Page 52 of Dom 5: The Finale
“How they look at you?”
She lifted her eyes to mine. “Like they know better.”
That almost made me laugh cause she had a lot to learn. “Good.” I told her instead.
“You sound proud.” She smiled.
I took a sip of my drink and leaned back into the couch. “You wanted power. You didn’t wanna be looked at like some little spoiled cartel princess, now you got it.”
Her eyes softened at that. “I wanted you to see it.”
The room got quieter after she said that because she had finally gotten closer to the truth of why any of this shit was happening at all. She set the wine glass down and turned more fully toward me with one arm draped along the backside of the couch behind my shoulders.
“I know how this sounds,” she said softly, “but I used to think if you ever saw me away from all the noise in Miami, away from Carmen, away from all that… maybe things would be different.”
I let that comment sit right there between us because silence always made people reveal more. “You still think that?” I asked after a second.
She looked down at her lap first, then back up at me, and the expression on her face would’ve made another nigga feel important. Hope always looked flattering on a beautiful woman but I didn’t give a fuck about it.
“Sometimes,” she admitted. “Sometimes I think you only stay because your life got complicated.”
That was the first time she said the baby without saying the baby. I rolled the glass slowly in my hand and looked at her. “Complicated how?”
She gave a little nervous laugh. “You know what I mean.”
“I want to hear you say it.”
Her eyes dropped, then rose again. “I think Carmen being pregnant changed everything.”
I didn’t lose my cool cause I was too calculated for that. “She’s my wife.”
“I know.” She replied quickly, like she wanted to get past that part before the truth of it could really settle in on her. “I’m not saying you don’t care about her. I’m saying maybe you feel stuck.”
That was was her ugly truth and the shit she convinced herself of. It was just the quiet, ugly thing she had been feeding in her own mind this whole time. The idea that Carmen only had what she had because she was carrying my child made her feel better. That if it wasn’t for the baby, I would’ve drifted somewhere else., somewhere toward somebody like Victoria. She really had built herself a whole little dream.
I looked at her long enough to make her shift and I slowly cocked my head to the side. “You think that?”
She tightened her fingers around the stem of the glass. “I think you keep calling me for a reason.”
That answer was honest… a little delusional, but honest. I leaned forward and set my drink down on the table in front of us. “Victoria, men call women for a lot of reasons.”
She looked at me like she was trying to decide if I was teasing her or warning her. “And what reason are you calling me for?”
That was the kind of question you had to be careful with. Too much truth too early and she might get cold and too much softness and she’d get worse with the fantasy. I needed her warm, and comfortable, not suspicious and guarded.
“I call because I know how your mind works,” I told her looking in her eyes. “And if I don’t, you get in your feelings and start doing stupid shit.”
It made her laugh, but there was pain in it too. “So, this is management?”
“Partly.”
She stared at me. “That’s cruel.”
“It’s honest though and you know I’m honest.”
She looked away, and for a second I thought maybe that would be enough to sober her up a little. Maybe enough to give her some pride back but then she reached for the bottle and poured more wine into her glass instead, with her hand steadier than I expected.
“You know what your problem is?” she asked.
