7. Pain is Pain

Dom

Leonie was prancing around her open-plan living room kitchen in those ridiculous pyjamas. Could you call them pyjamas? They were more like lingerie.

When she finally announced she was showering, I’d never been more grateful. I’d grab her the towel, help remove that dark silk I’d wanted to rip off her last night. I’d open the shower screen door for her if she needed any help. Just to get her out of my sight.

I tried to distract myself with my uncle’s texts. Anton was paranoid about some shipments coming into our port and tensions rising between a low-level gang with far too many drugs. They weren’t giving up any details, though.

I should be there. I’d get them to talk.

But the second the gushing water sounded from the bathroom, Issy put down her Nintendo Switch and turned to me on the sofa with an expectant stare. “Well?”

“Well, what?” I asked and sipped at my drink.

Leonie had it right with these smoothies. The honey really was the best secret ingredient. She’d gone on about it one weekend when I came home from university, but I hadn’t tried it until I made hers. I’d been missing out.

“Well, are you going to go and help her or what?”

Help her… help her shower?

“Excuse me?” I asked, trying to keep my tone low and bored, my gaze flickering towards the TV. The news. I’d tried to pick something Leonie might watch but couldn’t find a thriller this early in the day.

Issy groaned and moved from the armchair to the sofa beside me. “Go with her. To Jared’s. Please. I’ve got to go to the bakery.”

“Why would I do that?”

“You two could be friends,” she pleaded, leaning before me to get in the way of the TV screen. I turned to my phone instead. “You were once. There was a point I worried you two liked each other more than you liked me.”

There was a point where I adored Leonie. I would do anything for her. I probably still would if it wouldn’t make her like me. She had to continue to picture me as the teenage boy who fucked her over and hated her.

My feelings for her were like a lethal live-wire close to being exposed. The only fatality would be her if she got too close.

If she learned the truth.

I snorted. “Yeah, when you were like thirteen.”

“When you were like seventeen,” she countered. “You had cooler friends and still hung out with us.”

“I learned my lesson,” I said quickly and finished the smoothie.

If we hadn’t been friends, if I hadn’t loved her as I did… her life would be so different. She would be happy.

Issy held my gaze for so long that her big, hazel eyes had to dry out. A move she played on Dad all the time. It worked on him. “Go with her, please, Dom.”

“No,” I said, my voice brimming with grit. I couldn’t be alone with her. Not again. Not after last night. “I don’t want to see that fucker.”

“Please. She’s like a sister to you.”

She had never said anything more false. Leonie had never been like a sister to me. Sure, I wanted to protect her. I couldn’t let anything hurt her.

I scoffed. “She is not like a sister to me.”

“What else have you got to do?”

A lot. Anton was dangerous left alone, far too happy to pull the trigger and not deal with the consequences later, but…

“It’s not like you actually work at your security company anymore,” she added. “Chris does it all.”

Chris, my right-hand man, had practically taken over my private security company in the last year, as I’d become more involved in my father’s businesses. He’d really started to age lately.

I didn’t have the luxury of getting away from everything like Issy and Leonie.

Issy implored me, “Go on, she’s a little scared of him.”

Putting the glass down on the coffee table, I glared at her. She sat there, slightly hungover, calling herself Leonie’s best friend. Since they were born.

But Leonie Castillo, scared? The mafia princess who had killed one of her kidnappers without breaking a sweat, both wrists cable-tied together? The girl who had a better aim than some men I’d been in the military with? The girl who had stolen my heart even back before I knew I had one?

I couldn’t hold back the explosion. “Scared? Why would she be scared of him?”

“He’s… he’s quick to anger.” Issy stammered syllables before any more words came out, her eyes wider than before as she looked up at me, now standing over her. “God, don’t give me that look. He’s never actually hurt her—”

My fists were clenched so hard I might break a finger. Last night, when Leonie had told me he cheated on her, her eyes had been dull. They’d only brightened when I told her to move my hand from her neck. “He has.”

“Yes,” she said, lifting herself on her knees and reaching out for me with a hand. “But not physically—”

“Pain is pain,” I interrupted, voice tight, and stepped away from her touch. “You should have got her to leave him long ago.”

Issy shook her head. “No one gets Leonie to do anything.”

“Fine, but I can’t promise I won’t kill him.”

Not a lie. If he put one hand on her or manipulated her in any way, I would put my gun to good use.

“That’s fine,” Issy said and nodded enthusiastically at me. “In fact, that’s encouraged.”

I snorted as the shower turned off and Issy went back to her chair.

“I mean it,” she whispered. “You could.”

She was right, I could. I would if given half the chance.

Did he not think Leonie had been through enough? Next month was the anniversary of her father’s death and the hell hole that her life became afterwards. The least he deserved was the loss of a finger. Or his dick.

Leonie came out of the bathroom, holding the towel tight around her chest, so high up it showed far more of her legs than I had seen in some time. Apart from maybe an Instagram post the other week. Which I may or may not have zoomed in on. A few times.

“Dom’s offered to take you to grab your stuff from Jared,” Issy called after her as she darted for her room. Leonie stopped in her tracks.

“I don’t want to,” she said, slowly facing us. Her eye makeup was smudged from the shower.

I wanted to cause those smears. With pain, with pleasure, with sweat, with tears.

“Well, we’re going,” I said and gestured to her door, trying to keep my gaze above the towel. “Now go and get ready.”

“You can’t make me.”

I grinned. Bless her. “I think we already established that I can. We’re getting your shit and then you’re done with that prick.”

Issy was nodding enthusiastically, taking our plates to the sink. “Maybe it’s best you stay in the car, Dom.”

In the time I looked over my shoulder to agree with her, Leonie had escaped behind her bedroom door.