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Crushing the paper bag to my chest, I wait for the last door to slide open, and I gain my freedom again. For the past six months, Palermo Detention Centre has been my life. I screwed up, lost my temper, had another hissy fit, and broke a girl’s nose. It was my last straw. The law decided I was a problem that needed to be confined.
After Santo Cardarelli bought me four years ago, I ran away. I lived on the streets for a few months, stole to survive. When I tried to steal the wrong man’s car, it turns out it was Santo’s.
He wasn’t mad. Didn’t turn me into the police. I waited months for the punishment after that, but it never came. When I finally relaxed enough to listen when he spoke to me, I realized he wasn’t a terrible person. He was pleasant, kind of funny, and intense. I never understood what he did for a living, but I knew other men feared him.
The girl I hit? It was because she made a reference of the disgusting kind about Santo and me. I couldn’t let that go. She deserved so much more than what I gave her, but I’m the one who was punished.
I promised Santo that after this—I stare at the cold, grey walls of my prison—I was done being some badass. I don’t have anything to prove to anyone, and I need to start living for myself. His words, not mine. But I want to make him proud.
Santo is the father I never got to have. He’s treated me like the daughter he was never blessed with, and it took me a long time to realize that. I know that he’s leaving to get his wife from the States soon, but I don’t remember when exactly, and frankly, I’m nervous about meeting Evelina. She’s the nicest woman I’ve ever spoken to in my life, and I’m terrified she’ll see in me what everyone but Santo does.
Trouble.
It’s what I’m always called. What everyone predicts, and I don’t help myself very much by proving them right.
The door opens, and the light from outside filters in. The first thing to hit me is the smell of rain and a clap of thunder. I both weep with joy and jump from fright. The worst night of my life happened during one of the most horrifying thunderstorms I’ve ever experienced. I’ll have nightmares tonight, I’m sure, and I’m already dreading it.
Stepping through the exit, I hold the bag over my head and search the parking lot for Santo, but I don’t see him. Only a sleek white SUV and a man standing beside it with an umbrella covering his head. Panicked, I turn back around to run inside, but the door is already closed.
He wouldn’t have forgotten me. He never does. No matter how many times I expect him to, Santo has not once ever forgotten about me. A new thread of fear takes over my heart. What if something happened to him? What if he’s hurt? What if he didn’t mean what he said, and because I’m eighteen now, I’m no longer the kind of trouble he wants?
Soaked to the bone and shivering, I jump as another clap of thunder rumbles the ground under my feet. I can’t stay here, and as I look around again, just in case I missed something, my eyes stray to the stranger.
Seeing a bus stop beyond him, I begin a slow trek forward, hating every step I take, which only makes me walk slower.
“Nicola!” I hear my name, and foolish hope has me spinning in a circle, searching for the source, stopping as the stranger waves me over. I look again, to be sure.
Slowly striding towards the man, I’m hesitant to get too close. “Nicola?” I nod. “Santo sent me to pick you up.”
“W–wh–who are yo–u?” My teeth won’t stop chattering. The man reaches forward to cover me with the umbrella as he removes his jacket with one hand.
“Domino, I’m Santo’s son. He sends his apologies, but he’s gone to get my mother.” Heaviness assaults my chest. I don’t know why. Of course, she’s more important. He’s shared some things about his family, and being separated for so long has been hard on them all.
“Sh–show me.” His head cocks to the side, and an amused smirk creases his face before he places his coat around my shoulders and lifts the front of his t-shirt.
There on his chest, covering his heart, is the tattoo Santo told me that all the men in his family wear. Some kind of bird that represents their loyalty to the Cardarelli name and Sicily.
“We good now?” I nod my head, but I’m so cold I can hardly move. My fingers ache, my jaw feels like ice, and I think my feet are too numb to move. Sensing my hesitation, he scoops me up in his arms and frowns. “You’re small,” he mutters. “Too small.”
As he walks around the front of the vehicle, I don’t know what to say, so I keep my mouth shut as he opens the door and places me in the passenger seat. After buckling my belt, he closes the umbrella and tosses it in the backseat.
Sliding behind the wheel, Domino plays with the buttons on the panel between us, and heat blasts the vehicle as my teeth continue to chatter, and my body can’t stop shaking.
“Better?” he asks, looking down at me, and I’m stunned at how beautiful he is. It almost hurts to look at him. With his masculine jaw, slightly crooked nose, deep-set yet soulful blue eyes, and the beard growth on his face, I’m awestruck. “Nicola?” I love the gravelly tone to his voice too. Especially when he says my name. Closing my eyes, I forget that he asked me a question as I rest my head on the seat and curl my legs up, trying to use his jacket for warmth as the heat blasts me.
I can hear Domino cursing as the vehicle begins to move, but I just don’t have the energy to open my eyes. I hadn’t realized I was so tired until the heat hit me. If only my body would stop shaking, I could relax. It’s been so long since I’ve literally had any rest.
“We’ll be at the house in a few minutes,” he says, and I think I nod my head, but I’m not sure.
It isn’t until I’m in his arms again and he’s carrying me somewhere inside and up a set of stairs that I open my eyes again. I know this house; we lived here for a few months before I was arrested, so I’m familiar with the layout, and when Domino takes a right at the top of the stairs instead of left in the direction of my room, I want to protest, but I’m just too exhausted.
The sound of a door opening registers, and when I’m placed on a soft bed, I want to lay down, but Domino won’t allow me to. “Sit up so I can take your clothes off.”
Doing as he asks, I feel like I’m in a trance. His fingers are soft as they remove my shoes first, and then my shirt and bra. Laying me on the warm sheets, he goes for my pants and panties next. Completely nude before him, I watch his eyes, and they never leave mine. Not when I curl into a ball or when he places the blanket over my body and bunches it up around me.
“You’re a good man, Domino,” I murmur into my comfy cocoon, where my body finally eases up and stops shaking.
* * *
