Page 34 of Scorned Beauty (Scorned Fate #5)

“Fine, Dom, you can do it. But only if we don’t damage the tracker.” I was regaining some of my spunk. Apparently the man before me had a way of firing me up.

“I’ve done it before,” Dom informed me.

“Why am I not surprised?” I said dryly. “I’m gonna get my kit and change.

” It was no big deal, but I could see how the two women would be averse to doing it.

Handling a scalpel and cutting into skin could make the inexperienced woozy.

I’d seen both men and women faint just by looking at a needle plunge into muscle.

I put on a bikini bottom and peeked out of my bedroom, but Dom was already leaning against the wall outside of it. For fuck’s sake.

He entered the room with all the predatory vibes in the universe. Even hungover, he radiated a lethal aura only enhanced by his rough appearance.

“Don’t even think of trying any seduction.”

He genuinely looked insulted. “I’m not that insensitive.”

I grabbed the marker I had brought out and faced the full-length mirror. I felt around for the tracker. “It’s right here. You can probably see the incision site.”

He lowered to a knee and moved his head closer. I could feel his breath on my skin. I wasn’t aroused and was surprisingly jaded. “Just so you know, my libido is dead.” It was probably from the antidepressants I was taking, but he didn’t need to know that.

“I’m just concerned for you. Bianca and Sera already warned me and gave Sandro the green light to take me out if I misbehave.”

His tone was part amused, part affronted. Like he couldn’t believe their loyalty was to me instead of him. I also wasn’t sure how I felt about Bianca and Sera stepping in to defend me, but I remembered my therapist’s words about allowing people to help me.

It wasn’t weakness.

Blowing out a breath, I handed him the marker. “Please mark the spot.”

“So I don’t cut the wrong ass cheek?” he quipped.

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, that.”

He chuckled and drew a dot on the area, taking longer than was necessary to accomplish the task.

“Stop feeling me out.” He had his free palm on my other cheek, but it was totally innocent.

Maybe.

“You’re so prickly,” he grumbled. “I just want to be precise.”

“Riigght.”

Now that we’d established where the tracker was, it was time to take it out. I’d already prepared the instruments. “This is the anesthesia, the scalpel, and the tweezers. You need help on…”

“I got this, baby.”

I gritted my teeth at the endearment. He was making it sound like we were still together, but I held my tongue. Because I wasn’t about to antagonize the person who was about to perform minor surgery on me.

Dom delivered the anesthesia like he’d done it countless of times.

“Do you get to play mob doc too?” I asked, just so we had something to talk about while the anesthesia took effect.

“Sometimes when he’s not available, and a bullet needs to come out or a knife wound needs stitching. That kind of thing.” He sat back on his heels and stared up at me.

“You’ve lost weight,” I blurted out.

“I could say the same about you.” We let the silence wrap around us for a few seconds.

“I’m sorry about Billy,” he said. “I…I was there.”

“What do you mean?” I choked out before suppressing a ragged sob.

“When they found his grave,” he said. “God, Sloane, I’ve never been more terrified in my life. I thought the second body was you.”

“Sometimes I wish it was…” I whispered.

“No,” he growled. “Don’t say that. Otherwise, I’m moving in here with you.”

I emitted a brittle laugh. “Seems you have no problem invading my privacy.”

“Hate me forever if you must. I made the mistake of taking what we had for granted once. I’m not doing it again.”

We had so many missteps between us, but I was still struggling to get over Billy’s death and his secret with Harriet.

“Billy killed my father,” I blurted out.

Dom reeled back like I’d punched the breath out of him. “Come again?”

“My father didn’t leave us,” I rushed out. I had told no one else, not even my therapist. “But Billy caught him beating up Mom, and he said…he just saw red and grabbed the baseball bat and hit Dad on the head. Over and over.”

“Holy fuck. He told you this where? In the basement of that house?”

“Before he…he passed. He wanted to get it off his chest. Mom panicked and went to Harriet. I think Harriet had told a story to Mom about a friend who went to the Russian mafia to get rid of her abusive husband, but I think Harriet was talking about herself.”

“So Harriet put your mom and Billy in contact with Grigori?”

“Yes,” I whispered in the same breath as, “I think it’s numb.”

Dom looked at me strangely and I tipped my chin to where he’d poked me with a needle. “The incision site.”

“Sorry,” he muttered.

“Do you want to do this some other time?” Because he looked as dazed as I was when Billy revealed the truth.

Granted, I was miscarrying at that time too and suffering from blood loss.

Sometimes I replayed it in my head like it was a bad dream.

That for years, the three most important people in my life hadn’t instigated the lie I’d been living.

That I didn’t waste those years thinking Billy was a worthless piece of shit of a brother when he’d been living with the guilt that he killed our father.

That he let me live with that hole inside me that our father abandoned his family, and we weren’t worth it to stay.

I was rewiring my beliefs with the way I’d made my choices because of them, and they were a tangled mess inside me.

“No, I want to get this thing out of you,” Dom told me gently.

And I didn’t know whether it was the sympathy in his voice that brought tears to my eyes. “I don’t know why I unloaded this on you when you hurt me, too.”

I hated how my voice warbled. Dom was the last man I wanted to see me at my most vulnerable.

Regret etched his features. “Because I was your person,” he said. “And I betrayed you.”