TNT: The Dominator Series

TNT

a DARK MAFIA ROMANCE novella

part of

The Dominator series

DD PRINCE

SECOND EDITION

Copyright ©2019, 2024 DD PRINCE; First published in 2019.

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This is a fictional story, the product of the author’s imagination. Copyrights are the property of their respective owners.

NOTICE:

This book is not intended for those under the age of 18. It contains strong language, violence, and sexual content. If you do not enjoy such books, this might not be the book for you.

This book takes place between books  1 and 2 in The Dominator Series timeline but is best experienced after reading Unbound (The Dominator Series, book 3)

Dedication:

For those of you who, even a couple of years after reading Tommy and Tia’s book, mention him as one of your top anti-hero book boyfriends.

Thank you for supporting my dream.

Much love!

This book is a companion book to the Dominator series.

It’s best experienced after you’ve read the whole series, but can be read between books one and two. Do not read before reading The Dominator – or you’ll be lost.

If you read it after book one, before book two, there will be some minor spoilers, but nothing earth-shattering.

The epilogue has some bonus material that spoils the Unbound (Book 3) epilogue.

CHAPTER ONE

Spread, I demanded.

She complied.

Miles of white fabric kept her hidden from me. And that wouldn’t do, so I shoved the dress up above her waist, exposing tiny, white silky panties that were covered in cherries.

Fucking cherries.

That thing in my chest flared.  That Tia thing.

She smiled shyly. Shyly. Fuck. My baby girl. She wore these for me. She did so fucking much for me.

She looked so fucking beautiful today. On her wedding day.

Who do you belong to?  I demanded to know, as I fastened her ankles to the spreader bar.

She looked completely submissive in that wedding gown, looking beautiful, eyes shining with love. With trust. My wife.  Lying in a bed of rose petals.

Mine.

I belong to my husband, she answered, tears shimmering in her beautiful jade green eyes.

I shut my eyes and let that wash through me.

Never knew getting married would mean so much. Never knew that my perfect other half was out there. All I had to do was claim her.  Had no clue how different it’d feel knowing she wasn’t just mine because I said so, she was also mine before the law, God, the world.

Yeah, it’s been a bumpy road, and yeah, I took someone and claimed her as mine, as much as she resisted in the early days.

Naw, it was far from moral, since she probably only opened up to me because I saved her from a fate worse than me in Mexico, but here we were.

I claimed her, and it would be on the highlight reel of my life, that moment in a bathroom in a hotel in Las Vegas when she first declared that she belonged to me.  Not only did I claim her, absolutely willing to hold onto her whether she wanted me or not, but she surrendered.

And she isn’t broken.

My Tia is stronger, stronger and wiser, than anyone looking at her might expect a girl this young, this beautiful to be.

And here in paradise, in the sand by a house I rented for us, we made it legal in front of God and my family.

And now it was time to consummate our marriage.

My thoughts flashed to my father, and not for the first time today. Pop would’ve wanted a full catholic mass. Pop would’ve wanted four hundred plus guests, including his business associates and everyone else who bowed down to him, slapped his back and were ready to suck his dick if he so much as gave the word. He would not have been pleased with the type of wedding I had instead.

Then again, Pop threatened to hurt her by having a bloody wedding dress left outside my bedroom balcony door when I began to defy him. A signature Tom Ferrano warning. Dare found it and got rid of it before Tia saw it that night, but I saw it after the fact. And it was imprinted on my brain, present in my night terrors.

And then my father shattered my loyalty to him by taking her from me, knowing full fucking well what she meant to me.

Pop would not factor here on our wedding night.

I wanted, no needed, this beautiful fucking dress off her.

CHAPTER TWO

Rewind – Aruba

We were taking time away after the trying weeks we’d endured.

Heck, after the whirlwind that been our relationship so far.

Kidnappings - me twice, not including my initial abduction on high school graduation day. Him once.

Blood.

Murder - murder of enemies. Murder of family members.

Funerals.

Angst. So much angst.

Tommy decided we’d get a chance to catch our breath before the wedding.  But, not much of a chance, because he insisted he was marrying me at the first fucking opportunity.

Everything was piling up on him. And of course it was, after all we’d endured.

He’d say he was fine, shrug off my concerns, but I could see it in the clench in his jaw, the hardness in his whisky eyes. I could hear it in the mild irritation that always seemed to be in his voice. And I felt it in the way he did not rest easy beside me or under me at night.  

He spent a lot of time with his heavy bag. The day before we finished packing up the house was not a good day, and I could feel his frustration with life in the air around him.

I found him in the basement, not punching the bag, instead in a pose that reeked of distress, body glistening with sweat, gloves on his hands, but his arms were wrapped around the bag in an embrace, his face buried in the Everlast logo.

I wanted to go in and put my arms around him, comfort him, but I knew he wouldn’t have wanted me to see him like that, so instead, I backed away and went back upstairs with a heavy heart.

Would a holiday help after all he’d been through lately?

Planning and then attending Tom Sr.’s funeral. Watching Tessa exist, subsist, in the depths of despair over losing James, then her father.

Having Lisa go from catatonic for days to suddenly acting like everything was just fine despite the murder of her husband, which she was told was the fault of enemies and that they’d been dealt with.

Sarah said she hadn’t even shed a tear at the news. She just went perfectly still. Statue-like. For hours. It was concerning, to say the least. This was followed by her being quiet and hiding out in her bedroom for days.

We saw her armor slip for just a nanosecond when she announced to all of us, during lunch at the house while we were planning the funeral, that she was pregnant. She was hanging onto this pregnancy as a coping mechanism, it seemed. The timing was probably a blessing. She’d lost her husband, but had something to look forward to. She got to keep this piece of him, of their love.  

As twisted as he was, it was obvious he was something else for Lisa.

People could say the same about Tommy and me. They likely did.

Luciana was emanating her feelings of powerlessness like a big beacon, and struggling with how to deal with it all. She had a new baby and a dead father, a broken sister, dead brother-in-law, and angry, brooding big brothers. You could feel it in the air around her... her despair, her desire yet inability to fix things.  She was coping by trying to mother everyone, even though she was the baby of the family. She did the bulk of the planning with Sarah for the celebration of life and funeral.

Dario was stepping up in a big way. He encouraged us to go away and enjoy our vacation, then plan our wedding; plan our happily ever after.

He and Tommy had a heart-to-heart at some stage while they were planning Tom’s funeral and Tommy told me they’d decided that Dario would be staying back and working with a consulting firm to get the bulk of the Ferrano business holdings ready to be sold.

Life would be moving forward. Tommy wanted something away from the world of crime, if at all possible. He had said he wasn’t sure how possible it would be, though. He told me we’d have to wait and see. His biggest priority was getting me out of the country. He told me he just didn’t feel safe at home after all that had happened.

First Aruba. A vacation with just us. I chose it because the owner of the ice cream parlor I’d worked at had gone for his honeymoon and it sounded incredible. I loved the idea of visiting a lot of beaches and then maybe having a beach wedding.

Tommy arranged the trip and said we’d be meeting the family in Costa Rica for our wedding, there. He’d rent us a big beach house and it’d be a happy occasion. For all of us.

From there, I had no idea what would be next. Tommy had the wheel, the GPS, and the keys. I was along for the ride, trusting him to take care of us.

But, I really wanted to take care of him, too. He had on a brave face, wasn’t talking about what’d happened with his father. But, he wasn’t sleeping well and I knew that things were weighing heavily on him.

Aruba was meant to give us a minute to breathe.  And Aruba stole my breath.

***

I think I could happily stay here forever, I told him, on the drive to the hotel from the airport, taking in the beauty of the island through the windows of the taxicab.

He smiled at me, but only with his mouth, not with his beautiful whisky eyes.  We’ll see what happens.

There was stress, the dark circles of unrest, and uncertainty all over his features, and it’d all been there since the day Tom Sr. died.

And anger. He was definitely angry about being in this position, about his father putting him in the position where he was forced to choose between free will and Tom’s definition of loyalty.

He didn’t want to talk about it; he wanted to put my mind at ease when I asked questions. A few times, he got snippy, such as on the way to Aruba, when I was asking questions while we sat in the waiting lounge at the airport.

I’d pushed for information about our long-term plans.

What? You don’t trust me to keep you safe?  He glared at me.

What? No. That’s not what I’m—

Leave it all to me.

I don’t think it’s wrong of me to ask about our future, Tommy.

I’m tryin’ to fuckin’ figure out our future, Tia.

You don’t have to do that alone. And he shouldn’t expect to do it alone. I should have input. I should be a part of the conversation – that wasn’t a conversation, just inner dialogue I wasn’t participating in.

Oh. My mistake. You know how to deal with wise guy kingpins who’ll want you taken out if they suspect you killed your father? By all means, tell me what you think I should do about that. Help me. Whadaya got?  

Touché.

The emotion and misery in his eyes whenever he referred to killing his father?  It hurt me to see.

I knew he was wishing there had been another way. I knew it had to absolutely kill him to have to make that choice there in that moment, of whether or not to kill his father when there was a gun pointed at me.

I couldn’t imagine taking my own father’s life.

Of course I didn’t want to say that to him, to make him feel worse.

But, I belonged to a man who I knew had taken multiple lives. I didn’t know how many, wouldn’t ask, but I knew he would not hesitate to do it again