Twisted Obsessions (SIN CITY HEAT SERIES Book 2) (20 page)

     “
I don’t care!” Angelo roared. “This is Dominick we’re talking about! This is my brother!” Angel turned away from Oscar and ran a trembling hand over the low-cut waves in his hair. “What was I thinking to let him hold the drugs…” he mumbled to himself.

     “
Angelo, Dom is sixteen years old! We can have him out by the time he’s eighteen.”

     Angel swung around to face Oscar with an incredulous expression. “What?! No! I don't want my brother to spend one fucking minute in jail, let alone two years! Are you even listening to what you’re saying?”

     Oscar walked over and stared at him intently. “Two years compared to a lifetime. Do you think Dominick would want that for you? He loves you just as much as you love him.”

     Angel shook his head, still not allowing the words Oscar was speaking to settle and take root in his mind, but Oscar persisted.

     “
We can make sure his time is easy. No one – and I mean no one – will touch him.”

     Angel took staggering steps back and dropped down on the chair behind him. His head fell into his hands as the enormity of what Oscar was proposing became clear.

     Oscar continued. “Their so called 'informant'?” Oscar spat the word out as if it was something vile and revolting. “He’s a dead man and doesn’t even know it yet. So is his family. I don’t give a fuck how safe they think they’re keeping him. I’ll have his whereabouts within the hour. A judge on our payroll will preside over the trial. This is the best option for everyone, Angelo.”

     Oscar became silent as he waited on Angel’s decision. Finally, Angel gave him an imperceptible nod to proceed. In doing so, he knew he may have lost the only family he had left.

     Back in Vegas, Dominick's public defender was abruptly fired and a high powered attorney took his place. When Dominick entered the small room to consult with his new lawyer, he was surprised, then relieved to see Angel there as well. Angel walked over and pulled Dominick to him and hugged him tight.

     “I need to speak to my brother. Alone,” he told the attorney.

     Once the other man left the room, Angel looked Dominick over as if making sure he was okay, and saw the fear in Dom’s eyes that he so valiantly tried to hide. “Are you alright, Nick? Did they hurt you?”

     “No.” Dominick shook his head. “I didn’t tell them anything, though. I swear. Angel, when can I go home?”

     Angel blinked rapidly and looked away for a moment before meeting his brother's eyes. “Nicky, I need to talk to you.”

     He slowly outlined the plan Oscar had come up with for Dominick to take the rap for the charges, and how it would be arranged for him to serve a couple of years.  “Nicky, I'm not telling you that you have to do this. But...”

     “But if you take the blame, they would lock you up for life,” Dominick finished. He was under no illusion as to who and what his brother was.

     Angel's anguish showed on his face as he stood there in silence. He would never forgive himself for putting Dominick in this situation.

     “Are you sure I would only have to do two years?”

     “Yes.”

      Dominick stared over his brother's shoulder, deep in thought, but it only took him a few minutes to meet Angel’s eyes and nod. “Okay.”

     “Nicky...”

    “We have to, Angel. It'll be okay.” He gave his brother a shaky smile of reassurance. “I can do two years with my eyes closed.”

     But the sentence handed down to Dom was five times that. He was given ten years. He would serve time in a juvenile detention center, and then be transferred to a maximum security prison once he turned eighteen.

    
As he was being led out of the court room amid mournful wails from his mother, Dom stared at Angel with accusing eyes full of disbelief. Angel could clearly read the expression on Dominick's face: he thought Angel had set him up.

    
Their mother turned to Angel with loathing clouding her face and slapped him so hard his head snapped around on his neck. “You did this, Angelo! You did this! You are the devil! I curse the day you were born!” She was still spewing words of hatred in a mixture of English as well as her native French tongue as his father led her out the courtroom.

    
Angel's jaw jumped and flexed as he stared at the doors his parents had exited out of before turning his rage on the lawyer. “What in the hell happened! He was only supposed to get a couple of years!”

    
The lawyer nervously cleared his throat. “He was looking at twenty-five to life. I assume the judge didn’t want it to be obvious that he was going easy on Dominick.”

    
Angel lowered his face to the lawyer's. “He was paid to go easy! And YOU were paid to make sure things went smoothly!” he hissed.
 

    
The lawyer’s body literally quaked with fear. “I-I’m sorry, Mr. Lacroix. “W-w-we’ll appeal.”

   
Turning piercing, wintergreen eyes to the judge, Angel's fury reached across the courtroom to wrap around the corrupt judge like a constricting blanket. The judge refused to even look his way.

     
Oscar pulled at Angel's arm as he, too, glared at the judge. “Angelo, we'll fix it.”

    
Angel jerked his arm away from Oscar and walked out of the courtroom without another word, ignoring the continuous flash of light from the cameras and the barrage of questions being thrown at him by reporters covering the trial.

  
That night, as the judge's wife walked into their bedroom to go to sleep, she called out a weary goodnight to her husband who was lying with his back to her. He'd just gotten into bed ten minutes ago, so she knew he wasn't asleep yet. His usual routine was to read for thirty minutes before he nodded off, more times than not, still resting with his back against the headboard and the book in his hand. It was unlike him to have dozed off so quickly.

   
She touched his shoulder and called his name again. In the darkness, she frowned and pulled her hand away, rubbing her fingers together at the warm sticky substance on the sheet. Leaning over him, she turned on the small table lamp sitting on his nightstand. When she looked down, her scream was bloodcurdling and full of terror.

    
The judge's throat had been slashed from ear to ear and his tongue pulled out through the gaping, open wound, lying against his flesh like a bloody steak ready to be cooked. Blood saturated the front of his pajamas and the bed covers, and flowed from his body like a sea of murky, red water. Whoever had murdered him had done the job swiftly with an expertise which suggested a professional hit.
  

    
Several days later, Dominick was scheduled to be taken away to begin his sentence. The guard brought him to a room first and told to sit down. When Angel walked in five minutes later, Dominick stared at him with eyes full of distrust.

    
“Nick...you have to believe me. This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

   
Dominick shook his head. “Save it! I don't believe a word you say!” Dominick didn’t want to cry, but the tears would not be stifled.

    
“You know I would never lie to you! Nick please. I'm gonna take care of it!”

    
“I want to go home! Can you do that?!
Mom and Pop were right! You only care about yourself, Angelo! From now on I don’t have a brother! Do you hear me?! You’re dead to me! I never want to see you again!”

    
 
Angelo’s heart felt as if it had been twisted and ripped out of his chest.

    
“
Get out! I hate you, Angelo!”

    
That was the last time Dominick saw his brother. True to his word, months later Angel was somehow able to get a judge to declare a mistrial, and Dominick was retried. Five of the ten year sentence was suspended, which would allow him to be released when he turned twenty-one.

    
At age eighteen, once he was transferred to a minimum security prison, Dom still had to prove himself and earn respect. He'd already become hard and jaded from the horrors he'd witnessed in prison, although none of it touched him because of Angle's protection. While locked up, he got his GED and then his college degree in two years’ time.

      
Moments before he walked out the gates to freedom, an envelope was delivered to him. Enclosed was a check with enough zero’s to enable him to finish his education as he had planned to do and live comfortably for the rest of his life. Dominick burnt the check and ground it into the dirt once he was outside. He didn’t want his brother’s guilt money. The only thing he wanted from him was to be left alone.

    
Dominick never attempted to make contact with Angel…until last night.
    
“Dom?” Keisha rose to one elbow and blinked up at him through tired, bleary eyes.
    
“Hi, baby.”

    
Keisha looked over at the window and saw that the sun was beginning to rise. “You haven’t been to sleep? Baby, you need some rest.”
    
“I’m fine, Keisha. By the time I close my eyes, it would be time for me to get up anyway.”
 
   
“How did it go last night? Who did you go to see?”
    
Dominick was silent for a long time before he spoke. “My brother.”
    
“Your….I didn’t know you had a brother. You told me your family was dead. He lives here…in Vegas?”
    
“Yep.”
    
“Why haven’t you ever mentioned him?”
    
“My family - the only family that meant something to me - is gone. But I had no other choice. I knew if anyone could help us, he could.” Plus, as Dominick had told Angel - he owed him.
    
He went over to lie beside Keisha on the bed and slowly told her the entire story. Some of the things he admitted to her, he’d never breathed to another living soul. His ex-wife knew very little about his early life. The hurt he’d kept buried deep inside came flooding out as did the regret he felt for his wasted youth, sorrow for the parents he still missed so much…and the sense of loss he felt for the brother he mourned as if he, too, were dead. She let him talk until he fell into an exhausted sleep.
    
Closing her eyes, she held him to her breast and soothingly rubbed his back. One way or the other, Rochelle would pay for bringing this pain into their lives. When she saw that psycho bitch, she was going to give a whole new definition to the word crazy.