Page 85 of Scorned Beauty

“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.”