The Italian Dom by N.J. Adel
CHAPTER 39
Domenico
Taking a drag of my vape, I checked the size of the truck parked in the driveway and the amount of boxes and hardware tools unloading off it. “You weren’t joking about tearing the villa apart.”
She spread a couple of humongous scrolls over the dining table. “I’m just making a few changes here and there.” She pointed at the garden, the pool, the kitchen and the entire upper floor.
“A few changes here and there, eh?”
She chuckled. “I might have gotten carried away. It’s just that I need something to take my mind off things.”
“I thought you were doing this project because you were excited about it?”
“I am. Renovating something that beautiful, my own villa, has been one of my dreams. I have you to thank you for making it come true.”
“But it doesn’t seem to be enough.”
“It is, I swear. It’s just that no matter how hard I try to distance myself, I can’t seem to be able to do it. I mean, can you really blame me for worrying about my sister and nephew? I fucking raised that girl and practically delivered her baby.”
I held her from behind and rested my palms on her stomach. “You’re gonna be a great mother, you know that?”
She stilled for a second, and then she threw a nervous glance at me over her shoulder. “Thanks.”
“Baby girl, I want you off the pill.”
“What?”
“There’s no reason for it anymore.”
Flustered, she tucked her hair behind her ears. “Yes, there is. I’m twenty-one, and I still have school.”
I sighed. “I want to have a family with you, Nicky. I can’t wait to fill you with my seed and watch you get pregnant with our children.”
She fidgeted with the villa plans. “We should talk about that later, after the wedding, after Leo.”
“We should talk about something else now.”
She glanced at me again, warily. “What is it?”
“I didn’t tell you before because I didn’t want to influence you or manipulate you into feeling something for me that isn’t accurate. But now is the time.”
“Time for what?”
“To tell you my story. You wanted to know why they called me Berry. It’s time I told you.”
She spun to face me fully, curiosity filling her gaze. I drew a chair for her to sit and took the one next to it. “I’ve told you about the uncle that married my mamma and raised me as his own.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“His name was Arminio, and he wasn’t a good man.”
She nodded and held my hand. “In your nightmares, you keep talking to an uncle, begging him to stop. Is Arminio the uncle in there?”
The air constricted in my chest. I didn’t know I talked that elaborately in my sleep. I didn’t know she heard it. “Si.”
“Okay. What did he do?”
I filled my chest with hash vapor. “He beat her and me daily, always saying he never wanted us and wished us dead. At first, I thought it was because he was forced to marry his brother’s woman and take care of a boy that wasn’t his, but that wasn’t the real reason behind his hate for us.”
“What was it?”
The memories came racing in. So much darkness. So much blood. “It turned out he didn’t like women.”
“You mean he was gay?”
“I guess you could say that.” Till today, I wasn’t sure if there was a label for guys like him. “Times were different sixty years ago, especially in traditional families like ours. He couldn’t come out, so he…”
Her eyes flashed with terror for a second, as if she knew what I was going to say before I said it. “He what?”
“He’d come to my room at night, talk to me about girls, how I’d soon be a man and would need to know how to please them…and explain how they’d please me, too.”
She gulped, her eyes turning red. “Let me guess, he’d show you.”
Revulsion seared through my skin, bubbling up like burn marks. “He’d spray his fucking cologne on me, telling me it was a sexy thing that would turn any girl into a lurida troia, and he’d, like a dirty slut, suck me. Then he’d make me do the same to him, telling me it’d make me better at pussy eating, so I did.” I could still feel his fucking taste in my mouth.
Her hand flew to her chest. “Jesus, Dom. How old were you?”
“Seven.”
Her brows drew together as soft whimpers escaped her mouth. “He used your innocence. He made you think it was okay.”
“He was teaching me to be a man, and he’d stop beating us on those nights, so…”
“He made you want it,” she sobbed, “because it was better than the alternative.”
That was what I thought. If only I’d known… “When I grew up a little, and my questions turned into suspicions and later anger, he brought me gifts. Expensive cologne bottles like his, watches, designer shoes and clothes that made me look more of a man than a kid. Sometimes he took me in his car to teach me how to drive, promising me he’d get me one when I was old enough. But his most precious gifts of them all were porn movies, lots of them.
“He’d play them on in my room and make me watch with him. The movies were all about anal, and he’d tell me how a woman’s ass was much tighter than her cunt, and I’d have to try it or I’d be missing a lot. Then he’d say it was okay if I wanted to touch myself in front of him. He wouldn’t tell Mamma, and it’d be our little secret like before. Until one day, watching, touching and sucking weren’t enough for him.”
She squeezed my hand, a tear rolling down her cheek. “Oh, Dom.”
“At first, I fought, but he was fucking stronger. When I threatened I’d tell someone, he threatened me with Mamma. Every time, I said no or tried to fight, he beat the shit out of her and made me watch. Then he’d burn me with his cigarettes and carve nasty words on my body with his knife before he’d gag and rape me.
“When nothing would make him stop, I tried to beg. Needless to say that didn’t work either. You need to have a soul to listen to a child’s pleas to stop hurting them, to fucking stop splitting their ass with your filthy cock. Arminio didn’t have one.
“I remember the pain and the gag he’d shove in my mouth to stop my screams. He didn’t like them, but he still wanted me to moan like a good bitch that enjoyed taking his cock. With each one of my screams, he’d cut me deeper or burn me more times than usual…or fuck me harder. That way I learned if I didn’t scream, the pain would be less.”
Nicky shuddered with sobs and fell to her knees in front of me, holding both my hands now, kissing them, her tears wetting them. “Please tell me you killed him.”
“I did, but it wasn’t soon enough.”
Her bloodshot eyes stared at me for an explanation.
“When he started raping me, he didn’t do it in the house. He’d take me to a private apartment or an underground sex dungeon so Mamma wouldn’t notice. One day she followed us, though.”
“Oh no. She confronted him, and he hurt her?”
“Yes. She stayed in the hospital for two weeks because of it. The second she could talk, though, she cried her eyes out, wishing I’d told her, blaming herself for everything. Then she told me I didn’t have to protect her anymore and asked me to take her to Giovanni so she could tell him everything herself.”
“But if she told him, why didn’t he help? Why did you have to kill your uncle yourself? Giovanni was your capo and fucking father. He should have done it. He should have stopped his brother from raping his own son.”
The anger and hate I’d felt for Arminio didn’t begin to compare to those I had for Giovanni. “Because he owed Arminio for keeping his secret and giving his son the Lanza name. Besides, he was Giovanni’s enforcer and brother. Giovanni couldn’t just kill him without a good reason he could tell the rest of la famiglia. Telling the truth wasn’t an option. It’d have exposed too many secrets. He’d dismissed her that day with a promise that he’d have found another way to take care of Arminio’s problem.”
“Which was what?”
“Life didn’t give me the time to know. Mamma couldn’t bear the thought of being the weakness Arminio used to get to me. She couldn’t wait for Giovanni either.” My jaws tightened so hard they could shatter. I growled at the memory, at the pain that numbed everything but the beast growing inside. “She went to kill him herself, but he gained on her. I tried to save her, but he held a gun to my head. She begged him to let me go. She begged him to kill her instead.”
“Oh my God,” she whimpered. “Oh my God!”
“He wouldn’t kill her, though. He didn’t want to lose his leverage, and at the same time he wanted to punish her for ratting him out, so he tied her and fucked me right in front of her.”
“No, no, no,” she moaned, blubbering.
“Mamma couldn’t take it, couldn’t live with herself. The next morning, she took her own life.” My voice cracked in the end. I squeezed my eyes closed for a second, pushing down the raging pain I’d longed tried to contain and failed. “Everything I did was for nothing. My pain and shame and guilt were for nothing. I failed to save the one person I cared about.”
Nicky rushed up and held my head to her chest tight. “No. It’s not your fault. You did everything you could to protect her. The only way you knew how. You were a kid. You didn’t know any better.”
I sighed in agony, burying my head in her chest. “Didn’t I? Unlike you, I was born in blood. Why did I fucking wait all this time before I ended it?”
“You were a little boy. You were still innocent. You were scared, for yourself, for your mother. You were supposed to be protected by the people who called themselves your family, not come to understand you had to kill for protection. What happened to you, what happened to your mom was Arminio’s and Giovanni’s fault. Never yours.”
As she threw my words back at me, I hoped now she believed them. But knowing exactly how she’d been feeling, I’d say it was just a hope, and not a reality. Maybe one day, together, we kept reminding each other, and we both finally believed.
I took another drag from my vape. “At the funeral, Giovanni came to me and told me a story about a sixteen-year-old boy named Damien Berry. His mother, too, had died. His father went crazy after her death and told Damien God had spoken to him and wanted Damien to turn into a woman to be his wife. Damien wouldn’t do it, so his father raped him anyway. One day Damien snapped, killed his father and fed him to the coyotes.”
Her sobs and tears covered me. “He made you do his dirty work. He turned you into a murderer.”
“It was inevitable. I was thirteen, and it was time for my initiation soon. He thought he’d make the best of it.”
“So you killed Arminio?”
“I took my time con il bastardo. I hung him like a fucking cow, took his knife and wrote on him all the nasty shit he used to write on my body. He screamed like a fucking puttana del cazzo, and I gagged and hurt and fucked him, teaching him to take the pain without a sound like he taught me. When his body couldn’t take it anymore, I flayed his skin, so slowly, watching him bleed.” There was so much blood. Some of the blood came in my mouth I could still taste it. Some splattered on my naked body, on my cock, turning me on, so I jacked off, shot my blood stained cum in his mouth and made him swallow it as his last fucking meal. “Then I fed him to the coyotes like Berry did.”
“I’m so sorry. So sorry.”
“Giovanni was proud and told me I’d take Arminio’s place when I was old enough. He even let me move in with him. He was the one who gave me that stupid name, Berry. When I became Enforcer, I got my tats to cover the marks and chose my own name. Il Coyote.”
“I can’t believe you had to go through all this.”
“I’m sorry, baby girl, to pour it out on you like this, but you’re the first person I’ve ever wanted to tell everything. No one but Giovanni, his sons and my other uncle Alfio knew the whole thing at the time. There were rumors everywhere, but I buried everything per la famiglia. Tino, as Enzio’s best friend, and one I did business for many times, was the only one outside the Lanzas that had a pretty good idea of what actually happened.” I didn’t give him the full story, but I didn’t bother denying it with him. Enzio, he and I were three fucked up bastards that in a way understood each other. “You’re the only one I told.”
“I’m glad you did.”
“This is the real me you wanted to see. Totally exposed. I told you I’d be scarier if I stopped hiding what I was. Are you scared?”
“No. Oh, Dom. If anyone could ever understand you and how you feel, it’s me. My God, you must be in so much pain all the time. How did you survive all this darkness, all this abuse, loss and blood?”
“I fought darkness with more darkness. I took my rage out on the fuckers I had to punish.” I saw Arminio’s face in each one of them as I flayed their skins and fed them my cum.
“Does it ever fade?”
I shook my head slowly. “Nothing numbed the beast.”
“What about the…other needs he made you have?”
I sighed. “I was confused for a long time. I experimented a lot. Women. Men. Vanilla. Rough. Hardcore. But no smell managed to erase his fucking cologne from my memory that haunted me every time I touched someone. Nothing silenced or satisfied the monster I’ve become. Nothing like the red trips.” I drew back and gazed at her swelling blue eyes. “Until you.”
“Me?”
“Yes, Nicky. When you gave yourself to me, not only did you take away that black pressure that gnashed at me, but also you made me happy. For the first time of my life, I was happy, and it was because of you.”
She grinned through the streaming tears. Then, she didn’t wait for me to kiss her and brought my lips to her trembling ones. “I love you, Dom.”
“Nicky…”
“It’s not because of what you told me now. I’ve been in love with you for a while, longer than I want to admit, but I can’t deny it or hold back anymore. I love you.”
My vicious heart swelled and tightened in my chest. Cazzo, it was painful. The hardest yet the best pain I’d ever endured. I brought her lips back to mine, sitting her on my lap, bringing her closer, as close as possible, needing her heat to wrap over me, to fill the black coldness in my soul. My throat clogged with intense emotions I’d locked deep for years longer than her whole life, but I freed the words I’d wanted to say for weeks. “I love you, too.”