The Mafia's Queen: Entangled With A Psycho.

He watched her turn morbid— the gradual pallor of her face. He admired the shock the mere thought of him being free caused, he relished the fear being triggered in her just by the sight of him. 

Regina's eyes widened, her body stiff with terror as she peered into Dominic's chilling blue eyes from a distance. He was… alive?

Seven years without a single glance of him somehow convinced her that the man's sins had finally caught up with him. She should have known better. She should have known that a man like Dominic Kane doesn't die easily. Not even if he wanted to.

Slowly, his callused fingers tightened a grip around the steering wheel, the smirk on his face slanting into a smile, a surprisingly gentle one. And it seriously baffled Regina how he was still capable of smiling that way after all the bellicosity he had exuded during his time as the head of Kane mafia— well before Leo came of age and snatched the title away from him. How it happened still laid a mystery to most people in the business but when it did happen, even Salvador was left aghast. Some say it was intended to be a coup, some say Leo killed Dominic in cold blood to take the mafia for himself. That last part seemed to have been debunked given that the Dominic that people thought to be dead was now seated on the driver's seat of a car that was parked mere meters away. 

He was also smiling as well, gently yet oddly spine chilling but Regina didn't have time to begin contemplating the functionality of whatever defunct conscience the man had left. If he even had any left.

A second later, she snapped out of her shock-induced stupor, spun around, and sauntered to her car.

" Same old Regina… " He muttered under his breath as her car sped off into the clads of night. " She couldn't even say hi to an old friend." 

Dominic swerved his gaze to Damien as he watched him get back into the car with a fully wrapped box which he clenched on tightly to. Dominic's eyes instantly zeroed in on the box. From his versed experience with wrapped parcels, when it's being held with such utmost caution, the thing was either money, smuggled drugs, a gun, and sometimes— in worse cases that is— it could be a bomb. Judging by the way Damien gripped it firmly yet gently, the chances of it being a bomb wasn't quite zero.

Dominic's gaze drifted back to his son. " Is that a bomb?" 

Damien, who for some reason, wasn't fazed by his father's appalling question.

" Do you want it to be a bomb?" Damien retorted, his lips twitching into a wry smirk.

" Well…" Dominic couldn't spurn the rapt smile trudging onto his face. " That would certainly be an interesting way to die. But seriously," he cocked his head at the box. " what's in it?"

For the next ten seconds, the sound of Damien chuckling filled the car before gradually dying down as he turned to stare out the window, his eyes flitting rapidly with unease. He didn't respond.

Damien knew what awaited him back home but he rather not put it in thought now. His grip firmed around the box, he had a lot of explaining he had to do now that he was taking his father back and that only was enough to scare the hell out of him. Damien had never been the best at explaining his actions, mostly because a good number of his so-called actions usually sounded utterly absurd, irrational, and rarely coherent but to countless people's surprise, his plans generally had an eighty-five percent success rate. 

It was how he was able to take down Lazzerro, one of the most powerful mafia in America, and ensued a planned conflict between both families without getting a single backlash for his deeds. The comedic part of it all was that no one knew he had a hand in anything, how would they when all they were doing coevally was ganging up on Leo.

It was already the dead of night by the time they got home. The car cruised through tall opulent gates and the first thing that caught Damien's eye was the silhouette of a man leaning against the wall of a dark twilit corner, anxiously waiting for him.

Waiting to see his father. It had been so long.

Damien starked his grip on the box and turned to his father. " I'm getting off."

Dominic nodded. " Sure," He said, giving Damien time to step out so he could park the car properly.

Shutting the door, Damien wrought his way forward— towards the shadow with an acerbic blithe— without any form of cogitation to the fact that lurking in the shadows might be a potential threat. But then again, that person was no threat. A pain in the ass maybe, but certainly no threat. A transient spark of obduracy fueled his voyage through vapid darkness, smoldering every chink of rationale in him but at the same time, it mollified him from the dither. 

Damien neared, a frown dredging the detailed lines on his forehead.

" Ernesto," Damien called out, clutching the box in his hand tighter.

Gradually, the man straightened and his face came into view as he stepped out of the twilit corner. 

" Where is he?" Ernesto said, wasting no time on an amiable exchange of greetings. Unlike his brothers who had ravening dark hair, Ernesto, on the other hand, had lighter hair. Blond, just like his mother.

Damien snorted, " Is that all you have to say?" 

" Oh, I'm sorry. Am I supposed to go on my knees and thank you for doing something you didn't have the balls to do for seven years?" 

A transient silence strewed the atmosphere around them as they stared each other down for seconds unending. Right from childhood, Damien and Ernesto rarely saw eye to eye on things, always getting involved in trivial discrepancies.. Damien was cynical and imperious while Ernesto was even worse.