Captivated by the deadly mafia boss

Kasia

“You have a phone call, dear.” Margaret brings me the handheld while I sit beneath the willow with my kindle. It’s quickly become my favorite spot. Dominik had a new set of cushioned reclining lawn chairs with a table delivered and set up beneath the tree for me.

“Is it Dominik?” I ask as I take the receiver from her. I haven’t seen my husband since last night. When I woke this morning, it was to a chilled spot beside me in his bed.

“No, it’s Tammy,” Margaret says with confidence, like she knows her. Why would Tammy be calling on the house phone, how would she have even gotten the number? We haven’t spoken since we roomed together sophomore year.

“Oh.” I try not to sound surprised, but it’s not like Tammy and I were close friends.

I wait until Margaret’s back in the house before I put the phone to my ear.

“Tammy?”

“Hey, Kasia. One sec.” The phone shuffles.

“Kasia.”

My heart drops.

“Dad?”

“Your father. yes. You remember me, don’t you?” There’s a sharp bite to his tone. “I have to resort to tricking that housekeeper in order to get you on the phone? My own daughter? What has that asshole done?” There’s no concern, only irritation.

“I’m fine. He said you were going out of town.” If he’s with Tammy, he must still be in the city.

“Change of plans,” he says. “What have you found out?”

Does he know of the marriage?

“Dad, last night-”

“I heard. You married him. What have you found out?”

I’m not sure what I expected, or hoped he would say, but to brush it off as so inconsequential stings. I know who he is, I’ve felt his disapproval, but this stings still. No matter what, he’s my father. My only true family.

“Nothing,” I say quietly. Another disappointment. “He found me snooping.”

There’s a long silence.

“You found nothing?” His voice is like a boulder dropping from the mountain tops.

Doesn’t he want to know what Dominik did when he caught me?

“No, Dad. There wasn’t anything in his office, nothing on his computer. He probably doesn’t keep his business here at the house.”

“Then you need to find out what he’s doing some other way. Go with him when he goes into the city. See who he’s talking to.”

I dig my fingernails into my knee.

“Don’t you have… employees that do that sort of thing?” I ask, desperate to get away from this subject.

“I have a daughter that’s sleeping with the man!” I pull the phone slightly away from my ear when he yells. “You should be able to handle this! Be useful, Kasia.”

Be useful. How many times did he bark the same demand at me while I was growing up?

I lean my head back against the cushion of the chair and look up at the leaves blowing in the summer breeze above me. It’s hot today.

“Kasia.”

“I heard you,” I whisper. “He’s not going to tell me anything.” I close my eyes.

“Then make him talk. Make him tell you or show you. You’re a woman, spread those legs of yours and get the information I need.”

My nails go further into my skin, pinching, piercing.

“How did he get you to agree for me to take Diana’s place? What does he have over you? You’ve done something. You’re doing something that is going to get you into trouble. What is it, Dad?”

“Stay out of my business, Kasia and do what you’re told!”

Before I can respond, the phone is taken out of my hand. I open my eyes to find Dominik standing over me with it pushed against his ear.

“Hello?” he says, keeping his eyes fixated on me. His jaw is tight. With one hand in his pocket, he gives the appearance of being causal, but I’m learning him. He’s pissed.

“Don’t call this number again, old man,” he says without waiting for any response from the other side of the call. “You have my direct line; you call that if you need to talk with my wife. I’ll arrange something.” He doesn’t wait for an answer, just clicks the call off.

He looks at me then moves to the empty chair on the other side of the table and sits down. I stare straight ahead, waiting for the punishment to be announced. I spoke to my father when I said I wouldn’t.

“I didn’t know it was him when Margaret gave me the phone,” I say, fixing my attention on the rose garden.

“I know.”

“I couldn’t just hang up on him,” I continue, still not looking at him.

After a long silence he says, “I know.”

Relief floods me. At least he’s being reasonable.

“There are things about your father you don’t know, Kasia,” he speaks in a low volume, but he’s not angry. He’s being straight with me.

“I’m sure there are a lot of things about you that I don’t know, that I don’t want to know.” I recall the night he took me. The woman he had kidnapped in order to make someone pay a debt.

“I’m not a good man. I won’t say I am, but your father… there are things that I won’t do that he has no trouble doing.”

I blink and look past the roses, off into the distance where the brick wall surrounds the estate. Where men walk along the wall while we’re out here, protecting us from the even worse men that are on the other side of it.

“Whatever the problem you have with my father is, it’s your problem. You two can fight like children all you want. Just leave me out of it.” I push out of my chair and start to walk back to the house.

He snatches my hand and yanks me into his lap. My chin is captured by his massive hand and he pulls me to him for a long, deep, passionate kiss that leaves my mind swirling. When he breaks it off, he rubs the tip of his nose over my chin.

“Why can’t I leave you alone?” he whispers, but I don’t think I’m meant to hear it. “I’m going to ask you a question, Kasia, and you have to be honest with me. If you lie, if you bend the truth or try to hide from me, you’ll be very, very sorry.” Any tenderness he may have had a moment ago is gone, replaced with firm demand.

“What do you want now, Dominik?” I ask. Everyone has questions for me, everyone wants answers I don’t have.

Be useful.

“Why do you think the accident wasn’t an accident?” He doesn’t need to be more specific. I know what he’s talking about, and a wave of nausea hits me. He knows.

Of course, he does.

“You don’t want to stuff your fingers in me first? Make me come for you again out here before I answer you?”

“No. You’ll answer me first. I’m not playing games, Kasia.” He grabs hold of my hand, pushing it off my leg and exposing the crescent-shaped cuts in my leg. “While you were talking to your father?” he asks, completely ignoring what I’ve said to him.

“I’m going inside.”

“No.” He holds me in his lap. “You’re going to answer my questions and without all the attitude.”

I blow out a breath.

“Kasia, you’re my wife now. We can make this easy between us or we can make it difficult.” He touches my leg again.

“How is anything between us easy?” The only part of us that actually works without hostility is when he’s making my body crave him. Sex. We’re good at sex.

“Let’s start at the beginning.” He traces the little marks again. “First, did you do this when you were talking to your father?”

I sigh. “Yes.”

He drags his eyes up to mine, there’s concern there. “No more, Kasia. If he gets you on the phone, you hang up on him. Promise me.”

Promises and commands, it’s all everyone throws at me.

“Fine.”

“Look what he makes you do to yourself,” he says, tapping the little cuts. There’s a trace of blood in one of them. It will bruise, I’m sure.

“He didn’t-” I cut myself off. “What else did you want, Dominik?”

“I want you to tell me about the accident. Why do you think there’s more to it?”

Can I trust him with this? Or will he tell me to drop it like my father had when I brought my thoughts to him.

His grip intensifies on my wrist. I’m not going anywhere until I give him what he wants.

“It just didn’t seem right. The car that hit them didn’t even slow down.”

“Okay?” He pushes, letting go of my wrist. “He was high, Kasia. That makes sense.”

“It’s not just that, they’d seen him following them. It was like he was tailing them, driving ahead of them to get in front and then he’d come out of an alley and be behind them again. Like he was trying to find a way to get to them. It’s not right. And no one was arrested. Not even a traffic violation.”

“The driver of the other car died too,” he points out.

“The drivers of the other cars on the street didn’t even stick around to give a statement. They just left.”

He narrows his eyes. “Then how do you know they were being followed by this car?”

I lower my gaze, take a shaky breath.

“I was on the phone with Diana.”

“During the accident?”

I flick away a tear from the corner of my eye. “She was complaining about the traffic and about the weird guy following them. Mom told her to just calm down, it was just traffic. That the guy was probably just lost.”

He holds my hands, and for a moment I can feel the strength seeping from him into me.

“You heard everything?” His voice dips, like he’s afraid I’ll run if he talks too loudly.

I swallow. “I heard my sister scream and my mom yell. I heard the crunch…” I blink a few times and suck in air. “I heard my mom…”

“What did she say?” he asks, brushing my hair from my face. “Kasia, what did you hear her say?”

“She said she was sorry.” I finally turn my gaze to him. “What would she be sorry for?”

“Did you tell your dad this?”

“No,” I shook my head. “Not that part. He was… upset about everything. He’d told me to pick her up. It should have been me, and then it wouldn’t have happened. I would have been on time; we wouldn’t have been there at that time.” The same guilt runs on a loop, tearing apart my insides.

“Your dad didn’t want to look into it, so you went and hired this DeGrazio guy.” He fills in the rest for me.

“You looked through my phone and my computer, didn’t you?” I ask, straightening my spine. “Of course, you did. You know, you don’t like my father, but you two aren’t that different.”

He raises his brows. “We can talk about that later if you want, but right now, I want an answer to something else.”

He’s a man on a mission and won’t be derailed.

“What?” I’m tired of all the inquiries.

“How are you paying him?”

“When my grandmother died, she left a fund for me and Diana. When I was eighteen it rolled into my control and my dad couldn’t touch it. I’ve been using that.” And it’s almost gone now. “You didn’t tell him to stop looking, did you?”

“He doesn’t need to be involved. I have men much better than that washed-up piece of shit.”

I pull back from him to take in his expression. He’s serious. He’s not playing with me.

“You’d have your men look into this for me?”

He cups the side of my face. “You’re my wife, Kasia. If it’s important to you, it’s important to me. But I don’t want you to ever go behind my back, do you understand? Never on your own, you don’t have to do that anymore.”

I doubt he understands the weight of his words. How easily he can crush me with a few syllables.

“You talked to him.”

“I did.” He surprises me with the truth. It shouldn’t. As far as I know, he’s never lied to me.

“He found something but hasn’t told me, is that it?” I’ve suspected DeGrazio wasn’t giving me information he had, but all I could do was keep pushing. Seeing the truth on Dominik’s face, I realize what a pathetic fool I’ve been.

“I know everything he knows, and now my men will take it from here. But Kasia, you have to swear to me no more playing detective. No paying anyone else to do it, and no talking with your father until we figure this all out.”

“You can’t think he had anything to do with it.”

He pauses a moment. “I don’t know.”

“So, I just sit here while you go off every day.” As much as I love reading in this gorgeous yard, there’s more for me out there.

“If that’s what you want, then yes. Or you can start looking for a teaching job.”

I blink. I couldn’t have heard him right. Dad never let Mom even think of working. He’d only let me get my degree to dangle the carrot of some sense of freedom. I don’t think he ever intended to let me have a life free of him. The more control he has the more he can punish me for ruining everything for him.

“How would that work? You won’t even let me go shopping without two of your men trailing around me.”

He nods. “That’s true. But we’ll figure something out.”

I’m not sure who this man is sitting with me beneath the tree. Where’s his steely demeanor? It’s unsettling.

“Speaking of shopping. Did you get anything else besides that funeral dress for the wedding when you were out with Margaret?”

The wedding dress was petty, I can admit that.

“No, just that.”

He pats my knee. “Then you’ll have to wear something in your closet.” He gently moves me off his lap and stands with me. He picks up my discarded kindle and takes my hand.

“You want me to wear a dress? Why?”

“We’re going out.”

It’s the only answer he gives me.

And once again, I find myself obeying him.