‘Where?’ He was so enraged by her apparent betrayal, he couldn’t even bear the weight of her name on his lips.
‘Colorado,’ Viper conceded. ‘I’m texting you the address right now.’ A brief pause. ‘What are you going to do?’
Dornan started to pace, completely ignoring Celia, who was watching his every move. He wondered if she could hear Viper’s side of the conversation. Doubtful. Dornan could barely hear him.
‘I’m going to go on a little road trip,’ Dornan said, ending the call.
He needed to smash something. Now. Celia was in front of him. No. She didn’t deserve his wrath, not over this. He tamped down his rage momentarily, as his phone buzzed again with a text message. He glanced at the screen and saw a Colorado address flash up. Took a deep breath.
‘Who was that? Everything okay?’ Celia asked in a small voice.
No, everything was most certainly not okay. It was the furthest place from okay that was humanly possible.
‘Work,’ he lied, though he didn’t need to explain anything to her. The way she was staring at him was making him itch. The bitch would do well to remember who was in charge in this relationship.
‘Dornan,’ she said quietly.
He expected her to launch into a tirade – it was her go-to – but instead her eyes filled with tears.
‘Fuck,’ Dornan muttered. Perhaps a better man would have felt regret over his callousness, over his rough rejection. Not Dornan. All he felt was annoyance. ‘Celia.’
She dissolved into sobs. Dornan hastily did his belt buckle up and glared at his wife. He looked at the screen on his cellphone and back to Celia. Her hands were covering her face now, her shoulders moving up and down as she cried silently.
‘Celia, just tell me what you want,’ he said gruffly.
‘Why don’t you touch me anymore?’ Celia said, her voice small and lonely. ‘Why don’t you love me anymore?’
Dornan raised his eyebrows. ‘I never loved you,’ he spat. ‘Not sure where that idea came from.’
Dornan shrugged his leather jacket on, swiped his cigarettes from the bed and shoved them in his pocket. He thought of the deal breaker, the night he’d found her fucking some other guy. While she was pregnant with Dornan’s fucking kid. With that memory implanted firmly in his brain, any trace of guilt he felt for pushing her away evaporated. He’d punish her until she either left, or died. Fuck her.
‘I want a divorce!’ she screamed.
He laughed. ‘You sucked my dick so I’d grant you a divorce? You’re crazier than I thought, Celia.’
Mascara streaking down her cheeks, Celia looked like one of the strippers at the club.
‘Why won’t you just let me go?!’
His chest tightened. He thought of her leaving, their sons in tow. No.
‘You know why,’ he said.
‘They’re mine!’ she cried. ‘They came from me! They grew inside me, and now you want to take them from me? I tried to make you love me, and you just push me away.’
Dornan spread his hands. ‘I let you stay here. I let you spend whatever you want. I didn’t try and take our sons from you. But I will not forgive what you did, Celia. And I will never let you take my sons from me. Ever. You want to go? There’s the goddamn door.’
She pouted, crossing her hands across her chest. ‘I fucking hate my life.’
Dornan shrugged as he left. ‘Survival of the fittest, baby,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘We might not like it, but it’s better than the alternative.’
‘Good luck out there,’ Celia snapped sarcastically. ‘Don’t get shot.’
He had to clench his fists to stop from laying one into her pretty face. He concentrated on the image of Stephanie and what he would do to her when he got to Colorado.
It wouldn’t be pretty.
He drove all night and into the next day, only stopping when his gas tank ran low. He had just crossed from Utah into Colorado, and to have to stop now was excruciating.
As he was filling the tank of his newly fitted-out truck at a gas station, somewhere near Grand Junction, Dornan’s phone rang. It was his lawyer. Jesus, what now? He answered.
Celia had filed for divorce. She’d signed over full custody of their sons.
She’d give up her own children, the things she loved most in this world, just to be rid of him.
Dornan didn’t know whether to laugh or smash his fists into the hood of his truck and cry.
The house was a modest affair: a single-storey stucco building that sat, squat and neat, between other houses that were exactly the same. Inside it was tidy enough. Chequered tea towels. Kitschy shit that cluttered the mantlepiece above the open fireplace, the coffee table, the windowsill above the sink in the kitchen. Useless possessions irritated him. What was the point of them? They took up space and gathered dust, and then you died and littered the world you left behind with your crap.
There were photographs hanging on the white panelled walls. A baby boy, with Dornan’s eyes, his colouring, his DNA. Everything about the kid screamed Dornan. He looked more like him than any of his other sons, for fuck’s sake. How was that for irony? He hadn’t even known the kid existed, and here he was, his carbon copy, smiling Stephy’s lopsided smile, her dimples passed down to his son.
His son. Those two words wrapped around him like a vice, pulling tight until he could barely breathe with the injustice of what this bitch had taken from him. He wasn’t a good man, had never pretended to be anything remotely in the realm of good, but he loved his children with a ferocity that knew no bounds. He was the father lion, possessive, pride of the pack, poised to strike at and rip the throat from anyone who dared to shatter his carefully constructed world.
Viper had been useful. Giving him the time the bitch was due home, the kid, too. He still didn’t know what he was going to say to them, but he was pretty sure it was going to take everything inside him not to smash her face into the kitchen table until she passed out. Sixteen years. And all the time, she’d let him believe she was dead in a shallow fucking grave somewhere.
And he had a seventh son.
He found her gun in the second drawer he opened. He knew she’d have one stashed in easy reach, and ironically it was the same one he’d given her. Fucking bitch. He flicked open the chamber, was mildly impressed at the recent cleaning and oiling of the weapon. He emptied the bullets into his pocket and replaced the gun in its spot.
He sat at the kitchen table. It was cheap pine and it looked like someone had traced their initials into it. JP.
His son’s name was Jason. He didn’t even have Dornan’s last name. But he would.
Dornan’s hand went into his pocket and he squeezed his fist tight around the bullets he’d just reclaimed.
And then he heard her car in the driveway.
He didn’t bother hiding. You couldn’t see the kitchen from the front door, so he helped himself to a glass of milk, sat back down at the kitchen table, and he waited.
She took a while. He heard several doors opening and closing, the screech of metal that needed to be greased, the jangle of keys in the door.
And then she was in front of him, her mouth hanging open, the paper shopping bags in her arms falling and crashing to the floor.
Dornan eyed the contents momentarily before returning his gaze to her. He felt beads of milk clinging to the stubble above his lip. He wiped it with the back of his hand and smiled at the bitch who was having conniptions in front of him.
Goddamn, she was still beautiful.
‘Hello, Stephy,’ he said. ‘You got a real nice house here.’
She was frozen. She couldn’t form words. Dornan laughed, taking another gulp of milk. He would have preferred beer, but she didn’t have any in the refrigerator.
She was so fucking obvious. He saw her eyes dart over to the kitchen drawer where her now-empty revolver was hidden. She rushed over, the shock still sharp on her face, opening the drawer and taking the gun out.
It was stupid, the way
his heart hurt when she pointed the gun at him.
‘That’s not very nice, baby,’ he said, his voice low and rough. ‘I come all the way here to visit you, and you pull a gun on me?’
She cocked the revolver in trembling hands. She still hadn’t said a word to him. Was he really that frightening? She’d loved him, once. She’d let him hold her life in his hands, and now she wanted to end his?
‘How’s my son?’ Dornan asked, his tone shifting rapidly, acerbic and bitter.
She huffed. ‘He is not your son.’
So she did speak.
Something broke inside him, something he’d been trying to push down and keep locked away for fifteen years. Longer. Sixteen.
He had loved her, goddamn it! He. Had. Loved. Her.
And she was staring at him like she’d never laid eyes on him in her life. No, it was worse than that. She was staring at him like he was a fucking monster.
‘That’s funny,’ Dornan replied looking at the framed photograph on the wall of a small boy, maybe seven, his dark brown eyes and hair a dead ringer for Dornan’s. ‘Because I’m pretty fucking sure he is.’
‘Get out,’ she whispered, her eyes full of tears, her aim steady. ‘Get out or I’ll shoot you, Dornan, I swear to God.’
Dornan nodded, reaching for his own gun. Terrified, Stephy aimed at his chest and pulled the trigger. And pulled it again. And again.
‘It needs bullets to work,’ Dornan said calmly. ‘Here, have one of mine.’
He aimed at her shin and pulled the trigger on his own Glock, smiling with satisfaction as she went down hard, her lower leg exploding in a mess of blood and bone fragments as she landed between a bunch of bananas and a loaf of bread.
Dornan took a deep breath, the victory of vengeance singing in his veins as he stood up and drank the rest of his milk. He let the empty glass fall to the ground at his feet, where it shattered.
‘Stephy,’ Dornan teased, stepping between the fallen groceries to get to her.
She cowered in the corner, her hands covering her face, which was turning swiftly pale. She had hurt him, and he was going to hurt her back. He was going to hurt her very, very badly. And the thought filled him with relief.
He holstered his gun. He didn’t want this to go too quickly; no, he wanted to draw out her suffering, the way she had drawn out his suffering. His endless fucking pursuit of a shallow grave, of a confession from her killer, of something. And all the time, she had been here, living and smiling and bearing his fucking child.
He knelt beside her, his boots crunching on the broken glass. ‘Let’s get you cleaned up,’ he said, smiling. ‘Where’s your bathroom?’
She whimpered. She didn’t answer. Sighing, he balled his fist up and slammed it into the side of her face. Not too hard, because he didn’t want her to pass out. Just hard enough to hurt like a motherfucker.
‘Let’s try that again. Where’s your bathroom?’
She pointed down the hallway. Smiling, Dornan grabbed a fistful of her long blonde hair and started dragging her. She half-crawled, half-limped alongside him, crying out in pain the whole time.
She had a bathtub. Excellent. Dornan rolled his eyes as she started to beg, scooping her up and throwing her hard into the bottom of the tub. She struggled to sit up and he hit her again. His fist throbbed in pain. It felt good. He’d never hit a woman before, not like this.
But she deserved it for what she’d done.
‘Here’s the deal,’ Dornan said, crouching beside the tub and brushing her fringe from her face. ‘You tell me when my son is due home, and I promise I won’t kill either of you.’
She swallowed thickly. ‘School finished at three-thirty,’ she said shakily. ‘He’s usually home by four.’
Dornan nodded, taking a syringe from his pocket, and a vial of morphine he’d made damn sure to bring with him on his long journey. Stephanie stared in horror as he stabbed the syringe into the vial and drew up a colourless liquid. He filled the syringe, and her eyes grew wide as she realised what it was.
‘Please,’ she begged.
‘You remember this, don’t you? Just like smack, only better. You liked it the first time. Remember how you used to come underneath me? How I’d give you a hit of the sweet stuff at just the right time? Do you remember that, Stephy?’ He wrapped a rubber tourniquet around her arm.
‘Dornan!’ she cried. ‘Please don’t do this. My boy needs me, I’m all he has . . .’
My boy. That made Dornan angry. He pulled the tourniquet tighter and a juicy blue vein popped up against her pale arm.
‘You promised,’ she said, blood spilling out of her mouth from the spot where he’d punched her. ‘You promised!’
Dornan smiled, pushing the plunger down and delivering enough morphine to stop her heart five times over. ‘I did promise,’ he replied cheerily. He felt crazed. He felt high. He’d loved her, and he’d mourned her, and now he would end her.
‘Remember how you promised you’d love me forever? How you’d never leave me? You lied, baby.’
Her eyes started to flutter shut. ‘You promised,’ she whispered.
He grinned wickedly. ‘I know. I lied, too. How does it feel?’
She couldn’t answer him, though, because she was dead.
A few hours later, the boy came home. Jason. His son’s name was Jason.
He was exquisite. Dornan could think that without feeling stupid, because he was laying his eyes on his son for the first time, as if he’d just been born, only fifteen years too late.
The boy found the kitchen a mess, and soon after his mother. Dornan confronted him, told him who he was. The boy put up a solid fight, made Dornan proud at the way he punched and kicked, but he had twenty-five years and change on the kid. He knocked him out, injected him with some tranquilliser to keep him subdued, and placed a call to John.
He answered on the second ring.
‘Hey, Dee,’ John said.
Things had been tense between them of late. Dornan knew the shooting had been stressful for John, and the mystery surrounding Murphy’s disappearance hadn’t helped matters. He’d also heard through the grapevine that Caroline was up to her usual, so it was no wonder he hardly saw his best friend outside of official club business these days.
‘Hey, buddy,’ Dornan said, a strange calm descending upon him as he surveyed the damage he’d done to his first love and their son. ‘Something’s come up. I need you in Colorado, now. Bring Ana.’
While John asked questions, Dornan picked through Stephy’s groceries, finding things to fix himself a sandwich. He poured himself a fresh glass of milk and sat at the table, which was covered in Stephanie’s blood, and proceeded to eat his first meal of the day as he waited for John and Mariana to arrive.
Dornan had found her.
He’d fucking found her. And along with her, his kid.
John hung up the phone and looked around his kitchen, rage and guilt rising inside him. The conversation hadn’t gone down well. Dornan had demanded his presence in Colorado, and insisted that he bring Mariana.
Did he know about Murphy? About the kiss? Did he know about the way John had put his hands all over Dornan’s woman, about how he wanted to do more and no matter what he tried to do to take his mind off it, he couldn’t get her out of his fucking head?
‘That’s a fifteen-hour drive,’ John had protested, as soon as Dornan had made the request. ‘I’ll grab a flight. Or ride it. I can ride faster than I can drive a car.’
‘You’re not riding with Mariana on the back of your bike,’ Dornan had growled. ‘Where are you?’
John glanced at his daughter, lying on the couch as she watched TV. Caroline was in bed, where she’d been for the past three days, only getting up to take more pills. Sometimes she liked uppers, but this week she was systematically knocking herself out for six hours at a stretch. He’d been sleeping on the couch to stay away from her. Their bedroom smelled like unwashed bodies and stale beer, and he wasn’t about to go in there and clean it
up. At least when she was on a downer, he could keep tabs on where she was.
‘I’m at home,’ he said. ‘Tell me what’s going on.’
Dornan cleared his throat. ‘I’ve found Stephanie.’
So it was true. Fuck. Did he know the rest, too? Did he know that John had already known where she was all along?
‘Alive?’ John asked finally.
‘No. Well, yeah. She was alive when I got here.’
Jesus.
John wondered about Jason, Stephanie’s son. Dornan’s son. He couldn’t very well ask about him, though. He wasn’t supposed to know Jason existed.
‘Okay, you wanna tell me what happened?’
‘Not particularly. You’ll see soon enough.’
‘Give me an address,’ John said reluctantly. He didn’t write it down. He didn’t need to.
He knew exactly where he was going.
Somehow knowing that I was pregnant made the nausea worse. It had ramped up significantly since the shooting, and it was taking everything I had to keep it concealed.
Guillermo’s mother had improved, and so he’d come back to the apartment. I had hardly seen Dornan in the past few weeks and I’d mostly kept my head down. I’d called Miguel and checked on Luis, desperate for information. My family had been buried in a plot without a funeral. There had been no investigation.
The corrupt fucking police force that was supposed to protect my country was probably being paid by the cartel to do their dirty work. I mean, it made sense. Emilio had Colombia by the balls, and he paid the police commissioner handsomely. I would know. I was the one who organised the cash transfers into his bank account.
It was around eight at night and I was cleaning up the dinner plates after Guillermo had cooked tacos. It was the only thing he knew how to make, and he’d already started before I could protest that my ass was going to get fat from the food he kept bringing home. There was a knock on the door. Guillermo looked at me from his seat at the breakfast bar.
‘You expecting company?’ he asked, one hand going to the gun at his hip.
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