When I asked Dom if we could come home – lame as it may be, I was starting to miss Poppet – he said yes without complaint and so we flew through the night, Dom in the pilot’s seat. I sat beside him as we soared over the countryside, looking across at him, bathed in the star and moonlight, looking glorious and right.
“So there are complications,” I whisper, nuzzling my face in Poppet’s fur. “Maybe he’s not what you’d call conventional, hmm? What with the you-know-what.”
The killing.
But he did that in self-defense, pretty much.
Or, if I want to be finicky about it, not exactly self-defense but definitely in the most unusual circumstances. It’s not like he went out Patty-style looking for somebody to hunt for sport.
When I look deep inside myself, ask if Dom is a good man, that tragedy in his childhood doesn’t change my opinion.
Yes.
He’s the best man I’ve ever met and if that makes me crazy, then fine, I’m freaking crazy, but there’s a connection between me and Dom that goes beyond sanity.
It’s primal, it’s us.
What about Dad?
I open my eyes and sit up, letting my hand move through Poppet’s fur. She cocks her head up at me, her bright eyes like lasers, reading me.
Something’s different, Mommy, I imagine her saying. Shall I guess what it is?
Even if nerves swirl inside of me at the thought of what Dad will say when he finds out, I know I’m too far gone into our closeness now to stop it. I know that even if I wanted to – and I don’t, not even slightly – I’d be powerless to resist this life-changing intimacy that’s beginning to dominate us.
“Wanna go to the toilet, Poppet?”
She leaps up and springs out of bed at the word toilet, which she recognizes. Then she lopes to the door and turns to glare back at me, perhaps thinking I’ve forgotten. I giggle and climb out of bed, pulling on my silk bathrobe on, shocked by how easily I’m getting used to these finer luxuries.
I feel a giddy, selfish rush when I think about standing at Dom’s side at society parties, hanging from his arm as though I’m not the girl people play tricks on. I imagine him standing proudly next to me, his hand on my arm, introducing me.
This is Dallas, my lovely wife.
“Woah,” I murmur, pushing open the bedroom door and grabbing my phone from the dresser. Poppet looks at me questioningly. “Nothing, girl. Just letting my thoughts get the better of me … again. Come on, let’s go.”
As I walk, I think about this morning, when Dom half-woke me and whispered that he had to go into the city on business. He leaned down and kissed me hotly and firmly as I lay there, lost in dreams, dreams of him. So that as we kissed I wasn’t sure if it was in reality or in the dream, and then he rose and left the room so quietly for a man of his mammoth size.
My lovely wife.
The words bounce around my head as I emerge into the garden, Poppet ducking her head and immediately springing toward the fountain, whitetail wagging madly.
Even if Dom and I move quicker than regular people, and it’s obvious that we do, to already be invoking the W-word is probably just a little bit silly.
Sillier than the L-word?
I almost laugh at the thought, watching as Poppet pauses and watches the sprinklers in suspicion, getting ready to leap at them if they start spraying water her way.
There’s no way I’m going to be saying that first under any circumstances. Dom may not be the sort of lunatic to lure me into the middle of nowhere and paint my name on a pig. Fine, Dom is not a monster. But he’s still a man and in my limited knowledge about men throwing that word out there first is never a good idea.
But do I feel it, deep inside?
Love?
I close my eyes and the smile that spreads across my face is all the answer I need.
Then my cellphone vibrates in my hand and I’m embarrassed by how quickly I swipe to unlock the screen, so eager to get word from Dom after last night. Luckily Poppet’s still engaged in her silent war with the sprinklers, so nobody sees.
But it’s not Dom.
It’s an email from an address I don’t recognize, just a series of letters and numbers with seemingly no order.
I open it.
A video.
Something about it tells me I shouldn’t click, it could be a scam, it could be anything.
But then I see the thumbnail. It’s too tempting and confusing not to play. Dom stands in a shadowed room, a gun in his hand, and next to him kneel two men with hoods over their heads. My mouth falls open and I stare, heart thudding, world-threatening to tip sideways the more I stare.
Dom—two men—a gun.
“Please, no,” I whisper.
Shooting the men who killed his parents in front of him in a fit of passion when he was a poor child is one thing. But executing two men in cold blood – two men he clearly already has under his control – is completely removed from that.
I feel my breathing pick up and catch in my throat.
I click play.
“You haven’t left me with much choice here, Patty,” Dom says, tossing his gun from hand to hand as he steps forward to dominate the frame.
A shock corkscrews through me when I see he’s wearing the same suit he was wearing last night.
Did he come straight from the execution?
Panic seizes me in its dreadful hands.
“But you’ve killed two of mine and that can’t go unanswered. So here I am, Patty, you fucking animal. You’ve gone too far. I’m going to assume you recognize these men.”
Some unseen figure has removed the hoods from the men with a quick flourish. They kneel there, rags stuck in their mouths, shivering and trembling with tears sliding down their cheeks.
“Markus and Simon
