He stopped talking, but didn’t take his fingers from her mouth. Something disturbing stirred in his belly for the girl.
He already knew he wasn’t going to save her. He didn’t want to want to save her. He wanted to forget her. She’d be used, and hurt, and she’d be dead within five years. He knew this with certainty. Girls who were traded in this world never lasted long before it destroyed them, and the Gypsy Brothers had the blackest touch of all.
She blinked her huge eyes, and tears fell from them, running down her cheeks and hitting his hand. He lifted his hand off her lips and brushed more tears from her cheeks with his fingers.
He wanted to tell her she shouldn’t cry. That crying implied weakness. But, as the saltwater leaving her body burned on his hand, he said nothing. Because the minute he left the room, he was going to press his tongue to every one of her tears that had fallen onto his skin and taste how sweet they were himself.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Mariana
I was so annoyed that I’d cried in front of him. I’d cried on him, right into his hand. I was so angry with myself. Before he left, he didn’t take the cuffs from my wrists, but he didn’t shackle me back to the wall, either. The manacles were heavy, and I rested them in my lap as I sat on the bed.
I had seen a look on his face. Had I imagined it? Just before he had told me that he couldn’t help me. It was a look that said he wanted to, and I sat with my whirling thoughts, the stunned disbelief and helplessness seeping into every one of my pores until I was trembling with the futility of it all.
I was going to be a whore.
I was never getting away.
And I couldn’t decide which one was worse.
My breath quickened as I imagined strangers’ hands pressing me down, hurting me, taking everything from me until I was an empty shell.
I was so confused, so achingly numb. But the numbness was punctuated with fear, random moments of panic that would suddenly slice through me unbidden. He had answered the question of what was going to happen to me, and been smart enough to realise what I was trying to do before I even really realised myself. Making pretty eyes at him and trying to get him to help me. I could tell that he liked me. But I couldn’t figure out how to make that like into something that could save me from the hell that was imminent.
A couple of hours after he’d so graciously fed and watered me, Dornan was back, this time with Emilio. I flinched as soon as I saw the insipid kingpin, my ribs reminding me not to piss him off. I didn’t move from my spot on the bed when they entered, just watched and waited.
I was expecting something nasty, but when he asked me the first question, I definitely wasn’t prepared.
‘Are you a virgin?’ Emilio asked casually.
A virgin? I opened my mouth and laughed, a genuine laugh that started in my belly and spread through the room, unwelcome. I stopped abruptly when the vibration rocked my ribs, gasping and holding my side. I looked past Emilio to see Dornan’s mouth twitching up at the side.
Bang! Before I knew it, Emilio had stepped closer and struck my cheek. I tasted blood.
I cleared my throat. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said in an acid tone. ‘I figured you were joking.’
Emilio grinned.
‘We’ll just have a look, shall we?’
I rolled my eyes, but fear crept into my bones and glued my thighs tightly shut. ‘I assure you, I haven’t been a virgin in a long time.’
Emilio snapped his fingers and Dornan stepped forward.
‘I want you to find out if she’s a virgin or not,’ he said, his condescending expression fucking infuriating.
‘I already told you, I’m not,’ I snapped, narrowing my eyes at him.
He was going to turn me into a prostitute. Images of a never-ending line of faceless men, with bad breath and sweaty palms, grated at my nerves.
Panic bubbled up inside me, replacing the calm I’d worked so hard to maintain.
Don’t ever show fear.
Emilio grinned, his gold tooth glinting. ‘Have fun,’ he said, slapping his son on the shoulder. ‘And take an inventory while you’re there. But don’t mark the little bitch. We’ve already lost enough time from her unfortunate fall.’ He made rabbit ears with his fingers as he said the word ‘fall’, and I cringed.
He was almost at the door when he thought of something. ‘Check if her tits are real,’ he said casually to his son, as rage burned inside me.
Dornan watched as his father left the room, slamming the door in his wake.
And then slowly swivelled his head back to me.
I surveyed him with quiet determination, suddenly calmer without Emilio present. Safer. It didn’t make sense, yet it did. Because Emilio demanded that I call him Master, and he broke my ribs, and Dornan didn’t really seem to care what I called him.
‘Papi,’ I said flatly. I licked my lips before I could catch myself, a nervous habit that I often displayed when unsure. Damn it! Stop it. He probably already knows exactly what you look like when you’re scared. He watched you cry like a blubbering baby this morning.
Dornan laughed, and I could have sworn my chains rattled at the low, booming noise that reverberated every fibre in my being.
‘Doesn’t that mean daddy?’ Dornan asked, his face relaxed and his stance casual, unlike yesterday, when I’d seen him tightly wound.
The time he’d smiled as my blood poured from my wrist and onto the floor.
I smiled back, despite myself. Despite the situation. Try to get him on your side. ‘It’s a friendly term. Casual.’
He pursed his lips. ‘So do you want me to be your friend,’ his lips quirked up into a sneer, ‘or your daddy?’
My cheeks burned at his question as I trained my eyes on his, refusing to let them dart lower. Screw trying to get him on my side. The way he asked the question while he stared at my chest — it was pretty obvious what he was getting at.
‘How about neither?’ I replied condescendingly. ‘How about you’re just an asshole?’
He chuckled. And that made me mad.
‘You’re afraid of him,’ I blurted out. ‘Your father. I see the way you talk to him.’
Dornan’s eyes flashed darker, his eyebrows bunching together. He clenched his jaw, and I imagined the teeth inside grinding down on each other.
He reached out and fingered my cuffs. I stood and drew a sharp intake of air. I hadn’t even noticed him get that close, he was so beguiling. Sleek, like a panther. And just as deadly.
I didn’t want to be sitting down when he pounced. He looked like he wanted to rip me to pieces.
‘I’m not afraid of anyone,’ Dornan growled, his tone measured, his fingers light as a feather on my wrist.
Liar.
‘But you, on the other hand …’ he trailed off, his impressive six-foot physique overwhelming my five foot two. I craned my neck to look up at him as he drew closer still.
He was beautiful. He was terrifying.
‘What about me?’ I asked, my voice wavering slightly.
‘That’s the thing,’ he replied quietly, a low rumble that threatened to break me apart. ‘I can’t figure out if you’re more scared of me, or of yourself.’
I glared at him. I felt utterly naked. He saw inside me, and I hated it. I bit the inside of my cheek to stop myself from speaking further.
It was too easy to speak to him, to share my secrets, like falling into an abyss. I enjoyed talking to him, enjoyed being around him, and that revelation was disturbing.
His fingers caressed my arm, landing on my bandaged wound. ‘How’s your wrist?’ he murmured, his voice smoky.
‘Empty,’ I said truthfully. Emptied of blood and hope.
He continued to caress my arm, his fingers burning into my skin. I had an irrational thought that maybe he would still help me — maybe he would save me.
It killed me that I wanted him to.
‘My father doesn’t believe you’ll behave,’ he said, and a thrill of fear brushed along my spine.
>
I shrugged. ‘Do you?’
He grinned, letting my wrist fall as both his hands travelled up my arms and across my collarbone, where they rested for a moment before drifting down further.
I drew in a sharp gasp as he palmed my breasts. I still hadn’t had the chance to shower, and as he squeezed my nipples, I felt the nauseating burn of Este’s blood where it stained my skin.
‘What are you doing?’ I gasped, trying to wriggle away, only succeeding in creating a friction between his fingers and my nipples that made a blush creep up my neck. Este. These people killed Esteban. Do not think of him as anything but a coward and a murderer. ‘What do you want with me?’
‘I’m sorry about your boyfriend,’ Dornan said, seeming to read my mind. ‘And I assure you, darlin’, the only thing I want from you right now is to know whether these beautiful titties are real or not.’ He gave one last squeeze for emphasis, something glinting in his eye. Amusement. I amused him, chained up like this, hurt and broken and owned.
‘You don’t have to enjoy it so much,’ I spat, turning my head to look away from him.
His hands continued to skate across my skin, and just as it had thrilled me when he was searching for the thin microchip hidden under my flesh, my body responded again to his touch. This is so wrong, I thought. Shame burned at my cheeks as gooseflesh sprang up on the skin at my collarbone where his hand had come to rest. His grip was loose, but dominating at the same time. So why did I want him to keep his hand exactly where it was?
I had stopped struggling. I realised I had been holding my breath, and I let it all out at once, gulping in new air. Not fresh air. It was the same air I’d been trapped inside since I’d arrived.
Our eyes met again, and his face softened minutely. It was a glimpse past his usual fierce expression, not that I terribly minded his fierceness, and that was the whole problem. I liked his fierce far too much. He was the polar opposite of Este, who had always been gentle and loving and kind.
I despised Dornan Ross in that moment, because I wanted nothing more than for him to take his other hand and put that on me, too. Pick me up and take me somewhere, anywhere, far away from here.
I was pinning my hopes on the wrong man. He’d already said he wouldn’t — couldn’t — save me from my fate.
I tamped down my arousal with every fibre of my being, and called upon the other feeling that flowed through me like poison in my veins. My greatest fear of what was going to happen to me made my hands shake with anger.
‘Taking inventory to sell me?’ I asked bitterly, my eyes defiant as he looked back into my fiery gaze. I had finally voiced the fear that had been gnawing at my edges for hours. Slave. Slave. Slave.
I expected him to laugh, as he and his father did whenever I said something like that. Instead, his grave reaction terrified me.
I wanted him to say no. I needed him to say no.
But what he said instead, one tiny word, was enough to shatter my world.
‘Yes,’ he answered, without missing a beat.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Dornan
He didn’t want his father to sell her.
It was business, plain and simple, but the rage that burned inside him at the thought of what happened to girls who were sold … it physically pained him. His father had told him from the very beginning the fate he had chosen for Mariana, but that was when she had been just another girl. A commodity. A product.
Now he had tasted her blood. Her tears. And she was oh so fuckin’ sweet. Not sweet in temperament — the girl was a spitfire. But the way her life blood tasted took his breath away.
He paced in the corridor outside her room. A guard near the bathroom studied his sub-machine gun to avoid Dornan’s gaze.
He couldn’t stop what was going to happen. He knew that. And so, he vowed to get on with things upstairs. To forget about the girl. To leave her to the fate she had volunteered for.
Upstairs, club members were mobilising, heading back to LA. He knew his father was up there working hard to try to stem the damage from the cocaine loss. People were baying for Gypsy blood. It made Dornan want to go and blow the DEA’s fucking headquarters sky high.
He was dragging his feet because of the damn girl. He should have been back in LA already, getting the rest of the club into motion. John would be fine without him, but he wanted to be a part of the action. He needed to know what was going on. His father, more specifically, needed him to be the eyes and ears for the cartel’s interests. People had a way of being saved when John was left to his own devices.
His father summoned him with a hearty yell from above. He climbed the stairs a little faster than he would have liked, fantasising about caving the old man’s head in and taking control of the empire himself. After all, he was the one who did the dirty work. The one who got the blood on his hands, snatched the girls from the pickup points, made the drops to the suppliers. His father just sat behind his desk and yelled orders while he got his cock sucked by his very blonde, very young secretary. But even as Dornan fantasised about Emilio’s comeuppance, he knew what he really wanted was just for his father to tell him he was proud of him. He was pathetic.
‘Pop,’ Dornan drawled.
As if to reinforce his thoughts, the little blonde hurried past him, her skirt ruffled and her bright red fuck-me lipstick smeared across one cheek. Dornan made no move to step aside, crowding her with his broad shoulders as she squeezed past.
‘Be nice,’ Emilio said sharply. ‘Don’t think I’ve forgotten about what you did to Margie.’
Dornan snickered as he remembered Margie moaning beneath him. He hadn’t done anything to her that she hadn’t wanted. The girl was practically begging for it.
‘I wonder how Margie’s going?’ Dornan said, sitting down across from his father. Small talk. It was what they did before getting to the business side of things.
‘Going nowhere with a bullet in her head,’ Emilio said dismissively.
Dornan raised an eyebrow, genuinely surprised. ‘I thought she was your favourite?’
‘She was talking to the boys in blue.’
Dornan balled his fists angrily. You couldn’t trust anyone in this business. He shook his head in disdain.
‘In that case,’ he said, ‘I hope you made it slow.’
Emilio grinned, and Dornan couldn’t help but glance at his gold tooth. He hated it, always had. As a small boy, it had freaked him out, and the feeling hadn’t abated as he grew. He imagined the tooth sparkling as his father ate someone’s flesh from their bones. He was a sadistic motherfucker.
‘Oh, yes,’ Emilio said, clearly revelling in his trip down a blood-soaked memory lane. ‘I fucked her with the gun first. One of those .45s. It was a big bastardo. She didn’t like that at all.’
Dornan chuckled, knowing it was the expected reaction, but inside he felt disgust. Not surprise, though. He’d stopped being surprised by his father’s abhorrent antics a long time ago.
‘So,’ Emilio said briskly, and Dornan knew what would come next. ‘Business.’
Bingo. Predictable old bastard. He was only sixty but life had been hard on him, and the wrinkles around his eyes told of some of that hardness. Some of that struggle.
‘I’ve managed to rustle up some product to get us through.’
‘Not from that fuck Murphy,’ Dornan said, before he could bite his tongue.
Anger flashed in his father’s cold eyes. ‘He’s a crazy motherfucker, Dornan, but he has something that I need. That we need.’
Dornan fought to maintain some semblance of calm.
‘I need your boys to go and get it.’
Dornan wanted to roll his eyes so badly, it hurt. Of course you do. The old man always fucking needed something.
‘When and where?’ Dornan asked.
Emilio began to recite times and addresses, as Dornan struggled to pay attention. A thought of the girl flashed in his head. Would she still be here when he returned? He waited patiently, committing to memory eve
rything his father recited. He bore the conversation with outward patience, the girl’s eyes filling up every facet of his being inside.
Finally, Emilio got to the end of his spiel, surveying his son with cold precision. Dornan dreaded that look. It was like his father saw right through him. And invariably, he did.
‘Ask me what you’re going to ask me,’ Emilio said bluntly.
Dornan shrugged. ‘I wasn’t going to ask you anything.’
Emilio’s look of indifference morphed almost immediately. ‘Figlio mio,’ he drawled, as his grin rapidly expanded. My son. ‘I know your thoughts before you do. You want to know what will happen to the girl.’
Mother. Fucker.
‘What girl?’ Dornan challenged, feigning disinterest. ‘The blonde who just left her lipstick all over your cazzo?’
Emilio stood, still with that maddening look on his face, signalling that their meeting was over.
‘I’d let you play with the little Colombian,’ he said as Dornan approached the door, ‘but I need to be brutal. I need to make an example of her.’
The image of five headless bodies his father had made examples of when he draped them across the top of the San Ysidro border crossing only months before twisted at Dornan’s gut. The girl was too good for that. Even if Dornan did want to hurt her — it wasn’t like that. He enjoyed a little bloodletting, sure, and a healthy dose of intimidation, but not the stark brutality his father favoured.
‘Have you considered using her other talents?’ Dornan asked casually. Don’t let him see. Don’t let him know.
Emilio narrowed his eyes, but his expression was light, playful even. Dornan had seen his father stab a man in the face with an icepick while he was in this kind of carefree mood.
‘Other talents?’ Emilio echoed. ‘Does she have a golden pussy? A mouth that sucks better than a vacuum cleaner? A third tit somewhere?’
Dornan huffed out a small laugh. ‘She’s a book cooker. A bean counter.’
Emilio shrugged. ‘And?’
Dornan wanted to shake the old man. ‘And she’s probably better than fucking Bella at getting our accounts in order.’