I was never one of them. I didn’t even come close to looking like my brothers or the man I’d believed to be my father for twenty-eight years of my life. Blind and stupid. Hell, I didn’t even look like my mother except for the eyes. The color at least. The look inside them was all my father: Jake the Snake Sapienti. I was Dominic Sapienti, and I looked like my loser father. How in hell could my mother have fallen for him? I mean, once she’d gotten to know him? On the outside, I could see it. But the inside? Black as Satan’s soul.

He’d aptly earned his nickname. He slithered from one loyalty to the next. Wherever the payout was, there he was. No friends to speak of, but too many enemies to count. A killer. Ruthless. Hateful. He did the work no one else would do. The jobs that no one wanted to take. Crimes that made even me cringe.

I’d learned from Roman that Franco would have killed him when he found out about me. About his wife’s affair. She’d begged him not to, she said she loved him. And Franco loved her too much to hurt the man she loved.

Well, wasn’t he the fucking romantic. A regular Romeo.

I turned my thoughts to Gia.

To her face.

Her eyes.

Her fear.

I gripped my cock and began to pump, leaning one hand against the wall while water sprayed my head and shoulders. I fucked my hand at the image of her bent over the bed. The sound of her exhalations, her grunts and screams, her drugged attempts to get out of the way of the belt. I thrust harder into my fist at the memory of her bare ass bouncing with each stroke, the welts turning a deep red. I imagined the heat of her ass if I were to spread her open and plunge into her warm pussy. I wondered if she’d be wet. If she’d be ready for me.

The thought made my cock throb. Some girls got off on it. Not the way I’d done it just now, maybe, but for some of the girls, there was something about getting their ass whipped. It made them wet. And even though I didn’t rape them, I made them come after punishing them. It was a power play. That was all. I owned them—owned their pain and their pleasure.

I imagined Gia coming. Imagined kneeling behind her and spreading her open, feasting on her pussy—fuck—as she’d beg for me to stop. I threw my head back, water prickling like needles against my face as I blew.