“I don’t appreciate threats,” he sneered.
“This isn’t a threat. This is a promise. Remember that the only reason you still have a job in this industry is because Mom and I kept our mouths shut about your pathological inability to understand consent. And I’m getting very tired of keeping secrets.”
“Everyone has indiscretions. Look at you fucking a secretary. You can’t escape your blood, boy.”
An icy rage squeezed at my chest. I wanted to physically hurt him. To make him feel just a degree of the pain he’d caused others.
“Indiscretions? Try assaults,” I spat out. “We paid your victims for the suffering you caused. And if you think you’re getting another dime from Mom, I will personally see to it that every single one of your victims files criminal charges and civil suits against you. I won’t rest until the world knows that you are nothing but a disgusting piece of trash.”
“Don’t be so naive, Dominic,” he snarled. “They aren’t innocent victims in all of this. Women are attracted to power, to what you can provide for them. What has that girl in there gotten out of you? A few pretty baubles? Some couture in her closet? Did she make it look like it was your idea? Wake up, son. We’re all just using each other.”
“Stay away from us,” I said again, not wanting his words to penetrate my brain, but they were already burrowing in and releasing their poison. “I’m not protecting you anymore. I’ll burn down the family name if I have to.”
“You’d better rethink that strategy, my boy. I can do quite a bit of damage to your mother. You think I was the only one who strayed? That I was the only one with predilections?”
I was shaking my head. “I don’t believe a word that comes out of your lying mouth.”
He leaned in, and I could smell scotch on his breath. Because of course he’d already started indulging. Paul Russo didn’t know how not to. “Your mother, those girls, that secretary in there? They’re the liars, and you’re just the fool who fell for the lies.”
I did what I’d wanted to for so long. I hauled back and hit the man squarely in the face. His nose made a crunching noise that wasn’t nearly as satisfying as I’d hoped.
“You’re the damn liar,” I said, standing over him wishing I could keep hitting him until he felt a shred of the pain he’d inflicted.
“Is there a problem here?” A doorman hustled over from his post and helped my father to his feet, shooting me wary looks.
“Not anymore,” I said.
My father took a step toward me, holding a linen handkerchief under his bleeding nose.
“Believe this, Dominic. If you don’t get me what I want, I’ll be forced to remind you just how important I still am to you and your mother.”
“Try it, old man,” I said, daring him.
The doorman was debating whether or not to get in between us. Passersby were giving us a wide berth. That was the thing about normal people. They could sense evil. And between my father and me, there was a vortex of it swirling.
“You’ve made your bed,” he said. “I gave you a chance. Next time your father asks for something, you’ll remember this.”
“You were never a father to me.”
“What a coincidence. You were always a disappointment to me.”
He strode away, coat billowing in the wind, looking like the villain he was.
I was so angry I was shaking.
“Dom?”
Ally. How much had she seen? How much of him had she seen in me?
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I insisted, refusing to look at her. I didn’t want her anywhere near this. Anywhere near the feelings that my father brought out in me. I didn’t want to taint her.
She reached for my hand and squeezed it. But I pulled out of her grasp.
“Dominic, listen to me. You’re nothing like him,” she said quietly.
“I said I don’t want to discuss it,” I snapped, blindly looking over her head. I couldn’t look her in the eye. She’d seen us side by side. There was no way to deny the similarities.
“Let’s go back inside,” she said.
I followed her, careful not to touch her. And when we sat, I ordered a drink. A double.
If it was good enough for him, it was good enough for me.
64
Ally
I decided to give Dominic some space that night. Sometimes time and space were the only things that could heal the hurt. So I used my time in my second favorite way. I ran my dance class through a challenging routine that left them all sweaty and gasping by the end. But we’d rocked it, and everyone, myself included, left grinning.
It was the last class of the night, and rather than hurrying home to Dominic as had become my habit, I cued up a new playlist.
The song started. And I let my hips and shoulders find the driving beat.
Dancing helped me physically move through the things that were bothering me. Like the fact that Dominic felt comfortable sweeping into my life and solving all my problems for me but wouldn’t or couldn’t share his own problems.
Yeah, okay. So there was the typical “I don’t want to talk about it” guy thing that seemed to come encoded in the Y chromosome. But his vault preset was something different. His “I don’t want to talk about it” came with a side of “I don’t trust you.”
I was hurt.
More importantly, I was worried.
I knew as well as anyone what scars parents could leave on children. But I also wasn’t in the position to start a conversation about the future. Not yet.
Spinning around, I kicked high to the right. I danced and moved and crawled my way through the song and then another and another until my shirt was soaked in sweat and my muscles sang.
I kept going until I felt loose and strong. Until I felt happy again.
I took that happy home with me. The door to Dominic’s office on the second floor was closed, so I headed up to the bedroom and showered. Brownie was nowhere to be found, which meant he was probably staring lovingly at his grumpy dad.
The door was still closed when I came down in my robe. So I warmed up some dinner and ate alone in the kitchen. I gave it another ten minutes before I couldn’t take it anymore.
I knocked and then opened the door on his terse, “Yeah?”
He looked troubled. Brownie was sprawled at his feet, eyes mournful.
“Dom?” I paused in the doorway.
He looked up, and I saw the brightening in his eyes.
He patted his desk, and I crossed the room to him. I stepped between his open legs, and he dropped his forehead to my stomach, his fingers toying with the belt of my robe.
The knuckles on his right hand were split and bruised. But I knew it was his heart that had taken the most damage.
“Can I do anything for you?” I asked softly.
He looked up at me. His eyes and that shadow of a smile were sad. “Yeah.”
“Tell me.”
He gripped my hips and lifted me onto his desk. “You can ask me for something.”
“Anything in particular?”
“I want you to ask me for something only I can give you. Something you need. I want you to need me.”
If I’d had a shot at Paul Russo, I wouldn’t stop until his face looked like ground beef. Then I’d wax his entire head, toss a stick of dynamite down his pants, and kick him off a pier into shark-infested waters.