Page 54 of Hard Bargain

Cassian had stopped pretending to do anything else. He just watched. “Whatever it is,” he said after a long moment, “you’re wound tight as hell.”

“I’m fine.”

Cassian snorted. “It’s Sunday,” he said. “My mom’s doing the usual brunch. The whole family will be there. Might do you some good. Go shower. We’ll head over.”

Dominic flexed his fingers once, feeling the ache settle deep in his knuckles.

Fine. He needed to be around something loud and familiar. Something that required nothing from him except that he showed up, ate too much, and tolerated his aunt's probing questions.

“Alright,” he said.

Cassian’s grin came back immediately. “That’s what I like to hear.”

* * *

His aunt Lucia lived across town in a house that was too small for the number of people currently inside it. It stood on a quiet street lined with trimmed hedges and neatly parked cars. Modest. Well-kept. The kind of neighborhood where people knew each other’s names.

Dominic had spent most Sundays here growing up. The furniture was different now. Fresh paint on the front door. Same house.

Through the front window he could already see movement inside. Laughter spilled out onto the sidewalk before they even reached the door.

It opened before they knocked. “Finally,” his aunt said, smiling like she’d been waiting on them personally. She hugged Cassian first, then pulled Dominic into a crushing embrace. “You look tired,” she told him disapprovingly.

“I’m not.”

She gave him a look that said she knew better.

Inside, the house was warm and familiar, walls lined with family photos, shelves packed with porcelain figurines and old trophies. Voices layered over one another. The smell of onions, garlic, and sweet bread filled the air.

His mother stood near the kitchen island, laughing at something one of her brothers said. Her gray hair was clipped back loosely, soft strands brushing her cheek.

She spotted him and her expression shifted instantly. “Dominic.”

He crossed the room and kissed her cheek. She slid her hand up to his face, thumb brushing along his cheekbone in the same way she had since he was a boy. “Your father’s coming later,” she said. “He had to finish something.”

His father had worked two jobs for most of Dominic’s childhood. Construction during the day, warehouse shifts at night. He’d worked more than he’d been home, but he never complained.

His mother worked too, and she carried the rest of the household without asking for credit. They were poor enough that bills were discussed in low voices at the kitchen table. Poor enough that new shoes meant waiting for the old ones to give out completely. Dominic remembered the way his mother stretched groceries so five kids never quite noticed there wasn’t much to stretch.

He’d hated the permanent exhaustion in his father’s eyes. The way tension lived in his mother’s shoulders like it belonged there. He’d decided early he wouldn’t live like that. He wouldn’t measure life by what was affordable. He didn’t want “maybe next month” to be a sentence he ever had to say.

That decision had shaped everything that followed. He’d told himself he would build something big enough that the word practical never dictated his choices again.

He’d offered to move his parents to a bigger house more than once. His father had listened, considered it, then declined with calm finality. “This is our house,” he’d say.

Dominic understood the pride in that. The house represented survival on their terms. They accepted some help eventually. He paid what they let him pay. Covered things they pretended not to notice. Bought them reliable cars they would never have bought for themselves.

“Sit! Eat before it gets cold!” his aunt Lucia called.

Dominic had barely taken his seat when Abuela’s voice cut clean through the room. “Dominic.”

He looked up immediately. You didn’t ignore that tone.

She sat at the head of the table, posture straight despite her years, silver hair pinned perfectly in place. Everyone else might shout over one another, but Abuela never raised her voice. She didn’t need to; conversations dimmed around her without her having to ask for it.

“Yes, Abuela.”

“You are how old now?” she asked mildly.