Chapter 29

CHAPTERTWENTY-NINE

SOME TIME LATER, Dom was sitting on the small stretch of beach at the edge of their property. It had taken a while for him to cool off, and luckily his father and Luca had steered well clear and given him some space.

It wasn’t like him to react so defensively to his father, especially about something that had been set in stone for years. Dom knew what was coming, and bucking against it would only drag things out before the inevitable happened.

Finding a woman to play the part and make a family with would be easy. Power and money were irresistible, so it would come down to finding someone they could trust.

Even just thinking about what was coming was hard to stomach. God, when had things changed? He’d been resolute in his path, in whom his father needed him to be…

But then he’d met Luca. Steadfast, passionate Luca, who was proving time and again that he wouldn’t back down from a challenge. He’d thought nothing of confronting Vincenzo earlier, and God knew how that went.

Luca was someone he’d been so determined to hate, but Dom couldn’t find it in himself to do it anymore. How could he? Luca had denied his birthright many times over, wanting nothing but the normal, untroubled life he’d been leading prior to meeting Dom. But after all this, how could he go back?

“Mind if I join you, or are you still brooding?”

Dom looked up at Luca and shook his head. “You’re fucking out of your mind, you know that?”

Luca clearly took that as an invitation, because he dropped down onto the sand beside Dom. “That’s kind of the pot calling the kettle black, but okay. About what exactly this time?”

“You shouldn’t have done that. Talked to my father.”

“Oh. Does that mean you were listening?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know it didn’t go well?”

Dom raised a brow. “Did it?”

“Yeah, we’re playing backgammon and shooting the shit right now, can’t you see?”

“Jesus. You never know when to shut up, do you?”

“Funny, your father basically said the same thing. You two are starting to give me a complex.”

Dom groaned, wondering how big of a mess he’d need to clean up now.

Luca leaned in and nudged him in the ribs. “Hey. It’s gonna be fine. Maybe I gave your old man something to think about, you know?”

Dom shook his head. “Still. You shouldn’t have done that.”

“Why not? You should get a say in your life. Until we got here, I’d never seen you really smile or laugh. Why should you have to be miserable because of some stupid, outdated rule?”

“Because it’s just that—a rule. You’re not a part of this life, Luca. You don’t understand.”

“I understand enough to know your father could change things, but he’s too stubborn to do it. Gee, I wondered where you got it from…”

“God, you’re a mouthy shit,” Dom said, but there was no malice behind his words. He was actually a little impressed that Luca had gone to bat for him, but it raised the question…why? He’d done nothing to deserve it. After what he’d put Luca through when they met, Dom deserved to live out his life with someone he didn’t give a damn about.

He grabbed a handful of sand, letting it sift between his fingers. Like an hourglass, his time with Luca was running out, and in its place, the future he’d been dreading. A future he needed to come to terms with sooner rather than later. His father wasn’t doing this out of spite, he was doing it to protect him, and Dom needed to just suck it up and fall in line.

Fuck, he’d been doing that his whole life. Why should now be any different?

“You’ve gone all quiet and broody again.”

“Again? What was I before? Upbeat and perky?”

Luca snorted. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in either of those moods, and quite honestly, I think that might be a little terrifying. But you were a little more talkative.”

“And let me guess, silences make you uncomfortable.”

“Let’s just say I’ll be the surgeon with the music playing. Quiet is too…final in my line of work.”

Dom’s lips twitched. “Mine too. But usually after a lot of screaming.”

Luca shoved him in the shoulder. “That’s horrible.”

“That was my reality.”

“Was?” Luca’s eyes brightened with the one emotion Dom had learned to live without growing up—hope.

“Is. And if I go down the path you’re suggesting, I’d be the one screaming once the guys got done with me. You think my father is being a stubborn asshole, and in many ways, so do I. But in reality, he’s protecting me. He knows what would happen if word got out about my…preferences.”

“You’re saying your family would kill you? For being gay? That’s…that’s barbaric.”

It was. But it was also the way of Dom’s world. Everyone knew that.

Dom bit down on his molars so hard he was surprised they didn’t break. “Being gay is the equivalent of being a rat. It’s not tolerated, and anyone—including the heir of the reigning family—would be…exterminated if they were found out.”

Luca’s eyes glistened, but Dom knew this was the only way to get through to him. To make him realize that no amount of talk or reasoning with his father was going to make him cave on this matter. Not when it might result in the death of another one of his children.

“That day in the market,” Dom said as he looked out to the calm waters of the lake, “was the day I became the Rossetti heir. I’d always been the next in line, but that day in the market was the day my childhood vanished and I was thrust into this world.”

Dom fingered the ring on his right hand and stared at the gold R that had meant so much to him for so long, and for the first time felt a sense of resentment at what it represented.

“My father, he’d taken us down to the markets as a family outing, but he was also there to pick up a gift for my sixteenth birthday. You see, on my sixteenth birthday he was going to formally introduce me to everyone in the ‘family.’ Up until then I had been kept out of all business. But that day…that day it all changed.”

Dom turned to see Luca watching him intently, the wheels behind those intelligent eyes turning. “It’s whatever was in the box. Right? The parcel he went back to get with you and Caterina?”

Dom nodded and held his hand up. “The family ring.”

Luca’s eyes fell to the gold band holding the onyx stone in place. “It’s beautiful.”

“Hmm.”

Dom looked back out ahead of him, remembering that night after the market when he, Caterina, and his father had returned home. Vincenzo had been close to catatonic with despair, but just before he disappeared inside his room, he’d taken the soot-covered box from Caterina and handed it over to his son with seven words that would forever change Dom’s life: “It’s time for you to step up.”

“This ring was a symbol of trust. My father’s trust in me. That when he couldn’t function, when he couldn’t look after Cat or talk to anyone who came to the door, that I would in his place—and I did, for months. His men knew what had happened to my mother and sister, and at that stage Vincenzo was still forming his connections. But I could do the basics. Basics I didn’t even realize I was doing. Like paying runners who dropped off ‘packages’ for my father, or informants leaving messages they needed me to get to him. I stepped up. I became the Rossetti heir, and if anyone in my world ever found out I’d fallen for a fucking Fiore—and a man at that—the consequences would absolutely destroy my father.”

For once, Luca stayed silent, taking it all in. It was a lot to digest, Dom knew. He hadn’t grown up in a typical way, that was for sure.

“You’ve…fallen for me?” The utter disbelief in Luca’s eyes was almost comical. Wasn’t he the one who’d tried to get Dom to admit he cared, even a little? And now that Dom was admitting it was true, he couldn’t believe it?

“Luca, I’ve risked my father’s wrath, my life, everything to save you. What do you think?”