Unbound (The Dominator 3)

Zack Jacobs was asking the kinds of questions that set my teeth on edge. I knew about the Ferrano family. I knew that their decision to take revenge against my uncle had been rather fortuitous for me. It seemed our paths were destined to repeatedly cross and maybe even merge.

“Which Ferrano?” I knew this answer but needed to confirm. I knew the older one had just recently gotten married to the girl who my uncle had kidnapped several months ago, before he was murdered in cold blood by Tommy Ferrano.

“The younger one. Dario. It seems that he took his new pet from Kruna and is getting ready to marry her. He’s trying to find out what happened to the pet’s little sister.”

I clenched my jaw. Fuck.

“Are Kruna aware he’s digging into his pet’s past?”

“Does not look like it.”

Dario Ferrano wasn’t on my radar until a few months back when Jesse turned up dead. Jesse had been blown up and was after the Ferrano boys in the name of vengeance for Juan Carlos. Dario Ferrano liked to cause explosions. Another fortuitous thing for me.

Not fortuitous? The fact that Kruna’s senior partner team were being sloppy.

“Do you think Jacobs knows you have her?” Rocco asked me.

“No. He doesn’t play like that. If he already knew, he wouldn’t poke around. He’d be straight up about it. What we know about Zack Jacobs, he’ll figure it out soon enough.”

Zack Jacobs was a fucking bloodhound and exceptionally good at his job. He’d been an asset to me on a few occasions already.

“So, what can I do now for you? To help?”

“Get me everything you can on the Ferrano family. Who their friends are, who their enemies are, what their big deals are right now. Make it a priority.”

Unbound;

The Dominator III

Tommy

A few weeks after Dare’s Wedding

(be sure to read Prologues first)

Tia was asleep, her cheek on my belly, her silky oats and honey-scented hair fanned out across the chest tattoo that bared her name and displayed her symbol. An owl on an olive branch. Wisdom. Forgiveness. Thinking about the symbolism made my gut churn, go sour.

My left hand was tangled in her hair and I was staring at the ring that sat on my finger. Gold and black. Light and dark. Good and evil. Right now, there was more black than gold to me because I’d spent a sleepless night plotting. Plotting the next moves that had to be made. It all went round and round in my brain all fucking night long.

Take down Kruna, being the fucking gophers for the goddamn Feds without getting ourselves killed.

That fucking Zack.

If I had my way, when this was over, the footnote would be a gaping hole in his forehead. Dare was acting like he was leaning toward giving Zack a pass. I didn’t fucking think so.

Bastard didn’t earn my trust overnight. He worked at it, the motherfucking liar. And he’d pay for fucking us over. I never forgot betrayal.

We had to first confirm and then if she was there, (I suspected she was), get Angel’s sister Holly back from Alessandro Romero’s hellhole down in Mexico. Zack said he had it on good authority that this was where she was and it was gonna be a tricky proposition. He wasn’t useless. A lying fed motherfucker but he was resourceful. He was still fact-finding.

We had to find a way to get her back, knowing Romero knew what we’d done. We didn’t know him. We’d heard he was an ice-cold mother fucker and it stood to reason that he’d want me dead for killing his Uncle Juan Carlos and Dare dead for killing his brother Jesse. The cartel that I had a relationship with from the takedown of the Castillo cartel was something I didn’t relish the idea of calling on again. They’d helped me for what they’d get out of him being gone.

This time, if we needed their help, we’d be indebted to them and that would slow down our plan to distance ourselves from our Pop’s world as much as humanly possible without it meaning we had to disappear into thin air to escape that shit.

I didn’t know much about Romero other than the fact he’d inherited his father’s business in pedaling flesh and in dealing guns. And my guys alerted me once or twice to the fact that people had compared us. I didn’t like that. I’d had people keep their ears to the ground, concerned Romero might set his sights on us after Jesse Romero was killed.

Beyond this shit with Kruna and with Angel’s sister, we also had the launch of Fete and Leo Denarda was being a fucking thorn in my side. This guy wanted in on partnership but I made my involvement contingent on him being kept out. Of course, he wasn’t happy. But he was a slimy asshole that I refused to associate with.

He didn’t take the news of his exclusion well and now he was trying to screw with us. And what’d started out as an annoyance had become more than a mere pain in my ass; like a mosquito trapped in a dark room with you.