Was she? Zoey hesitated. “He’s… not what I thought I was.”
“Do you know why all the businesses have been closing up? I found out. Everyone’s talking about it. It’s The Blood Oath pack. The pack deliberately raised their protection fees so high that they couldn’t stay in business any more and lots of the business owners are just leaving the city so the Blood Oath pack can’t murder them. They’re having to go into hiding.”
Zoey felt an odd flare of protectiveness towards Dominic. Where had that come from?
“Come on, Danielle, that’s just rumors. We all thought that it was the Blood Oath pack behind the garbage problem, and it turned out that it was just a corrupt neighborhood liaison. And they took care of it. Why would they force businesses to shut down? Then they couldn’t collect money from them. That would hurt the pack, not help them.”
“Oh, I see. For months you’ve been trash-talking the Blood Oath pack. But now you’ve got a rich, powerful boyfriend, and you don’t need to live in our lousy neighborhood any more, so who cares what happens to us?” Danielle said bitterly. And before Zoey could answer, Danielle had hung up.
Frustrated, Zoey stalked out of the bathroom. Romano was serving himself pancakes. Dominic was giving him extremely sour looks. He gave her a cheery wave.
“Romano. We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Zoey said snarkily.
“I know, I know, you guys didn’t have sex,” Romano said. He gave her an exaggerated wink.
She brushed him off with a hand wave.
“Dominic. What do you know about all the businesses closing in our neighborhoods? They pay protection money to the Blood Oath pack, right? So you must be keeping track of them?”
The warmth in his eyes vanished. It was as if a door had slammed shut in her face. “We don’t speak of pack business to non-pack members.”
She felt as if someone had dumped a bucket of ice water on her head. Who was this man? One minute he was inviting her in, opening himself up and letting her see little pieces of himself, making her feel as if she was special and magical, and the next, he was everything she’d hated and feared for months and months.
The other Dominic made her melt like butter on a hot sunny day. But this cold, hard stranger, standing in front of her? She would not be the mate, or the wife, of this man.
“I see,” she said tightly. “I see a lot. Things I really don’t want to see. Thanks for last night, it was…interesting.” He flinched when she said that. Good. She’d meant it to hurt.
Holding her messenger bag, she turned around and walked into the bedroom, shut and locked the door behind her.
“Zoey!” Dominic bellowed, his voice so loud the door shook.
She shot out the window and onto the fire escape just as he kicked the bedroom door in with a sound like a bomb going off.
Then she scrambled down the ladder and dropped to the ground and disappeared around the corner. She’d leave her bike at Sergio’s for now; she had another bike stashed in an empty warehouse in the warehouse district. And Dominic was about to find out how hard it was to track down a map witch who didn’t want to be found.
Chapter Thirteen
Arturo paced the floor, watching Giuliana on the computer screen on the wall across from him. Anger bubbled up inside him. She was lying to him again. She’d told him that she was at the mall, and yet there she was, halfway across town. She was actually in a good neighborhood, just driving around, apparently at random. That was the only reason he wasn’t dragging her back home right now.
That, and if he did so, he’d have to give up his secret – the fact that he had her bugged. And not just her cell phone, which of course she had guessed early on. Putting a bug on the earrings that had been left to her by her late mother was a low move, he knew, but it didn’t prick his conscience in the slightest.
He could have grabbed a strand of her hair from her hairbrush and used a tracking spell, but they weren’t as reliable. And he couldn’t afford any errors.
His niece was stubborn as hell, just like his sister Maria had been. His sister had chafed under his attempts to protect her. So he knew that no man was good enough for her – so what? He would have found a mate that he approved of, eventually. She should have just waited. Instead, she’d snuck out and gotten herself pregnant by one of his foot soldiers – who’d abandoned her and run for his life as soon as she found out that she was with cub.
Arturo had tracked him down, of course – quietly. Discretely. And fatally. There was no escaping Arturo’s wrath. And he’d threatened death to anyone who so much as looked at his pregnant, unwed sister askance. Of course, his sister knew what everyone was thinking – the mafia shifters were an old-fashioned bunch, and they were all silently judging her, and it hurt her deeply. But at least none of them spoke of it to her face.
With all that Arturo had done to keep her safe, nature had betrayed them in the end. She had a defective heart valve and died of heart failure – begging him to care for her infant daughter.
His niece had been the sweetest little girl – but then she’d grown up to be just like her mother. Independent, argumentative, and way too into taking risks. These days, Giuliana lied to him just for the sake of it. She did it often. She’d go to the mall, leave her cell phone hidden at a restaurant, to make it look as if she was still there – and then go head out and drive around town.
Oh, she’d always come home with bags full of the latest couture, but why did she have to sneak out like that? Just for the sheer joy of defying him.
He wished that Dominic was still available to marry Giuliana. He’d been shocked that she’d actually agreed to it, but also relieved.
He suspected that, with Dominic’s past, it was unlikely that Dominic would ever open his heart again. Dominic had erected an enormous wall around his heart, and he guarded it with a protective armor of cold indifference and cutting sarcasm. But Dominic would have fulfilled the duties of a good mate, he would have abandoned his life of one-night stands and devoted himself to Giuliana. Settled her down. Tamed her restlessness.
Before Arturo could make the announcement, though, the Bianchi pack had approached him, and proposed the mating between Fabiana and Dominic.
