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Dom continued to give her the cold shoulder as he started to break down his gun. Watching him ignore her hurt Maria more than she’d like to admit, but thinking back to how horribly she had talked to him the last time, she wouldn’t get any sleep tonight if she didn’t try.

“Why didn’t you tell me that you weren’t the one who killed Kayne?” Her voice came out as a whisper.

Picking up a rag off the table, he wiped down the parts of his gun he had separated. It took him several long moments when he finally spoke. “Would you have believed me?”

“I … don’t know,” she answered truthfully. Carefully, she watched him, entranced with the way he was caring for his weapon. “But you should have at least given me the chance to believe you.”

“I didn’t tell you because”—Dominic finally looked up from what he was doing to meet her eyes—“I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t have done it myself.”

Maria swallowed, listening to him recount Kayne’s final moments.

“I had the gun in my hand, Maria. I might not have been the one to take his life, but I can’t promise you I wouldn’t have done the same as Lucca did five seconds later.”

Nodding, she took his answer for what it was—the truth. It might not have been what she wanted to hear, but she wanted the truth. It was something her father had never given her when it came to this profession.

“Why didn’t you tell me he was a cop? I deserved to know, and you had no right to keep that from me, Dominic.” That was what upset her the most—the secrets the men kept from her. It was exhausting and demeaning, especially when it concerned her. Maria didn’t know what the men were trying to “save” her from, but it certainly hadn’t helped the little bit of heart she had when it shattered into even tinier pieces. The irony was, the more they tried to protect Maria, the more hurt she got.

She might have been backstabbed by Kayne, but Dominic and Lucca had betrayed her just as badly.

When she watched his hazel eyes drifted back to his task, Maria became furious that he hadn’t answered her, going back to giving her the cold shoulder.

“Fine,” she snapped, jumping up from the table.

Maria couldn’t believe it when she made it to the front door and he had yet to stop her. Normally, she would have flung the door open and stormed out, but putting her hand on the doorknob, slowly turning it, she realized she shouldn’t have called his bluff

Come on ….

“Don’t.” Dominic’s commanding voice had her freezing in place.

Maria hid her smile, but it was wiped clean off when she turned at the sound of a chair screeching to see Dom’s serious expression and imposing stance. His hazel depths scorched her. He didn’t take them off her for a second.

“Leave, Cassius.”

Cass did as followed, quietly turning off the TV, then getting up.

Maria pressed her back up against the door as Dom’s fierce gaze kept her from leaving. Her breath caught in her throat, knowing that, as soon as Cassius left the room, she would be in deep shit with the way Dominic was looking at her.

A bedroom door closing down the hall told her that they were alone, making every hair on her body stand up.

“By the time I found out you and Kayne had a thing, it was already too fucking late.” Dominic’s heated words were almost as hot as his stare. Slowly, he stalked toward her, closing the distance between them as he continued. “I wanted you to fucking choose me over Kayne. Not because you found out he was a cop and I was your second option, but because I was the only option.”

It was unbearable to keep her eyes on his, seeing how badly she hurt Dom by choosing Kayne over him. He didn’t even try to hide his pain.

Lucca was right … Dominic was madly in love with her, and she completely missed it. Maybe it was because the idea of her and him ever being together was absolutely insane, considering who their fathers were. But the last thing she truly expected was for Dominic to wholeheartedly love her. She wrongly assumed that, because his last name was Luciano, his intentions would be to use her. Instead, she ended up in the arms of a man who had done exactly that.

I’d rather love a dead man and be alone for the rest of my life than ever love you.

Maria’s words struck her like a high-speed Mack truck.

She finally drifted her jeweled eyes to his chest, no longer able to look at the pain in his. Maria had known she would hurt him before she’d said those words. She had wanted him to hurt, just as badly as he had hurt her by killing Kayne … or so she thought.