Gypsy Brothers: The Complete Series

by Lili St. Germain

  Dornan made a show of removing his gun and knife from his holsters, placing them on a small table near where I sat. The camera was still going, or at least I assumed it was with the red light blinking every few seconds. By this stage, I’d been here for a few hours and had long since forgotten my modesty. My legs were cramping as I sat in a pool of my own blood, and I could no longer feel my arms.

  I’d moved through the stages of grief swiftly as the Ross brothers had taken from me what wasn’t theirs. Firstly shock and denial, but that had been quashed as Chad had pressed painfully inside of me, eradicating any possibility that the horrors they promised were just threats. Secondly anger, and that’s where I still hovered, bleeding and furious as Dornan stood in front of me, his face poker-blank.

  “Tell me, Julie,” he said, and I cringed as he used the nickname only my mother used. “Where’s the money?”

  I shook my head. “I already told you, I don’t know!”

  My breathing quickened, terrified as I watched him unbuckle his belt. I wanted to squeeze my eyes shut, but I daren’t look away in case I missed my own death.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, panicking. No more. I couldn’t handle any more. Not again. Not him.

  Dornan moved like a panther stalking its prey, every move measured and silent as he drew the belt from its loops and held it in front of him. It was black, leather, with a skull-shaped clasp.

  “You know,” Dornan said, as he doubled the belt over and held it in both hands, “I was the first to hold you when you were born, Julie. All screaming and covered in blood.” He smiled darkly, standing in front of me.

  Before I could flinch, he brought the belt down on my left leg, the leather burning as it bit into my bare flesh.

  I screamed.

  “It’s kind of like now,” he continued, playing with the belt in his hands. “Your daddy wasn’t there in time to see you be born, and he’s going to miss your death, too.”

  He raised his arm and this time, I braced myself.

  Not that it helped.

  He brought the belt down on my other leg, and I screamed again. I screamed so loud that my throat felt like it would crack in two.

  “Where’s the money, Julie?”

  I started to cry, then. Hung my head and sobbed. Because I didn’t know the answer, and he wasn’t going to stop until I gave him something.

  “My father will kill you for what you’ve done,” I cried, lunging at him against my ropes.

  Dornan tilted his head to the side, an odd expression on his face. He chuckled mirthlessly, the sound hollow and bitter.

  “Not if I kill him first, baby girl.” He bit his lip, letting the belt fall to his side.

  Emilio cleared his throat, reminding us both that he was still in the darkness below the stage, sitting in his chair, his black eyes shining like orbs.

  A flicker of annoyance registered on Dornan’s face as he turned his attention to his father.

  “The belt isn’t working,” Emilio rasped, his Italian accent thick but understandable. “Maybe you need something a little more convincing?”

  Dornan looked at the ground, then back at me. His mask slipped for just a fraction of a second, and I saw my chance. His tiny sliver of hesitation gleamed like a beacon of hope.

  “Dornan,” I begged, “Please. You don’t have to do this.”

  Dornan ignored my pleas as he untucked his shirt and began undoing the buttons. My stomach roiled as he shrugged the shirt off and laid it over the table next to his gun and knife.

  “I swear, I don’t know anything,” I said desperately.

  I had well and truly moved from anger to bargaining as he began to untie my ankles.

  “You’re supposed to protect me!” I screamed. “You’re family!”

  His face twisted into anger as he undid the final rope and wrapped his hands around my throat, pulling me to my feet. I tried to bear weight on my legs as I struggled against his grip, and failed miserably. I couldn’t even feel my legs, let alone stand unassisted.

  “You’re supposed to be my family,” he growled as he throttled me painfully. “Remember?” He took one hand from my neck and drew it across his bare skin, reciting the words tattooed over the bottom of his ribcage. “Il sangue è sacro. Famiglia è sacra!” Blood is sacred. Family is sacred.

  His indifference morphed into rage as he threw me on the ground. I cried out as I landed on hard wood planks, my skull and my elbows taking the brunt of the impact.

  “Don’t ever talk to me about family,” Dornan spat as he stood over me. “You were going to steal my son from me.”

  “He hates you,” I rasped, my own anger bubbling up inside me.

  He stopped for a second, glanced at Emilio, then back to me. “I hated my father once, too,” he said, unbuttoning his jeans. “I got over it.”

  What happened next was so brutal, so devastating, that even now, I can’t form words to describe it.

  Blood is sacred. Family is sacred.

  But clearly, we weren’t family anymore.

  ***

  I’d moved into the final stage of grief, acceptance, as my vision clouded over and those white spots burst into shimmering stars, promising me peace, whispering sweet nothings in my ear that the pain would soon be over.

  I accepted death, let it wash over me, and as a brilliant white light focused above me hours later, I smiled, believing I was finally going to wherever it was souls went after passing on.

  Something sharp jabbed into my arm, and a gloved hand came into my vision as it tilted the bright light slightly.

  Shit. I wasn’t going toward the white light. I started to hear again, panicked voices that yelled for blood transfusions and oxygen, and I realized I wasn’t dying.

  I was being brought back to life.

  I had ceased breathing; the only sound in my universe the intermittent roar and fade of my heart pumping erratically as it skipped to its irregular, fading beat. Someone shouted for paddles, and I thought it amazing that I could still hear snatches of voices even though my lungs no longer drew breath.

  I had a choice to melt back into that acceptance of death, to succumb, and I won’t lie, it was so very tempting. I let myself sink further, the same fall you experience when you succumb to sleep, but I knew I wouldn’t be waking from this.

  I screamed inside my mind as hot electricity bit at my chest and rushed through my body, forcing my heart to try and beat, but I resisted its saving grace, refusing to surface from my own demise. If my arms would work, I’d push them all away and demand that they let me die in peace.

  I had accepted this. I was ready. I was ready to die.

  And then a face appeared in my mind.

  Jase. My dear boy.

  I loved him. If there was even the slightest chance he was still alive, I had to hold on, for him.

  I suddenly had to live.

  Another shock, worse than the first, sparked something primal inside of me: a hope that burned like wildfire, and an anger that simmered like poison in my veins.

  “She’s back,” a voice said, closer this time.

  I opened my mouth and gasped for breath, pulling precious air into my lungs as pain spread through my body.

  From the brink of death, I was born again—naked, bloody, and screaming as the cold reality of my survival overwhelmed me.

  As I vowed to make Dornan and his sons pay for their sins.

  FIFTEEN

  I blink, shaking my head, and hear movement upstairs.

  Dornan.

  I adjust my white sundress and make my way quietly up the stairs. As I hit the last stair, I hear the creak of a chair from the office. I knock gently on the door and it swings open.

  Showtime. I’m woefully prepared for this, but I suck in a breath and give it my all. I haven’t come this far just to drop my game in the final stretch.

  Dornan’s sitting behind his desk, his laptop open in front of him. He’s staring intently at it, but presses a button shifting his focus to me when I e
nter the room.

  “Sammi,” he breathes.

  “Are you okay?” I ask hesitantly, hovering on the other side of his desk. I’m stalling. After making love to Jase, I can’t bear the thought of Dornan’s touch on my skin.

  He rises from his chair, his ability to walk around apparently undisturbed. I marvel at the fact.

  “You can walk,” I say, surprised. “I can’t believe it. After what happened?”

  Luckiest bastard alive. That blast should have killed him.

  “Come here, you little cunt,” he says, his teeth gritted together in a grotesque sort of grimace. It’s made worse by the healing scars that litter every piece of his exposed flesh.

  “Whoa,” I reply lightly, surprised. “You kiss your mother with that mouth?”

  Dornan smiles, baring his teeth, and my world crashes down around me as I hear the door slam behind me, locked with a key from the outside.

  He turns his laptop around so that I can see the video he’s watching, and my heart sinks as my knees threaten to buckle underneath me.

  As I realize what it is I’m seeing.

  Surveillance footage of a girl. A girl in a garage, wearing nothing but a thin nightgown, her movements quick and efficient as she places crudely fashioned bombs into the gas tanks of her enemy’s motorcycles. My heart rushes up into my mouth as I continue to watch the screen, completely engrossed. As the girl turns, the camera catches her face in the infrared light, and I see her trepidation.

  Her excitement.

  What a stupid girl.

  I take a step back, hitting the door with my ass as he answers my question.

  Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?

  “No,” he says, coming around the desk at me, “but I kissed your mother with it plenty of times.” He smirks as he delivers the final word in his sentence.

  “Juliette.”

  SIXTEEN

  Every day for six years, I used to pray that I would find my way back to the boy I loved.

  Until finally, one day, I did.

  But that’s the funny thing about life. Nothing good ever lasts, not for me, anyway. You think you’re the one with the power, at least I did, but then I got careless. One tiny mistake, and now I am powerless to stop what comes next.

  People think money equals power, but all the money in my bank account, the dirty notes laundered clean that my father left for me, are useless.

  Money does not equal power. Power is held by the one with the knife in his hand, tracing shallow cuts into your skin.

  Power is held by the one who owns you.

  I had power once.

  Now, I have nothing.

  “Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.”

  - Khalil Gibran

  PROLOGUE

  I loved Jason Ross for seven years. One together, then six spent apart, while I festered in my rage and he grieved my supposed death.

  Then finally, we were reunited again.

  He knew me as a stranger before he finally saw me for who I really am.

  Juliette Portland.

  A dead girl. A lover. A murderer.

  My heart was finally whole again.

  But none of it matters anymore.

  Because now, it’s all been torn away.

  I don’t know how much longer I can stand this.

  Before Dornan breaks me.

  ONE

  “Shallow cuts.”

  I whimper again, struggling against my ropes as darkness threatens to pull me under.

  And I want it to pull me under. Mercy. Blackness. Please, just let me pass out.

  He stops, his black eyes gleaming with satisfaction as he surveys his handiwork. My head sags forward, my chin hitting my chest, and I can see the scores of small cuts he’s marked into the skin on my stomach. So far, he’s avoided my tattoo, and the scars that hover below it, but he keeps touching it, caressing me there, and I know he’s planning something painful for that spot.

  I’m tied to a chair today, my wrists bound behind me. My ankles are completely numb, tied tightly against the chair legs. Some days he ties me to the bed, each limb stretched painfully and attached securely to the corners of the bare frame. There’s no mattress, and the bedsprings bite at my back as he takes his pleasure making me bleed. I’m still wearing the same thing I had on when he snatched me - a black T-shirt, sliced open down the front so that it hangs loosely at my sides and black cotton bra and panties. He’s taken my jeans from me, probably so I feel the bitter cold at night.

  Or to have easy access to my legs so he can drag his knife along every inch of exposed flesh.

  He still hasn’t raped me. Hasn’t even touched me down there. It confuses me, and it makes me afraid. I want him to get it over and done with. Do what he’s going to do, instead of leaving me for days at a time, starving and cold, as my blood dries on my skin, coating the tops of my thighs.

  “Shallow, shallow cuts,” he murmurs, his low voice rocky and rough. I moan as he drags the blade through my skin again, breaking it open like paper and pressing his fingers into the wound he’s created. He leans forward and I whimper again, knowing what he’s about to do.

  I jolt back suddenly as his tongue scrapes along my opened skin like sandpaper, claiming the blood that he’s spilled, drinking in my sorrow. His breath is hot against my cold skin, his tongue like a dirty worm burrowing inside of me.

  Agony.

  I’ve been down here for so long, I’ve lost track of time. There’s no sunlight in here, only concrete, dampness, and cold. At night I freeze, and during the day I swelter. That is the only way I know if it’s night or day, and even these things are starting to become muddled. I count my days by the fresh wounds, having nothing else to reference time with.

  It doesn’t matter, anyway. I could have been down here for a day or a year, and the fact remains the same:

  I am never getting out.

  I know this now. I fought against him for the first few days, until he broke me. Starved me and beat me and broke my spirit. It’s shameful, really.

  I always thought I was stronger than this.

  Assumed that he’d never be able to break me - but he did. So quickly.

  “I’ve got a surprise for you today,” he says, his mouth quirked into a dark smile, a smile that feeds off my suffering. A smile marked with my blood, his full lips coated in a red sheen.

  Surprises are bad. I don’t like his surprises. They always hurt me, make me bleed. I don’t even know if I’ve got any blood left to bleed for him.

  I cry softly as I remember the last words he spoke to me in his office before he pressed the rag to my face, and held it there until the noxious fumes in the material stole my consciousness.

  “I know you think this is going to be bad,” he had said, his grip against my face almost enough to break my jaw, “but however bad you think this is going to be? It’s going to be so. Much. Worse.”

  TWO

  The door to my room - to my dungeon - slams shut loudly, and I jerk awake from the sleep I’d finally been able to succumb to.

  It feels like I’ve only been asleep for a moment at the most, and when I see my blood still wet on his bottom lip, my suspicions are confirmed.

  Damn. I was really enjoying that brief interlude of calm unconsciousness.

  He’s not holding the knife anymore. Instead, he’s got a small vial of something in one hand, and a slim plastic package in the other. He places both on the small wooden table that sits just inside the room and stalks over to me.

  I gasp as he undoes my ropes. Blood rushes to my ankles, which creates incredible pain, too. I cry out as he fists a hand in my hair and drags me from the chair, throwing me onto the narrow single bed face down. Wire springs grab at my wounded skin, tearing at me, and I force myself to lie still, my face pressed into biting metal, and my eyes staring a the bloodstained floor beneath it. I don’t even fight as ropes are wrapped around my ankles and wrists, flaying my aching limbs in four dire
ctions, making me completely vulnerable to his whims.

  “Look at me.”

  I turn my head to the side and see him sitting on the chair I’ve been tied to for the last several hours. He rips the plastic package open with his teeth, and I feel my eyes grow wider when I see it’s a hypodermic needle. I swallow thickly as he stabs the tip of it into the small glass vial he’s holding, and draws liquid into it.

  “What’s that?” I ask, stunned and scared.

  He tuts. “It won’t kill you, if that’s what you’re wondering.” He scoots closer, brings the sharp metal tip down to my arm.

  It’s automatic, my struggle. I cry out at him as I fight my restraints, as I press my knees into the bed and try desperately to get up onto them.

  “Stop.” One hand on my back, pressing me down, but I ignore him. He chuckles. “I didn’t think you had any fight left in you, Julie. I was getting disappointed there.”

  I continue to struggle, even though I know it’s futile. In the position I’m in, legs wide and ankles tied painfully tight to the bed corners, I’ve got no leverage. Face down, with my arms painfully twisted into ropes behind my back, I can’t get away. All I’m doing is wasting my precious energy.

  “I said, stop.” He’s less amused this time, trying to stop me as I thrash around, drawing away from the tip of the needle. I can only hope that he needs to hit my vein, and can’t just shove the stuff into my arm.

  His smile disappears and he recaps the syringe, shoving it in his jeans pocket. He twists me painfully so I’m on my side and covers my mouth with his large hand. I kick and scream, but he easily holds me in place. I panic as he reaches down with his other hand and pinches my nose shut with his thumb and forefinger.

  I gasp against his palm, desperately trying to suck air in, but I get nothing. Before I know it, blurry grey dots are in front of me, and then the world goes black.

  ***

  Black and light. Unconscious and awake.

  I can’t remember the last time I fell asleep normally.

  Was it beside Jase the night before we fought? The night before I went and fucked everything up?