“Nothing for you to worry about,” he said, avoiding answering my question. He placed a dark piece of plastic on the table next to my bowl and I opened my mouth to say something, but he cut me off. “I said don’t argue.”
Lucas left without another word and I stared at the credit card. This didn’t feel right. I pushed it away into the center of the table. I didn’t have the money for an entire wardrobe, but I could still manage to buy things for myself.
I tracked down Dom in one of the garages. “Dom?” I called from the door. “Lucas wants me to go shopping because apparently my clothes aren’t cutting it anymore.”
A tanned man with a mop of curly brown hair slid out from under the sports car and sat up. “Well, we’ll have to listen to His Highness, won’t we?”
I couldn’t help but grin at his response. If I thought Lydia was nice then Dom could be classified as a sweetheart in my eyes. Closer in age and with a thick Brazilian accent, Dom and I had clicked from the moment Lucas introduced us to one another.
“Come on,” I said to him. “I’m looking forward to getting out of these walls.”
Dom and I spent most of the morning ducking in and out of stores while I picked out a few new pieces. I stuck to what I knew, but Dom soon drove us into a part of town that housed designer boutiques and I cringed at the price tags attached to something as simple as a pair of jeans. I made a note to ask Lucas if I could stop at home and pick up some more things, or at least if he would be willing to retrieve some things for me.
“All done!” Dom said, swinging a bag casually as he joined me.
I eyed the sleek container in his hand. “What’s that?”
“Gifts. You’ll get them later,” he said.
“Dom…” I had learned very quickly that Lucas came from a world where there was more money than sense. I’d spent my life carefully saving for the things I wanted but, in his world, money was just something to burn through. The entire house had been decorated as if it belonged in the glossy pages of an interior design magazine. The cars looked like something straight out of a Bond movie and I had not missed the designer labels that came attached to Lucas’s watches, glasses and shirts. I was cautious about what to accept from him as I didn’t want to add to the debt Dad already had.
“Mia, you shouldn’t refuse a gift. It’s bad manners,” he told me as we got back into the car. I could feel my cheeks burn with embarrassment. I didn’t need gifts, but I didn’t want to argue with Dom.
“Thank you,” I replied him quietly.
We stopped at a busy little bistro for dinner. My hesitancy at whether we would find a spot was ushered away by the server who recognised Dom and soon asked after Lucas. The Foster name carried weight no matter where we were in town.
“Dom?” I asked him, jabbing at the pasta on the plate.
“Mhmm?”
“May I ask you something?”
We were sitting outside in the cool summer breeze and I could see the way Dom’s eyes occasionally scanned the area. He monitored people and movement stealthily and I wondered what could be such an imminent threat that he needed to work this way.
“Sure thing, Mia,” he said, bringing his focus back to me.
“Why… I mean, you don’t seem the type of guy that would work for Lucas Foster,” I said, making a mess of the sentence from the start.
I watched the way Dom swallowed his bite of pizza before wiping the grease from his fingers on a napkin. “You want to know why I’m working for him?”
I nodded my head in response as Dom pinpointed the question I wanted to ask.
“In short,” Dom started, leaning forward and picking up his glass of water. “He was kind to me, Mia. He gave me a job when I needed it most.”
“But you seem so…” I was struggling to find the word, so I tried another angle, “Lucas is so…” That was the second time he had been referred to as kind.
“You sound like Rodrigo,” Dom told me, raising an eyebrow. Dom’s fiancé had his reservations about Lucas as well. “The world isn’t so black and white, Mia. Most of us have done things we aren’t particularly proud of.”
I chewed on my bottom lip and placed down my fork. “Why did you need the job?”
Dom sighed and drank deeply from his glass before he answered me. “I came here after my parents disowned me for being gay. Took all the money I had and left, wanting a fresh start, away from them and the rest of my so-called family. I couldn’t get a job, so I was living on the street. I used to get into a lot of trouble, Mia. Mainly non-sanctioned fights.”
I was surprised to hear that Dom had struggled so much when chasing the American dream, and that he was a fighter. He seemed too polite and gentle to scrap with someone, but there had to be more to him if Lucas had kept him in his arsenal.
He looked up at me, setting down the glass on the table. “Luc found me after a bad fight. The fucker had a knife and I hadn’t seen it. I probably would have died, Mia. Luc could have left me on the street but for whatever reason, he took me to a hospital and then gave me this job. That was years ago now.”
Dom looked like he was far off in his past, reliving the moment he had just shared with me. I reached across the table and gently placed a hand over his. “I’m so sorry to hear you had a rough start here.”
