt of my robe. I’m nervous; part of me wants to go to my room and be alone so I can try and sort this shit out.
But I know he won’t rest until he knows where I stand. He was apprehensive about telling me that story, and with good reason. Any woman with any sense at all would have been out of here a long time ago.
I’m in too deep now, though; there is no escaping the feelings I have for him. I lay down my phone and turn on one of my favorite playlists.
He takes this as a sign that we are moving on and opens the pizza box while I scoot across the bed. Notes from the first song on the playlist float through the room and calm my nerves.
“I rem
ember this,” he says softly.
I’d almost forgotten that this was the music I played for him when he was unconscious.
“Who sings it?”
“Of Monsters and Men,” I say, tilting my head to the side to look at him out of one eye.
“I don’t listen to them. Where do I know this from?” He bows his head and closes his eyes to concentrate. “You played this for me. When I was asleep, you played music for me, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Can you start it over? I want to listen to the lyrics.”
“Why?”
“I just do.” I don’t move.
“Please?” he asks, and that’s all it takes. When he acts like a gentleman, I’m putty in his hands. I replay the song, and he listens closely.
“I’m looking for a place to start
But everything feels so different now
Just grab ahold of my hand
I will lead you through this wonderland
As the soft walls eat us alive”
The music continues, and I realize just how appropriate the lyrics were for him when he was lying there in the dark on the brink of life and death.
I didn’t have anything particular in mind when I made this playlist. I chose songs that I liked, music that was catchy or soothing. It was pure coincidence that this song was in the mix, or was it?
“You saved me with this music,” he says.
I crawl across the bed and accidentally push the pizza box off onto the floor. Straddling his waist, I hold his face and kiss his mouth with a fever unmatched until this moment. His hands roam my body, sliding over my shoulders, searching my back and squeezing my ass, pulling me close to grind his hard length against the spot that sends electrical jolts from my chest to my core.
My hands are everywhere at once, desperately trying to get closer to him. I need him inside of me right now. He pushes the silk robe off of my shoulders, and I slip my arms out and toss it on the floor as he continues with my tank top.
