‘It’s hot today,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you have this door open?’
I shrugged. ‘I’m home alone. It feels safer with everything closed. How do you know when my birthday is?’ How did he know anything about me?
‘Bullshit,’ he said. ‘I bet if I try this door right now, it’ll open, won’t it?’
‘Of course it’ll open,’ I responded, panic building inside me. ‘It’s just a door.’
He made a point of opening and closing the balcony door, then passed me again, going back to the keypad at the front door. There was one inside and one outside, and he armed the inside one with quick fingers.
He crossed the apartment again and tried the balcony door.
It wouldn’t budge.
John turned to me slowly, his eyes practically bugging out of his head.
‘They keep you here,’ he said slowly. ‘They keep you here like a fucking prisoner. Don’t they?’
Fuck. What if he spoke to Dornan about this? What if he spoke to Emilio?
I pressed my teeth together in my mouth and tried not to scream.
He rushed towards me, and for a moment I had the uncanny thought that he was going to grab me by the throat and toss me against the wall. Conditioning, I suppose. Living in the middle of a fucking drug cartel with people like Emilio Ross and Christopher Murphy always hovering on the edges of your existence could do that.
But he didn’t grab my throat. He grabbed my shoulder with one hand, his touch gentle, and the other hand trailed along my chin, forcing my head up so we were eye to eye.
‘Don’t they?’ he repeated, much quieter this time. His eyes were full of anguish, and something else I couldn’t quite fathom.
‘What do you want from me?’ I whispered, turning my head away.
He cupped my cheek with his hand, his other palm starting to burn as it gripped my shoulder.
‘You don’t need to lie to me,’ he said, and something in his words snapped me back to reality. I did need to lie to him – to him and to everyone else in the world if my family was going to be safe. My sacrifice, my complicity, my ownership at the hands of Emilio Ross and the Il Sangue Cartel meant that I had to lie every time I opened my fucking mouth, lest I find a gun jammed down my throat for my transgressions.
‘I’m not a prisoner,’ I snapped, levelling my gaze at him again as the mask slipped back over my soul. ‘I’m forgetful.’
His eyes were like twin fires, his grip on my shoulder getting even tighter. ‘You’re hurting me,’ I said, wrenching my shoulder away and stepping back.
He turned and left, and the cocky bastard didn’t set the lock when he slammed the door behind him.
Was he giving me a chance to escape?
Or was he testing my loyalty?
Emilio had found countless ways to test my loyalty ever since I’d been painfully initiated into the Il Sangue Cartel, and by default, the Gypsy Brothers.
I didn’t leave. I didn’t take my chance to escape.
No, I re-programmed the lock myself (now that I knew the code) and sat on my couch, drinking vodka instead. You could say that I was weak, that I was suffering from Stockholm syndrome, that I was the worst kind of victim because I refused to help myself when the opportunity arose.
And I’d say fuck that. I’d made a deal with Emilio Ross, and at least four lives – my mother, my father, my sister and my brother – hung in the balance every single time I made a decision. Five, if you counted Luis. Oh, and then there was the small fact of my own life. That hung in the balance every single day, and everything always felt so goddamn temporary.
So I didn’t leave. I sat, and I waited.
John came back an hour later with a box. Plain, brown cardboard packaging.
‘What is this?’ Did I even want to know?
He took a knife from the rack and made a slit down the side of the packaging, pulling out a cellphone. I eyed the small black phone dubiously, pulling my own cellphone from my pocket.
‘For you,’ he said. ‘A burner phone. Nothing to identify you. Nothing to trace back to you. Nobody listening to you. But you have to keep it hidden, okay?’
‘I have a phone,’ I said.
John’s eyes flicked to me, soft and with the hint of a smile. ‘Your phone,’ he said, ‘is bugged. But you knew that already, right?’
I looked around the apartment nervously. Last thing I needed was for Emilio or someone else to overhear this conversation and decide I was getting too dangerous to keep around.
‘How do I know you haven’t bugged this phone?’
He smiled. ‘You just saw me open the packaging. Plus, you should know by now that I don’t have time to eavesdrop on your calls. I’ve got too much other shit to do.’
I had been standing stiff beside him; I felt the tension melt from me piece by piece as he held out the phone.
‘You can trust me,’ he said softly. ‘I’m not like them. I’m not like Emilio.’
I nodded, looking away, salt tears burning my cheeks at the weight of his kindness.
‘Mariana,’ he whispered. He put his finger underneath my chin again and tilted it up, so I had no choice but to meet his cerulean gaze.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘If you change your mind – if you decide one day you need to leave – you tell me. And I’ll help you, okay? I’ll make sure they can’t find you. Dornan’s my friend – my best friend. But he’s also Emilio’s son, and there are things he cannot control.’
I burst into tears, covering my face with my hands. I’d been theirs for six months by then, six months where the only visitor I got was Dornan, and the only person I spoke to every day was myself, in the mirror, talking myself out of doing something crazy like killing myself. And I loved Dornan. But I hated my life.
‘You don’t understand,’ I said finally. ‘He loves me. He saved me.’
John looked at me sadly, the smile fading from his face.
‘You call this saved?’
Two weeks later, Dornan showed up with Guillermo. A Gypsy Brother. Dornan figured out I’d been operating the locks without him. It was only to get out onto the balcony, to smell the salt air rolling in from the waves below, a welcome refuge from my gilded cage. I had the code now, but I’d never try to run. I wasn’t an idiot. I didn’t dare try to leave, not even for a moment. And then I couldn’t have, even if I’d wanted to, because somebody suddenly decided that I needed a full-time bodyguard. Dornan might have loved me, but he didn’t trust me – he didn’t trust anyone.
‘It’s for your own protection,’ he said. ‘I know you want to go outside.’
Because I had begged him to go outside. To shop for groceries, to feel the wet sand beneath my feet, to breathe in the fresh air on my balcony.
I got my wish.
I got to go outside, whenever I wanted, Guillermo Reyes always by my side or five steps behind.
It was easier, I decided soon afterwards, to be alone and locked up in a glass tower than to have someone watching my every move.
I realised much too late that things are almost never as bad as you think they are, and just when you think you’ve got everything figured out, everything will change again.
I wanted to go outside. I wanted to stop feeling so alone.
I got my wish.
I was never allowed to be alone again.
2007
NINE YEARS GONE
Sunday.
A sacred day. The one day a week when I was guaranteed time with Dornan.
I just had to jump through a few hoops first.
He’d been late to pick me up, which wasn’t a surprise. Still, I didn’t like it. I hovered inside the entry to the apartment – I still didn’t feel right calling it my apartment, even though I’d spent almost a decade trapped between its walls – and paced nervously. My black patent stilettos clicked on the tiles as I walked back and forth, wanting to wait outside in the fresh air and open space, but knowing Dornan wouldn’t be happy to find me out there. Because, accordi
ng to him, I was something to be protected. Something to be hidden away.
I was about to fix another coffee when I heard boots thunking on the concrete stairwell, getting louder as he approached. It felt silly that even after all these years, he made my stomach buzz nervously just by showing up. I hadn’t seen him in weeks, since he’d been away and then he was tied up with his wife and kids, but today was ours. At least, this afternoon was ours. Once we’d served our purposes to other people, we could serve each other.
There was a snort from the man sitting at the kitchen counter. ‘Your master is here, bitch.’
I narrowed my eyes at Guillermo, my excitement fading.
He laughed, slapping his leg with a hand covered in gang tattoos. Guillermo was now a constant in my life. He was my unofficial bodyguard, babysitter and someone who watched over me when Dornan wasn’t around. He lived in my apartment, ate my food, drank my good coffee and annoyed the living shit out of me every minute of the day. Don’t get me wrong – he wasn’t a bad person, or at least no worse than any other small-time gangster-slash-biker.
However, he was in my apartment. It was technically Dornan’s, owned by some dummy corporation on paper, won in a poker game years before I’d arrived and now a convenient hideout for me. And, sadly, Guillermo. He was in my apartment, and I very much did not want him to be here, because Dornan had arrived.
‘Jealous?’ I asked, smiling sweetly as I slammed two coffee cups down in front of me.
Guillermo, Latino and thirty-something, was attractive in an unkempt, rugged sort of way, but he wasn’t my type. One of Dornan’s thugs, he was also a fully patched member of the Gypsy Brothers and a skilled drug trafficker. He knew everything about me. Almost everything. He knew as much as Dornan and Emilio. As far as I could tell, Murphy was still the only one who knew for sure the details about my son.
‘Nah,’ Guillermo answered. ‘Just thinking should I get my earplugs before you two start fucking like dogs in here.’
I scowled. ‘You could always leave,’ I suggested helpfully. ‘Don’t you have something to do? Somewhere to be?’
‘Yeah,’ he replied stonily. ‘At the clubhouse. Church is about to start, and if you make me late—’
‘I hardly think they’ll notice if you’re there or not,’ I interrupted. ‘You’re not the president or anything.’
He laugh-snorted, shaking his head. ‘Your man ain’t the prez, either, cholita.’
I looked around the apartment, as if he were talking to somebody else. ‘Since when do you call me cholita? That’s Emilio’s thing.’
He shrugged lazily. ‘Whatever. Don’t make me late.’
I glared at Guillermo. He glared back, until his face broke, and he started to laugh. I tried to remain stony-faced, but something about the way Guillermo laughed was contagious. I might have wanted my own space, but his sense of humour was a lifeboat in my lonely existence. I’d never tell anyone that, though.
The front door opened, and I turned eagerly. Dornan. He stood in the doorway, his silhouette illuminated by the bright sun outside. He was dressed in dark blue jeans and a black T-shirt that hugged his defined chest, a black leather jacket over the top. He dropped his helmet on the ground and it landed with force on the hard floor, before rolling into the corner, forgotten. His dark eyes gleamed with anticipation.
‘You’re late,’ I said, but I was grinning like an idiot. Guillermo dragged a cigarette out and lit it, breathing a cloud of smoke in my face.
‘Guillermo,’ Dornan growled in warning.
‘I’ll see you later,’ Guillermo said to me. ‘Woof.’ He sauntered past Dornan, who looked on in amusement.
As soon as the door slammed shut, Dornan turned to me. ‘What was that about?’
I shrugged. ‘Just Guillermo being his charming self.’
Dornan smirked, almost barrelling into me as he closed the space between us. Impulsively, I jumped and wrapped my legs around him, our mouths locked together in a dance we’d rehearsed plenty of times before. It seemed we were always being reunited after long stretches apart, even though I saw him all the time, even though he lived in Venice Beach, only a few miles from the apartment in Santa Monica. But at the strip club there were always people, always Emilio hovering, or Murphy, or John giving us disapproving glances. Plus, Dornan spent most of his days at the Gypsy Brothers clubhouse, which was only a few blocks from the strip club, but we weren’t exactly the kind of couple that did lunch. No, he was usually mopping up blood or burning evidence from the sounds of it, and I was usually trying not to flip out and lose my shit if Emilio decided he was going to show up and ruin my afternoon with his wandering hands and outlandish demands.
Dornan pressed me up against the hallway wall, his mouth devouring mine.
‘I missed you,’ I said, something catching in my throat as I spoke.
He must have heard that waver in my voice, because he stopped kissing me, pulled back to look at me. ‘Everything alright?’ he asked quietly, his low voice vibrating in my chest.
I nodded. I hadn’t seen him since the night we’d celebrated my twenty-eighth birthday together, in this very apartment, with a lone candle and an impossible wish murmured as I cut my cupcake in half.
He frowned, like he wanted to press me further.
‘We’ll be late,’ I whispered, tracing the outline of his mouth with my index finger. His stubble scratched at my skin, but it was a welcome feeling, familiar.
Dornan groaned, setting me on my feet on the floor. ‘Are those the shoes I bought you?’ he asked, taking a step back and whistling. ‘Goddamn, they look even better than I thought they would.’
I gave him a wicked smile, stepping out of the apartment in my brand new black patent heels. ‘I’ll wear them for you later.’
His hand closed around my wrist and he pulled me back inside, slamming the front door and shoving me against it. His fingers curled around my arms with pressure that bordered on pain, pressure that would probably leave bruises. My stilettos screeched on the tiles, and I laughed. ‘We’ll be late . . .’ I warned him again, shivering as he pressed me into the door and began to kiss a trail from my neck down to my breasts. He bit each nipple through the material of my dress, pain and pleasure merging deliciously as one, stopping only to tug my dress up around my hips and kick my legs wider with an insistent foot.
He dropped to his knees, and I watched in anticipation, pressed against the door. Dornan’s stubble against the insides of my thighs was fucking torturous, brushing so close to my pussy I wanted to scream.
‘Wider,’ he demanded, taking hold of my right leg and hooking it over his shoulder. The moment he tugged my panties to one side and his greedy mouth descended on my clit, I yelled, ‘Oh, fuck!’
He chuckled against my sensitive flesh, sending vibrations through me that made me shudder involuntarily.
‘Your father is going to kill us,’ I gasped, rocking my hips against his face.
Suddenly, the tongue disappeared. He stopped. I made a small sound of surprise in the back of my throat, opening my eyes to see what he was doing. He lifted his head long enough to glare at me. ‘Don’t ever mention my father when I’ve got my mouth on your pussy again, you hear me?’
He put his mouth on me again, and I whimpered as I heard Guillermo’s motorcycle start downstairs. ‘Don’t stop,’ I whispered, threading my fingers into Dornan’s hair as his tongue did dirty, delicious things to me. My legs started to shake under the pressure of trying to hold myself upright on one stiletto while being tongue-fucked against a door. Just as I started to get close, he took his mouth away and stood upright, yanking his jeans down and palming his cock. ‘I’ve been thinking about fucking you against this door for weeks,’ he ground out, putting his hands on my bare ass and lifting me so that his cock was pressed against my wetness.
I wrapped my arms around his neck, crying out when he thrust into me in one rough stroke. ‘Don’t wear panties to this meeting,’ he said against my neck. ‘I want to feel your puss
y on my back when we ride.’
Oh, I wanted that, too. I barely went on the back of a bike these days because I barely left my apartment, but when it was just Dornan and me flying down the highway, it almost felt like we were free, just the two of us. And the thought of being naked against him, rubbing against the leather of his cut while his Harley sent vibrations through the both of us – it was almost enough to make me come on the spot. He thrust into me slowly, forcefully.
‘I want you to come,’ he demanded, gathering my hair in one fist and pulling hard enough to force my head back. ‘You’re going to touch yourself. You’re going to come with your mouth around my cock.’ And just like that, just as he’d gotten me close again, he pulled out of me without warning.
My mouth watered at this suggestion. There was something so completely carnal about coming with your lips wrapped around a cock, your moans being muffled by someone fucking your mouth. He let go of my hair and I fell to my knees, opening my mouth and teasing the head of his cock with my tongue. I tasted myself on him. ‘Make yourself come,’ he groaned, bucking his hips until his cock hit the back of my throat. ‘I’m about to explode.’
I reached into my lace panties and started making shallow circles around my clit. I was soaked from my own wetness and Dornan’s tongue, and my finger slipped a few times before I found a rhythm. It didn’t take long. Already perilously close, I crested that wave, moaning loudly around Dornan’s cock as I orgasmed.
‘Oh, fuck,’ he whispered. ‘That looks so fucking good.’
He thrust against the back of my throat one last time, coming across my tongue and down my throat as he cupped my face in his hands.
Guillermo was waiting on his bike when we finally made it downstairs, his engine purring loudly, helmet secured. He was ready to go. He took in my slightly dishevelled appearance and made a tsk-tsk noise.
‘You two are like fucking animals,’ he said, shaking his head in mock disapproval.
Dornan, who’d killed other men for saying less, laughed as he started his own bike. I fastened my own helmet under my chin and straddled the seat behind Dornan as delicately as I could, using my hands and the hem of my dress to shield the fact that I wasn’t wearing any panties.