Dominic (Made Men 8)

Maria silently agreed, not able to picture him driving anything else. Plus, she liked the show, just not the way it made her feel when she couldn’t be satisfied. She desperately needed to clear her thoughts and the raging fire brewing in her belly, so she put her mind on something else that she had wondered about all day.

“This morning”—Maria looked over at him curiously—“when you said Cassius was going to work with you, you don’t mean like family business, do you?”

Dominic’s silence met her question, which answered her question.

Shocked wasn’t even the word to describe the look on her face. “He’s fifteen, which makes him the youngest …” She trailed off at the thought. Lucca had been the youngest to be made at seventeen. You weren’t made unless you were a man, and her brother had only did so because he proved without irrevocable doubt that he was no longer a child.

Cassius wasn’t. There was a hint of a childlike charm still in him. She had seen it.

“I’ve not let him speak the oath,” Dominic spoke the words stoically. “But I know him, Maria. If I shut him out of the family business, Cassius will resent me. I spent my whole life trying to end my father’s reign, and I will not have the strength to do what would need to be done a second time.”

A cold chill went up her spine, knowing what he meant by that.

“To do everything I possibly can to keep Cass from turning into our father will not only delay the inevitable, but I could end up creating something worse in the process.”

Maria knew it was a dangerous game he was playing. It was like playing with fire, and Dominic himself knew it.

“I felt no love with my father, but I’d take my own life before I’d take my brother’s.”

Hearing the fear of what his brother could become, along with the pain it would cause him if he did so, Maria placed her hand over Dominic’s that hovered over the shift and gave it a light squeeze, letting him know she supported him in his decision.

The truth was, there was no right or wrong way to care for Cassius. However, she did know Dom was right. Maria resented her own father for the same reasons.

“It’ll be okay,” she told him strongly, though she wasn’t sure of it. Just like Dominic wasn’t. But she’d do everything in her power to help him keep Cassius from walking too far down that dark path he was on. “He’s your full brother isn’t he?” Maria dared to ask the question she figured out once she had seen Cassius smile, when Dom looked at her strangely she let him in on how she figured it out. “He has dimples too. They’re genetic.”

Maria didn’t need to tell him the rest, because Dominic already knew it. None of Lucifer’s other children had them, which meant most likely he wasn’t the one with them and since the two brother’s looked so much alike and nothing at all like their father, it only meant they had to share the same mother as well.

At his nod, Dominic already answered before Maria could ask her next question. “She isn’t alive… none of our mothers are.”

“I’m sorr-”

“Don’t be.” He assured her, letting her know it was another thing he made peace with. “It’s hard to miss something you never had.”

Maria truly felt for the little boy who seemed to have never had a chance at a normal childhood but she also knew the man he had become didn’t want pity. One thing he made clear about Lucifer: women didn’t belong in his world.

Letting go of his shifting hand after another squeeze, Maria turned on the radio, only to be greeted to another country song and station. It seemed to be the only music he listened to, and not just Johnny Cash. What the—

“You don’t listen to country, do you?”

He gave her a side-eye. “Yes.”

“Dominic. Luciano,” she annunciated his name in disbelief, “listens to country?”

“Yes. What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing …” Per say. It was just odd. “Just not what I, or I think anyone, would actually expect.”

Smiling, Dominic was glad he could surprise her. “Growing up, I was obsessed with old westerns.”

Maria looked at him in even more shock, while clearly trying not to burst out in laughter. “So, you wanted to be … a cowboy?”

“No, not particularly,” Dominic corrected her, not appreciating Maria’s sly smile. “An outlaw.”

“Mmhmm.” Maria’s smile grew bigger. “But aren’t outlaws just bad cowboys?”

Dominic’s eyes started to turn to slits, but Maria wasn’t done with her teasing.

“So, let me get this right … you like guns, listen to country music”—Maria’s laughter could no longer be held back as she giggled through the last part uncontrollably—“and instead of driving a horse, you drive a Mustang, but you don’t think you secretly wanted to be a cowboy?”