‘Security footage,’ John hissed at the guy, who nodded, making a beeline for the building.
‘I need to see him,’ I said, my tears suddenly stopping, my weeping replaced with an absolute conviction that if I didn’t get to Dornan right now, he would die – and if he died, I wouldn’t survive. I’d already lost everything else.
Este had been shot, and I didn’t cry. I was still in shock. I didn’t understand what was happening. But nine years of missing him, his lopsided smile and the way he squeezed my hand tightly to reassure me when I was afraid, the way he held our son and promised me we’d get him back one day? I knew, nine years later, the pain of watching somebody bleed to death in front of you, the regret of not saying goodbye. Because they’re just gone, and nothing you will ever do for the rest of your existence can turn back time and make those moments appear again, those moments when you just want to say I love you. I love you.
John took my elbow again, pulling me along. He stopped short of the emergency doors and yanked me into a room with an empty bed, still messed up like someone had been sleeping there recently, an empty chair beside it. I wondered, briefly, if somebody had just died there. ‘They won’t let us in,’ John said, blocking my attempt to leave the room. His blue eyes were wild, his dark blonde hair all mussed up from his helmet. He hadn’t shaved recently, and I had to wonder what hell he had been toiling in. I mean, Dornan got the trafficking, what did John get?
Suddenly I needed to be sick. Very, very sick. I put my hand over my mouth, forcing my throat closed. I retched, but nothing came up.
I needed Dornan, and I needed him now.
‘They won’t let us in,’ John said again. I ignored him, trying to push past him.
‘Mariana!’ he yelled, taking my shoulders and shaking me. ‘Look at me! You can’t see him!’
‘Screw you!’ I said, fighting off his grip. ‘His wife will be here in ten minutes, John. His kids. Emilio. Do you think they’ll let me see him then? Do you think I’ll be allowed to go to his funeral if he fucking dies?’ I was crying again, great shuddering sobs that hurt as they bubbled up in my chest and left my body. ‘Do you think I’ll be allowed to live if he fucking dies?’
‘He’s not going to die,’ John said, with conviction. ‘He’s gonna live. I promise.’
I shook my head. ‘Don’t make promises you can’t keep.’
I looked down at my hands. They were covered in blood, so much that I couldn’t even remember who it belonged to anymore. In the space of three hours I’d seen two lives end, one begin, and the person who meant more to me than anything barely holding on.
‘Fuck,’ I remembered, my hands shaking as I held them up to John. ‘I shot somebody. I killed somebody.’
John’s eyes narrowed, his eyes searching my face. ‘What?’
‘It was Allie. She shot Dornan through the window.’ I took in a ragged breath, reliving the moment all over again. The deafening blast. The way the light died in his eyes before they closed. So fast. It all happened so goddamn fast.
‘Where did she go?’ John asked, his tone dangerously calm. Too calm. I knew that tone. It was the eye of the storm.
It was hell about to be unleashed.
My skin hummed, where tiny pieces of glass were still stuck, and my feet were bleeding on the stark white of the hospital floor. My shoulder was pulsating where the bullet had nicked it. But it didn’t hurt. I was flooded with adrenalin, with the sharp sense that I had to survive. I was like a deer, eyes wide open, looking for the threat as the bullet whizzes into its body and tears it apart.
‘I shot her, but she wasn’t dead,’ I whispered, looking up at John with a mixture of dread and disbelief. ‘I put my hand over her face until she suffocated, and then I rolled her body into the marina.’
John released his grip on me and took a step back, swiping his hand across his stubbled chin.
‘You sure she was dead?’
I nodded, taking the gun from my waistband and holding it out to him. He looked around, seemingly shocked, before he shook his head and pressed my hand back to my side.
‘Keep it,’ he said. ‘You might need it.’
I nodded, replacing the gun in the hollow of my back, the metal against my skin oddly comforting as I rearranged my tank top to cover it.
‘I need to see him,’ I repeated. ‘Five minutes, John. I’ll shoot you if I have to.’
John tipped his head to the side, my threat apparently lost on him as he looked down at me. ‘No, you won’t,’ he said softly.
‘Alright, I won’t,’ I mumbled. Across the hall, I spotted a laundry cart, stacked with fresh sheets and what looked like hospital-issue scrubs.
I raised my arm and pointed. ‘Five minutes. That’s all I need.’
John turned, saw the scrubs. He sighed, his resolve crumbling before my eyes. ‘Wait here.’
He ventured cautiously into the hallway, looking around before darting over and grabbing a stack of folded green clothes. He brought them back into the room and tossed them on the bed.
‘Hurry,’ he urged, turning around to give me some privacy. I thought about our kiss. It was the wrong thing to be thinking about when my lover was fighting for his life in the ICU.
My heart in my mouth, I stripped my clothes off and wiped myself down as best I could with an extra shirt John had grabbed, before sliding the scrubs on and tucking the gun back into the waistband. I glanced in the small mirror that hung next to the bed. I still looked terrible, my skin caked with dried blood, but I was a damn sight better with fresh clothes.
‘Okay,’ I said, letting John know I was decent. He turned around and I gave him a tight smile. I was just about to pass him when he grabbed my arm again. I looked up, surprised, to see something else in his face.
Pity? Affection?
‘Ana,’ he said softly, pulling me to him. He wrapped his arms around me and squeezed me, and I melted into his embrace, comforted by the gesture. I felt his hand on my hair as he hugged me tight, as fresh tears started to flow.
‘It’ll be okay,’ he murmured into my hair. ‘He’s gonna be okay.’
I gave a small nod, hovering there in the space his arms offered, part of me just wanting to stay here in the safe darkness of his embrace. But that was dangerous. Very, very dangerous. He smelled like pine needles and gasoline, and I probably held on to him too tightly. The realisation of what I was doing made me tense. Dornan is dying in a hospital bed and I’m appreciating the way his best friend smells.
‘I would never let anything happen to you,’ John said quietly, and my heart dropped into my stomach with a resounding thud.
Oh fuck.
As soon as he’d said that, he released me, but made no move to step back from me, my head barely reaching his chin. ‘If he . . .’ John’s face twisted momentarily. ‘You’ll be okay. Trust me.’
If he dies, you’ll be okay.
I nodded again. We stepped out of the room, my bloody clothes discarded and forgotten, and made our way to the critical care ward.
To Dornan.
Did I ever say it?
I love you.
You saved my life.
Nine years, and I showed him, but did I ever say it?
You are my world.
You are my everything.
I didn’t know. Standing in a hospital corridor that smelled like bleach, waiting for John to come back and tell me if Dornan was alive or dead, I didn’t know if Dornan ever understood that I would have died for him in a heartbeat.
John came back to where I was standing in my green hospital scrubs, a surgical mask in his hand.
‘Here,’ he said gruffly, handing me the mask. His rough hand brushed against mine when he placed the mask in my outstretched palm, and he let it stay there for a beat too long. I stared at his hand, transfixed and probably in shock.
I wasn’t there anymore, though. Maybe it was because I hadn’t eaten, or because I was in shock, or because my shoulder had started to bleed through the hospital scrubs I
was wearing. Whatever the reason, I was awake one minute, looking at John’s mouth intently as he pointed to the blood on my shoulder, thinking It’s weird that I can’t hear him all of a sudden.
Then it was like somebody turned the light out. I didn’t even feel it when I hit the floor.
Just . . . nothing.
‘You can go,’ I said to John, even though I really wanted him to stay. But he had a wife and a daughter and an entire club that was no doubt reacting to the news that their VP had been shot.
He crossed his muscled arms across his chest, covering his Gypsy Brothers patch. His body language said he wasn’t going anywhere.
I felt . . . relieved. I’d fainted in the corridor on the way to see Dornan, which was both embarrassing and tragic – embarrassing because I wasn’t the one who’d been shot in the goddamn chest, and tragic because now Dornan’s wife was by his side and I’d missed my chance to see him. My shoulder had been bandaged, just a surface graze, and the bullet had taken a nice chunk of flesh with it. But I was okay.
A nurse bustled in, a clipboard in one hand and the jar I’d just peed in clasped in the other.
‘Good news all round,’ she said cheerily. ‘Everything looks good from the baby’s standpoint. Hormones are still high. You just need to eat something. Your blood sugar is low.’
I sat bolt upright in the bed, as John and I baulked in unison. ‘What?’
The nurse’s face fell. ‘The . . . pregnancy,’ she said, all trace of cheer gone.
‘I think there’s been some mistake,’ I said sharply. ‘I’m not pregnant.’
She looked down at the chart in her hand. ‘Yes, you are. Your hCG levels are through the roof.’
I laughed maniacally. ‘You’re crazy.’ I looked at John. ‘She’s crazy!’
She looked at John, then back to me. ‘Do you want me to call a psych down so you can talk to someone?’ she asked quietly.
‘What? No! I want to see my chart. There’s been some mix-up. I’m on the pill. There’s no way I can be pregnant.’
My stomach was sinking, sinking like quicksand. I tried to remember the last time I’d had a period. Nope. No idea. I thought back over the past several weeks, of how many times I’d puked or felt sick and assumed it was the stress of working for a drug kingpin or murdering a DEA agent that was making me constantly nauseous.
‘This is a mistake,’ I insisted, snatching my chart from the nurse. She looked affronted. ‘Can you give us a minute?’ I asked her, motioning to the door.
Before I’d had a chance to read the chart, it was snatched from my hands. John read through the notes as I fumed on the bed. ‘Give me that,’ I said. ‘It’s got to be a mistake.’
John’s blue eyes looked at me over the clipboard in his hand. ‘It’s not a mistake. I just watched her test that jar in the next room.’
‘Oh God,’ I groaned, flopping back on the bed. This was turning into a fucking nightmare.
‘Congratulations,’ John said, and when I looked at his face, he seemed almost disappointed at the news.
I was pregnant. With Dornan’s baby. And Dornan was in the ICU, being operated on, and he might not even live to hear the news.
The doctors insisted on keeping me in for observation, which was ridiculous, but I wasn’t about to argue with them. The hospital was where Dornan was, and if his wife ever left his bedside, I’d be able to go and see him.
At some point in the night, John woke me to let me know that Dornan had made it through surgery. He was going to be okay, Allie’s bullet having narrowly missed his heart. The news made me cry. I suddenly realised why everything had been making me cry lately. Damn pregnancy hormones.
As morning broke, I was itching to see Dornan. John informed me, however, that Dornan’s wife had spent the night at his bedside, once he was out of surgery. I was getting antsy in my own hospital room, so on impulse I rode the elevator to the third floor. The maternity floor. I hadn’t been able to get the little baby boy from last night’s horror show out of my head, and I’d even had nightmares that he was my baby, and I’d been the one who was shot by Dornan.
I tried to tell myself that I was just wandering the halls to keep my mind off Dornan, but it was more than that. I was gravitating towards the nursery, and soon I found myself right there, my hands pressed up against the glass window as I scanned the clear plastic bassinets all lined up inside.
He was there. The last bassinet, tucked into the corner. He was asleep, his little lips suckling away at the air as if he were dreaming of his mother’s milk. The name tag on the end of his bassinet was blank.
My heart shattered.
That poor baby. Nobody would ever know who he was. His mother was gone and his future looked bleak.
I wanted to take him home and hold him and feed him and never let him go. I wanted to tell him how sorry I was that there were people like Emilio in the world.
People like Dornan.
Something brushed against the back of my neck and I jumped. I turned my face to see Emilio standing there, smiling indulgently at me. He was smiling like he knew a secret, and that made me fucking terrified.
‘How are you feeling, Ana?’ he asked, putting an arm around my shoulder. ‘You were shot. You shouldn’t be out of bed, dear.’
I looked at him for a moment before turning back to the babies. I kept my back rigid, refusing to make it comfortable for Emilio to drape himself around me.
‘It was just a flesh wound,’ I replied. ‘I’m trying to stay out of your family’s way until the hospital discharges me.’ It was kind of the truth.
‘How thoughtful of you,’ Emilio said, pulling me closer to his side. ‘Always so thoughtful. Tell me, did you decide to drop this little bastard off before his mother died or after?’
Oh God. Sweat started to gather around my temples, and my skin was all itchy. I needed to get away from this man. I didn’t say anything.
‘I asked you a question, cholita.’
I yelped as bony fingers pressed into my bullet wound. I gagged, the pain so sharp that I almost puked right then and there.
‘Ahhhhhhhh,’ I cried, doubling over from the pain so my forehead was pressed against the cool glass window that separated us from the babies in the nursery.
Emilio didn’t like that. He tugged on a handful of my hair, forcing my head back up, and pulled me along so we were standing directly in front of the bastard baby he was talking about.
Emilio grinned, his gold tooth reflecting the harsh fluorescent lights that hung overhead. Even after nine years, I’d never gotten used to that tooth, and it made me jump every goddamn time he opened his mouth.
‘Mariana,’ he said, his voice like chains being dragged through rocks. His eyes were so much like Dornan’s that it scared me. How could you come from a man like Emilio Ross and not turn into him? That thought burrowed into my brain and sat there, dormant, waiting for the time when I’d have to rip it out and answer it.
Somehow, I knew we were heading towards destruction, even as we stood in the calm aftermath of Allie’s failed attempt at vengeance.
It wasn’t over. It would never be over. Emilio’s cold hand squeezed the back of my neck as he directed my gaze towards the smallest baby in the line-up.
‘I’m taking this boy home,’ he promised, his words turning vicious. ‘I’ll raise him as my own. And if you ever try and leave your post . . .’
I sobbed from the pain of his fingers inside my wound. ‘I’ve given you almost ten years,’ I whispered. ‘You told me you’d let me go once I repaid the debt.’
He chuckled. ‘That was before. This is now. Do you have any idea how fucking marvellous you are at what you do? I was going to shoot you that night but you insisted on coming with me. You’ve only got yourself to blame, dear.’
I couldn’t stop crying. The pain! I just wanted him to get his hands away from me.
‘You try and leave, and I’ll find you, Ana,’ he continued. ‘I’ll find you and I’ll make you watch while I kill that
boy in front of you.’ He returned his black eyes to me and grinned. ‘It’s a shame your family is dead. Your sister would be much more fun to kill while you watch than a fucking child.’
My blood ran cold. Even though I knew he was talking about this baby who’d been born in the back of a trafficking truck, all I saw was Luis. And it wasn’t just Luis any more. There was another baby, a secret that lived inside me.
I had to get out. I had to find a way to get out of this hell, for both of my children.
Dornan woke up.
But nothing was ever the same between us.
Because when I looked into his eyes, I no longer saw the man who had saved me all those years ago.
I saw the man who’d morphed into a monster before my very eyes.
Part of me thought it would have been better if Allie’s bullet had killed him, so I wouldn’t have to keep living this lie. The bullet didn’t kill him, though. It didn’t kill him, and he got better, and I still couldn’t bring myself to tell him that I was pregnant with his child.
I still hadn’t told him.
This great weight inside me, this thing, this child I carried like a sinful secret. It burdened me and lightened me at the same time. I wanted to tell him, and I didn’t. Thirteen weeks now, it had been growing inside me. After I’d found out, I’d dithered and ummed and ahhed and ached. Because I wanted it. And I didn’t. I wanted it because it was mine, loved it like I loved the first baby I’d birthed so long ago. Hated it because it was forcing me to choose. Life or death. No matter which one I chose, I was going to regret it. Kill my child, the child Dornan and I had unwittingly created? Or keep it, bring it into this world, only to have it taken from me just like Luis.
I hated myself because I was so selfish. Because if things had been different, if I had been free, I would have been ecstatic to have a baby growing in my womb, even if it was Dornan’s.
Especially if it was Dornan’s.
I loved him. I loved him even in my darkest moments. Even in his.
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