OWN HER: A Dark Mafia Romance(85)

He stood up and growled, “Sit your ass down, Dominic. You remember who you’re talking to. I am your President.”



“Then act like it,” I flashed back.



He shook his head. The man was angry, but he was a master at cool. “Fuck. This is so fucked-up. First of all, you need to check your tone, and check your presumptions at the gate. You are a member of this MC, and a brother, so I’m gonna give you just one pass for the shit you just pulled, but you gotta know, that shit does not fly. I am your President, and you gotta remember that. Regardless of what you think you know is going on.”



“Pres—” I hated myself for going off like that on him, too, and I totally saw his point. But I was fucking angry, about everything from Manny to the Hardcore gig and the loss of fraternity at the compound and with the MC in general. It just felt like everything involving Storm had been losing. But he had a point. I really should not have let it out like that on him.



Clav got it, and he got me. He knew where I was coming from and where I was at. He was a big enough man that he could see from my perspective, and he didn’t wait for the apology. “Dom—fuck, man, this shit is real, and you need to get that.” He looked me in the eye again. “I was not lying about Fielding wanting you dead and your woman under lock. That’s real, and he’s dead serious. I swear to you. I would not make this shit up. So you needed to know, and you need to be careful, and I’m serious when I say you should think about skipping town for a while.



“The rest of it—I get that you got a right to info about Manny, dude. I know that. But that gets tied up with shit you do not have a consideration in, so you gotta understand that the thing that is driving this clusterfuck is bigger than Manny. And I know that’s hard to hear, but that’s my reality, and that’s what I gotta live with.”



He paused, and I could tell he was wavering on whether or not to let me in. “I’m not gonna share it with you if you are gonna make the smart choice here and get yourself and your woman out of town. There’s no point in you knowing, then. So you gotta make that decision now. If you’re gonna go, you should just go. And we’ll sort it out, and then you can come back. We can have full honesty then, and we will.”



I looked in his eyes, which were fierce and so tired. He was my President, my brother, my friend. And he was fighting. I could finally see that, looking outside my own narrow self. And all of a sudden, I understood that whatever the bigger that was going on was, he needed help. He was near to drowning in it, even if he didn’t see it that way.



“I’m sticking with you, Pres. Tell me. Let me in. Let’s bring down whatever the shitstorm is. I’m not goin’ anywhere.”



He looked at me another moment, shook his head, sighed, and gave me a brief chin up. “You are a stand-up man, brother.” He went to pour himself a drink, and I retook my seat on the couch.



“Okay, Dom. Tell me what you know about it, so I can figure where to start.”



“I only know that you and Manny were both at the porno lot the day he went down. Sienna dropped her sister off in the lot, saw you two at the door to the warehouse. Her sister never showed back, so something—whatever it was—happened that day. To both Tania and Manny. I don’t know the details beyond that, but I know that much.”



“Okay, Dom. Yeah.” He nodded his head, squaring his thoughts. “So, they did the shoot. Since we were just security for Ronn, we weren’t in the room. He had us standing guard in the hallway at the door. Which was fucking freezing that day. Fucker. But he said it was a closed set, no watchers. So we didn’t know what was goin’ on till after. But fuck, Dom. That was some sick fucking shit they were filming in there. That girl…” He shook his head, heavy with regret. “But we didn’t know that, yet. We just thought it was regular porn. So we stood there.”



“Wait a minute. Who all was in there?”



He grunted. “Right. Joey Ronn and Jonathan Fielding were both in there. The girl. And there was a camera guy. There had been a lighting guy and a woman there earlier, doing costumes and makeup and shit, I guess, but they left before they started taping.



“We were probably standing out there an hour and a half, hearin’ all kinds of noises from the girl, but that’s kind of par for the course, right? I mean, I figured they gagged her, so, you know, just a lot of high-pitched noises. Those eventually stopped.”



He shook his head. “Finally, Fielding came out. He didn’t look at us, just left the building. We waited a few more minutes, and then Ronn poked his head out, looked at us, and said, just to Manny, ‘You. Get in here.’