Dating the Don (Savage Crime Lords #1)

Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

MAEVE

W hen was the last time I was in Cristiano's bedroom? I can't recall. I remember being much younger and watching Ada sneak in and out of this room like it was nothing. Thinking back, I never went with her. I had a sneaking suspicion that he might be hiding secrets here. Now that I'm older and looking around the room, it seems silly. Maybe it was just that I always associated a certain amount of authority with him since he was older than me and a boy.

The bedroom is sparsely decorated. It feels like it cannot actually be his room.

The few times I walked past, I clearly remember seeing sports and boxing trophies up on a shelf. The main feature of the room is now a big bed with luxurious beddingin a deep green color that almost looks black. There is artabove the headboard, but it seems abstract and colorless to me. A dresser with a box full of watches resting on top, each in a glass-hinged cubby with a velvet-lined interior. A bottle of cologne that I refuse to smell.

As tempting as it is to rifle through his drawers, I refrain.

The closet is the same, unassuming and almost plain-looking. A black leather couch rests against one of the walls, and there is a bare small table in front of it. If I’m being perfectly honest, it doesn’t even look like he spends any time in here at all. This is not a room meant for relaxation. This is a rest stop for sleep and it looks like very little else.

Cold.

Not a word that I would have ever associated with Cristiano before today.

The minutes pass slowly. I explore the ensuite bathroom and the lack of trinkets in there.

It could be a hotel room.

There has to be some sort of secret for me to find in here. There’s got to be a reason that only the housekeeper is allowed access.

My search is over in the first five minutes. Nothing.

I make a futile attempt to count the seconds if only to contain my seething anger. I get distracted and immediately think of what the man in the basement said. Right before Cristiano killed him. Killed him! The man I've basically grown up next to...A murderer.

It’s too much.

It’s like my world is being forcibly expanded far too quickly and I can’t keep up. My worldview is ripping at the seams and fraying apart.

I cling to the knowledge that the now-dead man knew my mother.

I sink awkwardly onto the foot of Cristiano’s bed.

I untie my apron and hold it carefully in my hands. It’s still covered in blood. Even the embroidered initials have red flecks on them. I have no idea how I’m going to get it out of the fine thread. My thumbs brush over the stitching reverently. It… it’s ruined. There’s some stranger’s blood all over it.

Tears well in my eyes, blurring my vision before I can properly blink them back. I’ll never be able to get this piece of her back. But I can’t waste my time crying right now. I wish my mother was here. She always knew what to do. No matter the situation. Even now that I’m all grown up, I still wish she was here to help me.

I’ve always loved the Dominio family. There’s no denying how good they have been to me. Ada, Cristano’s younger sister, is my best friend in the whole world. With that, has come some understanding that her family’s life and business are not my business. I have no idea what they do to make their riches. I have always known that it’s illegal, I just didn’t think murder was the order of the day.

Ada has to know.

Everybody has been keeping this from me. Am I a fool? Too naive? Have I been so single-mindedly focused on my dreams for my future that I was blind to everything else?

I summon the image of Cristiano in my mind. The sweet-faced boy next door type who has always been just a few too many degrees hot to be considered brotherly. Annoying, yes. Platonic? Sort of. Then, beside it, swims the vision of him with a feral rage on his face and his olive skin flecked with blood. He enjoyed killing that man. I saw it.

I cannot put the two images together.

They are two wholly different people.

The question that I have to answer is: which one is the real him?

Cristiano has always been protective of me and Ada. His number one priority has always been his family. He’s never once allowed anyone to speak badly of his sister or anyone in his family. I’ve seen him start and win plenty of fights as a result of somebody getting smart with him. But I thought it ended there. Protective, sometimes intriguing… but a murderer?

I don’t think it disturbs me half as much as it probably should.

The Dominio family has just done too much for me. I was only sixteen when my mother died. It was ruled a suicide by the police, although I never believed it. My mother would never have done that to herself. Even more than that, she would never have chosen to leave me alone in this world. She was my best friend, my guiding light. My everything. She would never kill herself. And she never touched drugs in her life. She absolutely didn’t smoke. Even drinking a glass of wine with dinner was a rarity. Overdose? Impossible. The woman used to cry during Disney movies for hell’s sake.

The Dominio family are the only ones who believe me. They offered me a place to live. Mrs. Dominio, Annalisa, even officially became my guardian so that I wouldn’t be turned over to the state and put into foster care.

They gave me a job and security. I owe them everything. Absolutely everything. I’ve spent the last few years working for them and saving up everything I possibly can so that I can repay them one day for all they have given me and stop living off of their generous charity.

Without the Dominio family, fashion school never would have been an option for me.

I cradle my mom’s apron to my chest and head towardsthe bathroom. I can’t even find hydrogen peroxideto get the blood out. I have to use what I have and give it my all. I'm barely aware of the tears streaming down my face as I scrub. I can't stop moving even though I feel like there's a leaden weight beginning to settle in my limbs.

Cristiano had a knife to that man’s eye. His eye! What was he going to do? How much worse could things have become before I plummeted down those stairs, and why in the first place, did he feel the need to torment that man? I need mand answers. And I need a shower. My clothes are stuckto my body from the dried blood and it is starting to itch.

I have no idea how long he’s going to keep me locked away in here. The least that he can do is to let me shower. But what if he walks in while I’m naked?

I freeze.

Heat thuds through every part of my body as my face flames nearly as red as my hair.

Absolutely not. That’s not something I can handle today.

A moment later, the bedroom door opens and shuts as if my lustful thoughts had summoned him. I’m standing in front of his sink with a soaked, possibly ruined apron, my face flushed with shame as if he could somehow understand my thoughts, and there he is. Looking significantlybloodier than he did an hour ago.

He looks at me for a considerable amount of time, perhaps unsure of where to begin. With all of the questions that are racing through my head at a hundred miles per hour, I guess I have no idea where to start either. We’re at a standstill. It's too much for me. I lose it. I tighten my hold on the apron as pink-tinted water sluices down my hands and forearms.

“Say something!” My eyes scrunch shut as I shout at him.

I probably shouldn’t do that. Raising one’s voice in the presence of a murderer is probably not a smart choice. But he’s Cristiano. My Cristiano. He would never hurt me… would he?

“You shouldn’t have been down in the basement,” he says flatly.

“You shouldn’t be a cold-blooded killer, but here we are!” I can’t seem to reign in my tone. My voice sounds high-pitched and frantic, even to my own ears.

“Is that what you think that I am now?” Cristiano asks.

I can’t read his tone. Is that remorse? Worry? Detachment? His face is more blank than I’ve ever seen it.

“Was he… that man… did he mean my mother… he said… and you killed him… he was…”

“In the Irish Mob. Yes.” Cristiano leans against the doorframe, his hands placed neutrally in his pockets as he waits for my next words.

“Oh. The mob. Of course!” I throw my hands up, flicking water everywhere. “So my mother was involved with the Irish mob? Oh, why didn’t you just say so!” I hurl my sardonic words at him bitterly. If they bother him, he doesn’t show it. I knew that my mom was Irish. Every time that I look in the mirror I’m reminded just how very Irish I am myself. Freckles galore and the carrot red hair. My mother didn’t have a mob-ish bone in her body! She never would have gotten involved in anything violent!

Just worked for a violent family my whole life…

And an Irish mobster knew her by her name…

“You should sit down. Drink some water.” Cristiano says in a firm voice.

I almost move to obey him for the tone he’s using alone and catch myself at the last minute. “What? No! I’m going to go get some air.” I wobble away from the sink and head for the bedroom door. Cristiano makes no move to stop me, but he does speak.

“I’m afraid I cannot let you do that.”

“You’re really going to try to keep me here as a prisoner?!” I demand.

He doesn’t answer, but the look on his face is clear enough. I’ve seen too much.

“You’re not keeping me here. I’m going to walk out of that door and I’m going straight to the police, you fucking psychopath! Who are you?!” I hurl words at him in anger that will probably have sizzled five minutes from now but I can’t stop. “I’m going to tell them everything! I’m going to… I’m…”

The tears are welling in my eyes again. Traitorous saline bastards.

“They are going to find everything down there! The body! Oh god, what did you do with the body?!” I am yelling and I don’t even mean to be.

Cristiano pushes off of the door and crosses the room to me. I can’t take my eyes off of him. Every movement he makes is predatory. A lion circling a trapped gazelle. The intensity in his gaze is overwhelming.

“Maeve…” He starts as his hand lifts to cup my elbow.

I wrench out of his grip, flinching. “Don’t touch me!”

For a moment I could have sworn that pain flashed across his face. Just the span of a blink and then it is gone. Just like that. I back further into the bathroom snatching my mother’s apron from the sink and sloshing water all over the polished tile floors but even that doesn’t stop him from coming closer with that damned look on his face.

So, I do the only thing that I can think of to make him stop: I slap him with it. The wet, bloodied apron.