The truth was, if she were a man, she would be very fucking afraid of her, but Maria gave off a female empowerment vibe. It was obvious to her and her brothers that the mafia princess was a straight-up psychopath like her brother Lucca, but there was a difference between them... She had been born a woman. And like Kat knew all too well, they would never be treated like their brothers. No matter how strong or smart they could become, in their father’s eyes and in the mafia world, they would never be as strong or as smart as their sons.
Because of that, there seemed to be a woman code written into Maria’s DNA, and she was pretty sure the blonde wouldn’t hurt a woman for a million dollars. Therefore, she liked Maria, even if it was a little sexist that she liked her and not Lucca.
When they reached a bunch of little stores off to the sides of the mall that had the big designer names above them, they headed into one that consisted of nothing but white dresses.
A very beautiful man with killer bone structure greeted them before heading to Maria and giving her kisses on each cheek. “Maria, my love, I haven’t seen you in a while.”
“I know. I’ve missed you.” She grabbed his hand begging to introduce him to her entourage. “Ken, I need a dress for my friend Kat.”
Ken? Yep, that was exactly whom he looked like, straight from the Barbie dream house in his tux.
Ken looked at Dominic, eyeing him up and down like he was his next meal. “And who might this handsome man be?”
“This is her brother Dominic.” Maria smiled, probably a bit to happily, at what was happening.
“Nice to meet you, Dominic.” Ken winked before quickly looking at Kat. “And you are gorgeous. Spin for me, honey, let me take a look at you.”
Slowly, she spun for him, feeling a bit awkward as she did so.
“Maria, you take her to the dressing room to get her undressed while I go pull some dresses.” His eyes moved back to Dom. “And you, handsome, can go take a seat in the sitting area.”
“Thanks.” Dominic politely smiled at him as they went to do as ordered.
When they entered the dressing room area in the back, there was a huge, lavish velvet couch for them to sit on while she tried on the dresses.
“May I offer you some champagne?” a woman in a tight black dress offered, carrying in three glasses of it.
Dominic quickly took a glass, downing the contents in a second, clearly looking like he needed it before he graciously handed a glass to Maria and then taking the last one for himself. Clearly afraid of looking greedy, he started to explain himself. “She’s not old enough to drink.”
The woman looked a bit mortified, taking another glance at Kat since she was the one needing a dress.
“But not too young to get married,” he told her.
Gotta love America.
“Okay, now you go in here.” Maria opened the door to the dressing room with her champagne in hand. “And put that robe on, and Ken will be in here in a minute.”
“And how exactly do you know that… and Ken?” she asked, feeling like she was probably asking a dumb fucking question.
“Because I used to come in here all the time to try on dresses for fun,” Maria answered just as stupidly as she had thought.
“Right… okay.” Going into the dressing room, she quickly undressed out of her black clothes, placing them in the chair and throwing on the white robe like she was told.
God, what am I doing?!
She wasn’t in there long enough to regret her decision before Ken entered with a handful of dresses and had her in one in just a few minutes.
When she came back out of the dressing room, Maria’s eyes lit up as she stepped up onto a pedestal.
As she took that first look at herself in the mirror, Katarina felt… strange. The expensive white dress was stunning, but it didn’t feel like her. “Hmm.”
The light in Maria’s eyes dimmed when she didn’t seem to like it and became more critical of it herself.
Dominic gave it a hard stare, then shook his head. “I don’t like it.”
They went back into the dressing room to put on another gown and doing the whole thing over again only to come out to feel even less like herself when she looked at her reflection.
“No,” Dominic stated, taking another sip of champagne.
Ken’s mouth dropped open in apparent offense at how no one was taking a second look at the couture dresses he had pulled.
Not wanting to waste Ken’s time any longer, she wanted the fake fairytale to end. “The dress I have is fine, Maria.”
Seeing her distress, Maria stood, coming closer to her to talk. “What’s wrong?”
“They’re beautiful, but—” She halted, then looked back at herself in the mirror. “This just… isn’t me.”
“Go back in there and get this thing off,” Maria ordered her after it looked like a lightbulb had gone off in her head. “I’ll be right back.”
They went back into the room, where Ken helped her out of the dress, and when Maria entered, this time with a much different dress both Kat’s and Ken’s jaws dropped.
When she put the dress on and came out of the room, she didn’t even have to look in the mirror to know it was the one.
“It’s perfect,” the blonde whispered in awe.
Now, as she looked at her brother, Kat would have sworn she saw his eyes turn a bit glossy for just a moment right before he blinked it away. He was only able to manage one word. “Wow.”
Thirteen
A Mission to Get Every Man in Kansas City Murdered
Kat couldn’t have heard the price correctly as they stood at the register with the dress. “Excuse me, what?”
Maria dipped into her purse. “Don’t worry about it. It’s a gift from—”
“The Carusos,” a dark voice spoke behind them before he slid a black card onto the desk.
Oh no. “I really can’t accept—”
“It’s okay, Kat.” Dominic pulled her closer to him by throwing an arm over her shoulder. “It’s the least they could do.”
The next few minutes were unbearably awkward while the dress was being paid for and she was told to return in a week to pick it up after the alterations were finished.
It wasn’t until they left the bridal store that Lucca finally spoke his mind, and when he did, he didn’t raise his voice, instead speaking quietly, making it all the more frightening. “Maria, you have five seconds to tell me why you are here.”
She just flipped her hair, simply saying, “Kat needed a dress.”
“And where the fuck are my men?”
When she didn’t answer right away, it was Dom who spoke, “Kat asked me to drop her off here, and when I came, I saw Maria alone.” He lied trying to save the dumbass Caruso. This next part, however, wasn’t a lie, and he looked Lucca right in the eye to prove it. “Instead of getting her in trouble, I decided to watch her for you and was going to bring her back home safely when they were done.”
Maria nodded, adding to the lie when Lucca looked like he was about to kill Dominic. “I called Kat to meet me here, and then I just snuck out and took a cab here.”
After another second of staring her brother down, he changed his attention to Maria. Now it looked like he just wanted to kill her. “We’re leaving.”
“Yep, so are we.” Dominic pulled Kat with him, who was still under his arm at the opposite side of the Caruso siblings.
“Bye, Kat.” An unbothered Maria waved.
Looking back, she smirked at the brave girl. “Bye, thank you for everything.”
“You’re welcome.” Maria’s smiling eyes moved to the Luciano brother before he got too far. “Bye, Dominic.”
He, on the other hand, just kept walking, giving her his back, pretending he hadn’t heard her.
It wasn’t until then that Maria appeared to be very… bothered.
“That was rude,” she whispered to her brother.
“Don’t care.” Dominic slowed down a bit when they got farther from the Caruso si
blings. “That psycho is on a mission to get every man in Kansas City murdered today, and I’m sure as fuck not going to be one of them.”
Fourteen
RSVP
Fifteen
We Knew This Day Would Come
It was going to be a day no one thought would come.
The day when a Caruso would marry a Luciano.
The event of a lifetime.
And it was finally here.
“May I come in?”
Kat’s sorrow-filled eyes went to the door and saw Angel standing there. She managed a nod, and he came in, carefully sitting down beside her.
They were quietly watching the clock move closer and closer to seven. The air in the room felt almost as heavy as the weight on their shoulders.
Licking her dry lips, she tried to speak. “When I do this… there’s no going back for us, is there?”
His eyes didn’t move from the clock. “No, there isn’t.”
A shaky breath came out when her fears were confirmed. This marriage wasn’t just sealing her fate. It was sealing Angel’s too.
“As long as you’re a Caruso, I will be too.”
The tear that had been captured in her eye finally slipped free at his words. Regardless of what happened with Angel and the Caruso girl he loved, he could have finally walked free when Lucca let him go. Her marrying Drago, however, was going to take that away from him forever. He wasn’t going to leave her here in the hands of the Carusos without a Luciano on the inside to protect her. Him gaining Lucca’s trust more and more every day as well as being in love with a Caruso made him that inside man.
But as sad as she felt for Angel, there was someone her heart hurt just a little bit more for. “I don’t know how much longer he has....”
“You let me worry about Matthias.” Her brother grabbed her hand. “You just get married and save all our asses.”
Reminded of why she was about to do this, she wiped the tear and held in the rest that were threatening to ruin her makeup.
Giving her hand a final squeeze, he stood tall as he looked down on his little sister while she sat there in her beautiful wedding dress. “They can make us dress differently, act differently, and even change your last name, Katarina, but they can’t change where we were born, who our father is, or our blood.” There was a sudden sadness that veiled him. “Not even we can.”
Drago was looking into the mirror finishing tightening up his black tie when a different reflection appeared behind him. Turning, he looked at a very different-looking Dominic, man to man. This wasn’t the Luciano brother he had seen with his underboss; this was a man coming to protect what was his.
“You do anything to hurt her or be any fucking less than what Lucca has said about you,”—Dominic began making him promise—“you’ll have wished the boogieman had come for you when I fucking kill you.” Unafraid of who stood before him, he gave him a glimpse of who Dominic truly was…. “And this time, there will be no coming back, Drago, because unlike my father, I don’t fucking miss.”
That was the first time he really met Dominic Luciano, and his first taste of revenge.
“You ready?”
Seeing Dominic come into her waiting room, she stood and took a few deep breaths.
His fierce hazel eyes stared at her black ones. “I want you to know that even if it meant my death, I would not let you walk down this aisle if I didn’t know you could handle it.”
“I know,” she whispered strongly.
“We knew this day would come, Katarina.”…
…They had sat in Dominic’s Mustang eating doughnuts with the words “Happy Birthday” on them in pink frosting. Normal people celebrated their birthdays on the day they were born, but being one of the unlucky ones, she didn’t. She celebrated her birthday on the day she’d apparently showed up on the doorstep. It had been seventeen years since that day, and she was definitely eighteen by now.
There was no record of whoever she had been before she was placed on that porch. Only one thing was for sure, that Lucifer was her biological father. Dominic had made Katarina Luciano exist, and that was more than anyone else had done for her. She supposed it would bother someone to not know where they had come from, but the truth was, her mother was probably dead in a ditch somewhere, knowing her father, and to get him to tell her who she was wasn’t happening, and that was if he even knew. However, she had her brothers, and that was more than enough family for her.
Putting a half-eaten doughnut back in the box, Dominic looked over at her, his face etched into a serious expression. “Things are about to change, Kat. I feel it.”
She slowly swallowed the bite she had in her mouth, knowing their father was becoming more uncontrollable and irate by the day. “I feel it too.”
“There’s going to be a day when I won’t be able to protect you any longer, Katarina. You’re eighteen now, and I’m afraid there will be nothing I can do.” She could see his heavy heart getting heavier. “But you’ll be ready. It’s what we’ve been preparing for.”
Nodding her head, she knew his words to be true. It was almost like a timer had been started, and no matter how ready she would be, Kat just hoped the clock would never run out…
…“Yes, we did.” She smiled at the memory.
“You’re going to be the one to save us all, and I couldn’t be more fucking proud.” Dominic’s intense gaze still bore into hers while his voice matched the intensity. “They might not know what you’re capable of, but one day they will. They’ll know what we are all capable of.”
There wasn’t another man on this earth like him, who had been through what he had been through, had seen what he had seen. She was convinced there was no man stronger than Dominic. He was the Lucianos’ future, and he was going to even the score.
Smiling down at her, he had one final request that he had made once before. “Make him fuckin’ regret picking you, Kat…. Give. Him. Hell.”
“I plan on it.” She smiled back.
Kat had been the one to be saved by her brothers for years, but this time it was her turn to save them. Her turn to save the family and finally prove her father wrong.
There was a place in this family for women, and like her brother had said, I couldn’t be more fucking proud.
Putting her hand through Dominic’s arm, she picked up the small bouquet of dark red roses.
The clock had finally struck seven.
Sixteen
Until Death Do Us Part
Once the doors flung open, the Catholic church not only echoed with the organs that began to play but with the gasps. Both the Luciano and Caruso sides were shocked upon seeing the first glimpse of the bride. Even the priest was taken aback.
As she walked down the aisle, her heavy dress dragged behind her while her lacy veil trailed a foot behind. It was exactly how you pictured a Catholic wedding dress to be in all its grand glory, all except for one thing…. Her dress was as black as her eyes, and her veil was as dark as her past.
This was a statement, an almost protest. There wasn’t only a wedding about to take place, but a funeral. It was a final goodbye to the life she was leaving behind and to her last name.
Lastly, this dress was her. It made her pale skin glisten and her light pink tresses glow underneath the lace. Her dark eyeshadow only added to the effect, making her look like a regal gothic queen.
When they reached the end of the aisle, Dominic was forced to give his sister away with a final hug. Even though they were prepared, that moment was harder on both of them than they’d thought it would be. You could see when he looked down at her that he still pictured her as the baby who had shown up on the doorstep in the cat onesie, and she still pictured him as the big brother who would always be there to protect her. However, they were both no longer those things, and it was time to part.
Giving her to the man who had stood at the end of the aisle, he left and took a seat.
When her eyes landed on Drago for the first time since she had trashed his place,
she expected the man who held a bit of fury behind his eyes. Especially with her dress choice, she had expected to see the flames in his fiery eyes. That wasn’t what she got though. There was a real calm in them, and as he looked down upon her for the first time since she’d approached the altar, he seemed almost pleased.
Unlike the Carusos, religion wasn’t anything her family practiced, but being married in their faith was what made them happy. It made her wonder what they had told or done to the priest to get him to marry them. All Kat knew was that Catholic weddings were one hell of a long event, and everything seemed to blur until she heard the words….
“Dearly beloved, you have come together into the house of the Church, so that in the presence of the Church’s minister and community, your intention to enter into Marriage may be strengthened by the Lord with a sacred seal. Christ abundantly blesses the love that binds you. Through a special Sacrament, he enriches and strengthens those he has already consecrated by Holy Baptism, that they may be faithful to each other forever and assume all the responsibilities of married life. And so, in the presence of the Church, I ask you to state your intentions.
“Drago and Katarina, have you come here to enter into Marriage without coercion, freely and wholeheartedly?”
Together they said the words, “I have.”
“Are you prepared, as you follow the path of Marriage, to love and honor each other for as long as you both shall live?”
“I am,” they repeated together again.
“Are you prepared to accept children lovingly from God and to bring them up according to the law of Christ and his Church?”
Drago repeated, “I am,” for the final time, but Kat took a moment to think about those particular words from the priest before she finally had to say the words, “I am.”
Drago (Made Men Book 6) Page 6
