Truth or Dare; The Dominator II (2 page)

She’s irritating the fuck out of me. She’s walking on eggshells with me and mothering me one minute and trying to tell me what to do the next. I fucking hate it.  When she gets particularly bitchy it turns me into a fucking animal and I know it’s turned into a cycle. She senses that I need release and she knows I hesitate because I worry about hurting her and then she purposely pushes me over the edge so I’ll take what I need from her. I know it isn’t healthy. Since marrying me and promising before God and my family to obey me and be mine forever it’s given me an even more dark and possessive sense of entitlement to her body but the depth of my love for her makes me feel guilty about it. I’m twisted in knots all the time.

It’s like we’re both uncomfortable in our own skin or something. Sometimes I don’t know how she can look at me after all I’ve done to her. I have a hard time looking at myself. I thank God that she survived everything I put her through but now that I’m not Tommy Ferrano, heir to the Ferrano family business, I don’t know who I am.  And her? She’s mine. She’s my woman, my lifeline, my life. I’m so obsessed with her that it borders on insanity and I
too
frequently
breach that border.

We arrived in Costa Rica and Tia loves the house I rented. It’s got a billion dollar view, it’s 5000 square feet, it’s private with ocean views and a pool on top of the roof, and it’s got every basic amenity we need just a two minute drive or ten minute walk away.  It has a long dock that she can sit and fish from and we often sit out back around the outdoor fireplace while she cooks campfire concoctions. There’s no one but us. No one here knows who we are. I finally have her all to myself and there’s no reason why another drama should put her in danger again but I know better than to become complacent. And I can’t handle having her out of my sight yet. I tried. I let her go to a fruit vendor while I was on a patio of a restaurant the day after the family all left to go back home and five minutes later I had to find her. I was physically ill with anxiety about her being vulnerable.

She wants to explore and shop and try local restaurants and go deep sea fishing and do yoga and take dance classes and live life to the fullest but I don’t want her out of my sight for the stuff I wouldn’t do and half the time I can’t be bothered with the stuff I would do. I go along with her when I can’t find excuses not to keep us home. She keeps looking at me with sad eyes and when I catch her she tries to paint on a smile, a fake smile. It makes me wanna put my fist through a wall.

I’m doing therapy over the webcam. I’d rather just forget it all instead of talking about it. I need distance from home, from the business, from ex associates and ex enemies. I need distance from myself, my urges, my needs, my nightmares. That’s why we’re here. We don’t know if I’m in danger, if Tia’s in danger, we don’t want questions from the cops about any loose ends back home. I don’t know if I’ll eventually take us back or make a life here or somewhere else but right now we’re supposed to be taking time to breathe, be newlyweds. But I can’t just breathe.

Every day brings breaking news of shit Pop was into that we were oblivious about. I have a standing weekly appointment with the fucking shrink, which I don’t wanna do but which I do because Tia needs me to do it so we both can hang onto hope that I’m not a lost cause.  The shrink specializes in helping men like me. Is it helping me? I don’t fucking know.

Yeah I shot my father when he turned a gun on her in order to punish me.  But in hindsight the time between when my father raised his gun to Tia and the time I fired my weapon I wasn’t sure but thought I saw something in his face that told me he wanted to die. I don’t know if it’s hindsight or just my nightmares haunting me.

I have alternating dreams where his expression changes. Did he raise that gun so I’d kill him with no intention of shooting her or me? Did I save her life and my own life by killing the man who gave
me
life? Did I pass or fail the ultimate Tom Ferrano test? The fact that I’d killed my own father, did it mean I really was no better than he was or did I just protect what was mine? His face haunts my dreams. The blood-covered wedding dress he had someone leave on the balcony outside my bedroom just before he died taunts me, tells me he intended to kill her or at least wanted me to fear that he would.  I was relieved it looked nothing like the dress she actually wore and I never told her about the bloody dress or a bunch of other shit that went down because she had enough to cope with. That dress continues to haunt my nightmares. Most of getting her out of that dress on our wedding night was about my desire, yeah, but some of that was probably about those fears and getting her safely out of it while it was still white, rather than stained scarlet.

Dare’s doing good back home, really stepping up. He’d always been an asset to the business, mature for his age, serious about being successful, and he and I were on the exact same page about the company and about what we did and didn’t want in our lives. He was making my life a helluva lot less complicated and without him dealing with shit back home I don’t know how I’d be coping.

Then again, maybe if I was busy sorting that shit out myself I would have something to focus on to take my mind off what I did, to take my mind off the fact that I’m cracked, damaged, probably irrevocably. But if I go back and that puts my wife in danger…the idea of doing anything to make her vulnerable, therefore allowing anything to hurt her? It’s unthinkable to me.

A few days after they got home from our wedding I sat down at the computer to check emails and saw a Skype notification from my brother asking me to get ahold of him as soon as possible. Finding out about the latest? Shit. The mess Pop left us just keeps getting messier.

Dare

8.5 years earlier:

“Truth, dare, double dare, or promise to repeat?”

“Double dare,” I answered her and leaned over and ran my nose from her chin, along her jawline, to the spot behind her ear.

She giggled and squirmed away, pink tinting her cheeks.

“I double dare you to…” she looked around and then whispered, “kiss someone you have a crush on.”

We were sitting under a tree outside our high school, skipping science class, a ways away from the building on the far side of the thick trunk of a big weeping willow. No one would see us unless they were close. I was looking forward to trying to get to second base with my lab partner. I was pretty smitten with her, like Charlie Brown and his
little girl with the red hair
.

“On a dare, yeah, but a double dare? A kiss is way too tame for a double dare,” I told her, “Can’t you do better than that?”

“Depends where that kiss is,” answered a female voice coming from the other side of the tree trunk.

As soon as I saw the source of that voice the redheaded girl in the grass beside me no longer existed. No other girl in the world existed but the tall brunette with the leather jacket and huge tits smoking a cigarette and blowing the smoke into rings. She was the only girl for me for the next 6 years. And what she did to me ruined me for the following three.

Debbie was a rocker chick. Her style consisted of heavy black eye make-up, tight jeans, fuck-me heels, plenty of leather and body-hugging spandex, long nails --- talons, really.

That day we met was her first day at my high school and she and I were inseparable throughout the rest of it. She was wild, she had an insatiable sex drive, she was crazy about me, and the family I was from didn’t bother her a bit. In fact, she thought it was a thrill that my family appeared to toe the line between good and evil. She loved to suck my cock, had no sexual inhibitions whatsoever, and she kept me on my toes. She wasn’t my first lay, I was a pretty busy 16 year old when I met her, but she changed the game for me. Back then I thought she was
it
for me.

On her 20
th
birthday I gave her an engagement ring. It was logical. We had a great time together. In hindsight there were things missing, things she didn’t give me, but I was young and in love with her spirit and the sex was incredible.

We split when we were 22, four months before the wedding when I caught her on her knees giving head to the goof hired to DJ our wedding reception.

When I walked into her place in the middle of the afternoon unannounced and found Debbie on her knees, I saw black. I got a lock on my rage with her but the guy whose dick was in her mouth wasn’t so lucky because he took the brunt. I hospitalized the guy, broken jaw among his injuries, and then I destroyed his life.

I had his and his father’s classic car that they rebuilt together crunched at a scrap yard and then returned to his driveway, got him fired from his day job, had all his DJ equipment destroyed, trashed his place, and then took steps that wound up bankrupting his father’s business. You could say when I got pissed it meant blowback.

A few times in the first year after Deb and I split I fucked with the guy just because. I didn’t want him to think it was over. I wanted him to keep lookin’ over his shoulder. Based on the shit I pulled he was probably
still
looking over his shoulder three years later. Yeah, I’d pretty much Greg O’Connor’d the guy.

I wasn’t proud of what I did to the guy’s father now and learning about my father’s tendencies in the revenge department had me analyzing some of what I’d done to get back at people who pissed me off but back then? All I saw was black. He knew she was mine. He knew who I was. He had a pretty good clue who my family was. He was a fuckin’ moron for crossing me. 

She saw the error of her ways, so she said, but she no longer existed to me. She yelled, she slapped me, she threw things, then she begged and pleaded, tried to use sex to get me back, stalked me for weeks, sneaking into my bed, showing up where she knew I’d be. She no longer existed to me; just white noise. Women in general became white noise, unless I had to have a minor and shallow conversation with them in order to get laid. I had no trouble finding hook-ups.

Present time:

Fast forward to today, after watching my brother marry a beautiful girl who was perfect for him I was thinkin’ it might be time to settle down, look for someone compatible.

Revenge didn’t help me get over what Deb did. Splitting with her was the genesis of what my sister Luciana dubbed the “Man Whore Years” for me. I was cold for a long time. The next few years I got my rocks off in nightclub bathrooms and alleys or motel rooms and sometimes my place with nameless, faceless chicks. I was always focused, driven, but during the Man Whore Years I was focused and driven with a big chip on my shoulder and no desire to trust a female that wasn’t a member of my family.

Then one day my Pop says that he’s arranged for my older brother to get hitched. Yeah, it sounds prehistoric but my brother wasn’t gonna do things the traditional way and Tommy getting married was a piece of the puzzle in whatever sinister plot Pop had cookin’ so Pop said he had to get creative because to him he couldn’t hand the business over unless my brother showed he had settled down. A wife and preferably a wife
with
a bun in the oven said that to my father and his business associates. He wanted Tommy hitched so that he could move on and do other things while Tommy took over as president of the company with me as VP.

Tommy was practically doing all the heavy lifting at that point anyway but Pop dangled the business like a carrot, knowing what buttons to push with my brother. Pop was always makin’ us jump over hurdles, both of us. My brother laid eyes on the girl chosen for him and he was interested. More than interested. It didn’t take long for him to do a one hundred and eighty degree turn. It was astounding to watch.

Up until that point I’d never seen my brother in a relationship. He showed up stag to family events, business occasions, never brought women around. He had a rep for being a womanizer and he and I are tight, I knew he got action, women liked how he looked so he barely had to snap his fingers to get laid, but I knew he wasn’t interested in settling down. After Debbie I probably modeled my approach to women after my older brother. Fuck ‘em then chuck ‘em.

He was all about power and had a single-minded focus to get to the top of his game in our business, to be someone no one questioned deserved to be in Pop’s chair. His love life was something that wasn’t discussed much but he had a rep as a prick who liked it rough. More than a few women who were interested in sinking their claws into him got knocked back or scared off. They didn’t kiss and tell outright because they knew better but there were hushed whispers about Tommy’s tendencies, especially after a neighbor’s cousin who’d moved to town turned tail and left town after one date with my brother, rumor having it that she pursued him relentlessly until he finally gave her a shot. She learned her lesson. She had bruises around her wrists, ankles, and throat and left town the day after their hook-up. There were a few other stories like that about Tommy but not much was said. People knew better than to gossip about him. If it got back to him, there’d be hell to pay.

This flesh payment my father took, Tia…she’s a real looker, a knockout. And sweet. She worships my brother. He’s a lucky fucker. My brother was turned inside out over her. His whole focus, reason for what he did, his motivations … all changed. As I watched their love story play out I frequently thought about the fact that by that point I should’ve been married to Debbie a few years. She and I should’ve been thinkin’ about kids.

Debbie really wasn’t the maternal type and I guess I hadn’t really thought that through when I proposed because I wanted kids. After we split I found out she had an abortion and never told me. It shook me. If I’d married her, maybe she’d never have given me kids. Maybe she would’ve kept aborting them. Or maybe she’d have had kids but maybe I’d be raising kids that weren’t even mine. Before the “man whore” years I wanted a wife who’d drive a soccer mom Hummer (No woman of mine would ever be forced to drive a minivan) and fill it with enough sons to make up a soccer team. 

I wanted daughters, too, to spoil. I wanted my woman to drive our boys to soccer and our girls to ballet and to do that while wearing lace and garters underneath her clothes for me because she was still a wildcat for me. I was foolish to think Debbie would grow up and mature into something maternal, traditional. She never promised me the picket fence, never promised to grow old together. I just figured it was a natural progression. I pushed the signs she wasn’t
the one
away until I was forced to face them when I saw her on her knees deep-throating that fucking goof.

I was Dario Ferrano, respected in my field of work. I was a member of an influential family with ties to organized crime but the appearance of loose ties and not a small amount of mystery so I was revered
and
feared. But I wanted the traditional sort of family that the Ferranos were not.  I wanted someone I could have a real connection with.

I’d seen a little of what I’d wanted with my grandparents, my maternal grandparents. My ma grew up in a stable and loving home and when I spent time with her for two weeks every summer I saw that. She picked the wrong man to have kids with and that choice had far-reaching impact. I didn’t wanna make that same mistake.

Anyway, too bad I fell for a non-traditional girl. After I caught her it came to light that she’d cheated plenty. She was wild, willing to try anything in the bedroom, always bringing new ideas of ways to get us off. After we split I knew why. She’d been doing more than her fair share of wild oat sowing.

My father was married four times, widowed twice. He was in his early 50’s when he died. My Pop had not only been married 4 times but he also had a long string of girlfriends and mistresses in between and often at the same time and our upbringing was anything but traditional. 

Rarely saw my Ma, and when I did she was timid, broken. My Ma’s parents lived in Iceland and they were amazing. If I’d have grown up there I’m sure I’d be a very different man.

My grandfather was Italian, grandmother was from Iceland, and that’s where they retired. I visited them in Akureyri for a few weeks every summer until I was in my late teens and that’s where I got a glimpse of a normal family life. My ma came from a big family and most of my Icelandic cousins came from stable homes with married parents. My grandparents were married 50 years, my grandmother died peacefully in her sleep and then my grandfather died in his sleep three days later because he just couldn’t live without her. I wanted
that
kind of love.

I wanted a woman who was spirited, beautiful, who loved to fuck, and who wanted a family as a means of getting more out of life, not out of settling. I wanted a woman who had substance. I didn’t want the Barbie dolls my Pop had around, didn’t want a shell of a woman like my Ma was turned into out of the fear she lived with because of my father. I wanted someone real, spunky, loving, interesting. After Deb fucked me over I closed my heart off. I didn’t see anyone around me who seemed real enough for me to let them in. Maybe I just never gave anyone else a chance.

Pop died after alienating his family. After he died I was taking stock. I’d been doing it a while beforehand, really, watching my brother fall in love and seeing what he was getting. A girl with fight in her, a girl who was awesome with my sisters and our nieces and nephews. And I wanted it all. I wanted success in my work life and I wanted a family. I also didn’t wanna worry about people kidnapping or shooting at my family. I didn’t want my wife and kids to face the risks we’d all faced due to my father’s choices, especially seeing what it did to Contessa who’d been widowed and left with two boys to raise on her own. I was spending time with my nephews, trying to be a male figure for them. So was Eddy, my brother-in-law, but those boys would grow up without their father. Jimmy was a good fuckin’ guy and didn’t deserve to have his life cut short at 26 years old.

And what all the drama had put my brother and Tia through? It was enough to make me do my damnedest to avoid the same thing.

Tia made him better. I wanted a woman who’d make me wanna be better, too. I didn’t know if I’d ever get back to resembling who I was before Deb cheated but after I got back from Tommy’s wedding I decided on a new era. I was gonna clean up my life.

New motto: man whore no more.

From then on I wasn’t gonna waste my time with women who weren’t likeminded. I’d try to thaw my heart but would probably have to settle because if she was wild like Deb she probably wouldn’t want the picket fence. I wanted both but it wasn’t likely so I’d pick picket fences and sensible bikini briefs over the garter belts and thongs if it came right down to it. It’d suck to settle but I’d already had the wild girl and that hadn’t worked out so if I had to settle, I had to.

Not long after we were back from Costa Rica I turned 25. We had a small family dinner with my sisters, my brother-in-law Eddy, my Pop’s widow Lisa, and my nieces and nephews. But the next day I found out what Pop had gotten me for my birthday. He’d arranged it before he died.

I found out that Pop had procured a wife for me. She was almost 23, was a redhead like I’d jokingly requested in memory of my science lab partner who maybe would’ve had a better outcome for me than Deb. This girl was American, and she’d been in captivity for 2 years, trained to be the perfect slave. Part of the deal was that if I wanted, she’d be put in a 30 to 60 day program to take her from slave material to wife material, some value-added transition service the resort that had offered for those who wanted their “possessions” to function flawlessly outside of the bedroom. I got the news via an associate of Pop’s, a lawyer I hadn’t met more than three or four times.