She knew who I was now. What I was capable of. And she didn’t cringe away from me. She didn’t fear me. It was the opposite. She clung to me. We clung to each other as if for life. As if for breath. As if without the other, it would no longer be possible to breathe, to live, to be.

22

Gia

The following morning, I woke alone in Dominic’s bed. The sight of his uncle kneeling before him, cowering, begging, pleading for his life as Dominic coolly cocked and fired the gun, haunted me. I thought about Mateo. About how he’d died. Dominic wanted me in that room yesterday. He wanted me to see one of the men responsible for Mateo’s murder on his knees, being brought to a different kind of justice—mafia justice—paying back what he owed: a life for a life.

I didn’t feel sorry for his uncle. He deserved what he got, and not only for Mateo, but for all the rest. Dominic had told me the story, the whole story, after we’d made love last night. He told me what the old man, Henderson, had told him. Told me about the reading of the will, of the provision his father had made to have each of the families renew their pledge of allegiance to Dominic as head of the family. He told me of his uncle’s betrayal. Told how his father—and Dominic now called Franco Benedetti father—sealed Roman’s fate and had left it for his sons to mete out justice. And he told me why he wanted me in that room. Not only for Mateo, not only for me to see that Mateo’s death would be avenged, but to see him. To see Dominic step so naturally, so easily, into this new role as head of a bloody family.

Dominic Benedetti now owned the Benedettis.

I touched the scar on my hip.

I guess it fit. He owned me too. Would he let me go once this was over? What we’d discussed that day in the dining room, that day I’d learned the truth of the brand, the truth of who he was, the day he’d fucked me in that bloodsoaked room when I’d been out of my mind. When he’d been out of his. The day he’d promised me he’d make sure my brother was avenged, and I’d promised him I’d kill him once it was over.

But it all had changed now. His father had left him everything in his final act of contrition. Dominic got what he had always wanted.

I wouldn’t have been able to keep my promise and kill him anyway, but now I even wondered if he wanted me to.

Everything was different now.

Throwing the covers back, I got out of bed and went to the bathroom to have a shower.