“O-Okay,” Katarina agreed, afraid if she didn’t, the girl might cut her head off. She couldn’t have cared less if she walked down in what she was wearing right now, but she damn sure wasn’t about to tell her that.
“I’m going with you,” Dominic announced, grabbing his coat. “Matthias, you stay here with Cassius.”
Matthias, who was grabbing his jacket too, looked defeated.
“That won’t be necces—”
Dominic raised his hand, cutting her off. “I’m not having Lucca find out I let you two go alone with this fucking idiot.”
Again, it took Todd forever to figure out he was talking about him. “Excuse m—”
“Fine,” Maria agreed.
She picked up her fur-lined leather jacket, and they all headed out the door, leaving Cassius and a heartbroken Matthias behind.
When he saw the Cadillac they’d showed up in, Dom stopped in his tracks. “You know what, Ted—”
“Todd,” Maria corrected.
“Todd,” he repeated the correct name, getting the Caruso’s guard’s attention. “How about you go home, and we can all just pretend Maria snuck out by herself. I think we both know I won’t touch a pretty blond hair on her head because of what Lucca would do to me if he found out I did. I’m sure it’s going to be similar to what he’s going to fucking do to you if you don’t leave.”
Her bodyguard’s face went pale as she waved him to go, and he left running. “Bye, Todd.”
Well, he’ll be dead soon.
As she walked toward her brother’s car, the cold February air hit her face on a gust of wind. She looked at what the blonde was wearing. “Aren’t you cold?”
It was Dominic who answered her. “You can’t feel cold if your heart is dead.” Giving a deadly smile to the golden goddess, he opened the passenger door of his blacked-out Mustang for her. “Isn’t that right, princess?”
Did he just…. She was going to have one of her talks with Cassius tonight about how boys can show their feelings to girls in many different ways.
Dominic didn’t hate her… He fucking liked her.
Twelve
The Right One
“Um, where are we going?” she asked when Maria started walking into the expensive department store side of the mall. The side she never visited because it was ridiculously priced and outrageously stupid.
“I told you, finding a wedding dress.”
She began looking around at the nudes and golds everywhere on display and how spaced out everything was from another ridiculously priced item before she planted her feet firmly on the ground. “Not from here, we’re not.”
“Yes, we are,” she stated, clearly daring Kat to no longer challenge her about it while she grabbed her arm to get her to move. “A girl only gets to walk down the aisle for the first time once. So, it has to be designer.”
“Princess has a point.” This time, Dominic grabbed her other arm, pulling her along.
“Fine.” She reluctantly let them drag her along thinking if Dom had said it was ok— Wait. “Did you just say, for the first time once?”
Still pulling her along, she didn’t even hesitate to speak. “I’m thinking my third husband after the first two mysteriously died will be the right one.”
“That’s good to know,” Dominic muttered under his breath.
“Maria….”
The blonde looked over at her.
“I think I’m a little bit scared of you.”
“I’m only kidding.” She smiled with a hint of evil, showing she probably wasn’t joking.
The truth was, if she were a man, she would be very fucking afraid of her, but Maria gave off a female empowerment vibe. It was obvious to her and her brothers that the mafia princess was a straight-up psychopath like her brother Lucca, but there was a difference between them... She had been born a woman. And like Kat knew all too well, they would never be treated like their brothers. No matter how strong or smart they could become, in their father’s eyes and in the mafia world, they would never be as strong or as smart as their sons.
Because of that, there seemed to be a woman code written into Maria’s DNA, and she was pretty sure the blonde wouldn’t hurt a woman for a million dollars. Therefore, she liked Maria, even if it was a little sexist that she liked her and not Lucca.
When they reached a bunch of little stores off to the sides of the mall that had the big designer names above them, they headed into one that consisted of nothing but white dresses.
A very beautiful man with killer bone structure greeted them before heading to Maria and giving her kisses on each cheek. “Maria, my love, I haven’t seen you in a while.”
“I know. I’ve missed you.” She grabbed his hand begging to introduce him to her entourage. “Ken, I need a dress for my friend Kat.”
Ken? Yep, that was exactly whom he looked like, straight from the Barbie dream house in his tux.