Empire

by Lili St. Germain

  ‘Do you know where Murphy is?’ he asked me, his tone deathly calm. Too calm.

  Oh, God. My stomach lurched again as I remembered the taste of Murphy’s blood in my mouth, the way he’d bled everywhere. All over me, all over my bed, all over the floor.

  Dominoes. We’d piled them up, he and I, and they were starting to fall. One by one, the lies would set us free, even if that freedom meant certain death.

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘No, I don’t.’

  And the truth was, I didn’t know. John had handled the burning of his body. And, I assumed, the disposal of whatever had been left over. Gravel and ash. Hell, maybe he was still at the same crematorium where Guillermo and I had taken the baby only yesterday. As far as I was concerned, the whereabouts of Christopher Murphy – what was left of him – was a mystery to me.

  I would have to ask John what he did with Murphy’s remains, assuming I made it out of Vegas alive.

  ‘The FBI are looking for him,’ Dornan said, taking my hand again and squeezing my wrist.

  I didn’t bother pulling away, the image of Agent Lindsay Price clear in my mind – the FBI agent who’d cornered me in the locker room at the gym Guillermo and I frequented, stolen my towel, and asked me where Murphy was. I’d never told Dornan. I couldn’t. I no longer trusted the man who, once upon a time, would have laid down his life to protect me.

  ‘The FBI are looking for him,’ Dornan repeated, ‘and they’re getting closer.’

  ‘Great,’ I replied. ‘Maybe when they find him, they can ask him where he stashed hundreds of thousands of dollars of your father’s money.’

  Dornan turned and smashed his fist into the mirror. Shards exploded in a rain of cold glass, sharp and tacky.

  ‘They’re going to call you as a witness, you stupid bitch,’ he said, ignoring his bleeding knuckles as they dripped all over the floor.

  Something reached into my chest and squeezed violently, the part of me that screamed MURDERER. I killed Murphy. The blood was on my hands, in my apartment, in the grout between my bathroom tiles. And even though John had it swept clean by a specialist crew, I’d watched enough TV to know that it’d only take a single missed speck of blood to put me away for the rest of my natural life.

  And I couldn’t be in prison. I could plot and thieve and run from the Gypsy Brothers and Il Sangue, but I couldn’t break out of a federal penitentiary. That was beyond my particular set of skills. I couldn’t ever, ever be caught for the terrible things I had done in the name of survival. Two police officers – Murphy, and his squeeze and DEA partner, Allie Baxter – were both dead by my hand.

  Dornan must have seen something on my face. ‘You know where he is, don’t you?’

  I shook my head vehemently. ‘No.’

  ‘Then why do you look like you’re about to pee all over the fucking floor?’ he growled.

  ‘They’ll arrest me for money laundering,’ I said quietly, my eyes wide, my breathing laboured. I wasn’t putting on an act. They really would arrest me for that. And ironically, the sentences for white-collar crimes like funnelling money – profits of drug supply and human trafficking at that – to every known tax haven in the world were probably harsher than if I’d just stepped out onto the strip with a machete and started hacking gamble-happy tourists to pieces.

  America, the land of the free, really fucking liked collecting taxes. It didn’t like it when you tried to hide money. Especially when you got that money for doing very bad things.

  ‘Why do you think we’re here?’ Dornan asked, his anger subsiding for the moment. I glanced at the broken mirror, the remaining shards casting a haunting image of us, shattered and warped a thousand times over as our reflections existed in tiny slices of glass.

  ‘Because you don’t have to testify against your spouse in court,’ I said vacantly, rubbing my wrist as faint bruises began to appear. I mean, I’d been a little slow to catch on, but I wasn’t an idiot.

  ‘Bingo,’ Dornan said. He wrapped his hand in paper towels to stem the bleeding. Then, as I continued to stand there like a waste of space, he put his hands on my hips and guided me over to the unbroken mirror that hung over the neighbouring basin. He started to fuss with my hair, moving strands to where they belonged and smoothing down the knots he’d created when he fisted clumps of my hair and pulled. There were flowers woven into my hair, my messy topknot.

  ‘Did you put these in my hair?’ I asked slowly, horrified at the way he’d dressed me and arranged me as if I were his doll.

  ‘I did,’ Dornan replied, tucking a small pink rose back into my hair. ‘You can thank me later.’

  Somehow the act of decorating my hair was more disturbing than almost anything he’d ever done. It was his way of communicating that he could do whatever he wanted with me – and if I didn’t like it, he’d force it anyway, just to get things the way he wanted.

  I watched him silently in the mirror’s reflection, weighing my options.

  They were feather-light. They didn’t exist.

  ‘You good?’ he asked. It was like the fight had bled out of him. Maybe it had. I nodded.

  ‘Then let’s go get fucking married,’ he said, pulling the bloody napkin from his knuckles. ‘Don’t worry. If you still hate me this much in a year, we’ll just get fucking divorced.’

  His casual words belied the intent in his eyes. I knew that look. We would be married, but we would not ever be getting divorced. The only way I would ever be undoing what was about to happen would be if one of us died and the other was widowed.

  John was going to want to murder Dornan when he found out about this.

  ‘Does your father know about this?’ I asked again, my heart hollow as the answer knocked around it like a frenzied moth in the dark. Because I already knew the answer.

  ‘Of course,’ Dornan replied, ushering me out of the bathroom. I glanced back at the shattered glass one last time, a sense of doom crushing down on me.

  ‘Esteban and I were going to get married,’ I said softly, letting him lead me to the altar, his reluctant bride. ‘But your father had him killed before we could do it.’

  ‘Lucky me,’ Dornan said, as Elvis started singing ‘Suspicious Minds’ at top volume over the speaker system. Oh, the irony. ‘Now I get the honour of calling you wife while he’s napping in the dirt.’

  I made a choking sound in the back of my throat as his words slammed into me.

  ‘You motherfucker,’ I shot, anger blossoming in my chest like noxious fumes.

  He took something from his pocket and held it out to me, seemingly unaffected by my reaction. ‘Have some gum. You need it.’

  If looks were knives, he’d have been sliced clean in half. ‘How thoughtful,’ I said, snatching the packet from him.

  I unwrapped a stick of gum and stuck it between my teeth. Mint flooded my mouth, sharp and tangy, and from that moment on I’d always associate white dresses and Elvis with sticky-sweet mint and broken bones.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  DORNAN

  The ceremony was short. It wasn’t, however, remotely sweet. When it was time for them to kiss, Dornan could have sworn Mariana flinched.

  He’d have to punish her for that.

  And he had just the punishment to fit her crime. The crime of not loving him anymore. The crime of checking out. She was physically here with him, but her mind was just gone.

  But her body would be his. He would mark her so that any man who touched her knew she belonged to him. He would dig into her flesh until her eyes burned from the pain.

  He’d seen the threads of them unravelling, but by the time he understood how serious it was, she was already somewhere else.

  And he couldn’t figure out where.

  The phone, the incriminating evidence against her, was like a ticking time bomb in Dornan’s existence. He’d almost asked her about it so many times, but he had never actually spoken the words aloud, because he didn’t want to know the answer. She was all he had, the only person who loved him that wasn�
��t required to by virtue of sharing his DNA, and he couldn’t bear the thought that she might have betrayed him.

  That fucking phone, though. It was prepaid, a flimsy piece of shit that led nowhere. No details, no call history that he could find when he scrolled through the phone’s basic functions – nothing. Murphy was the one who could get things like call logs easily and discreetly, and that motherfucker was either ghosting all of them, or dead. Dornan had packed the phone for this trip specifically, taking the opportunity to steal it from its hiding spot while Mariana was packing. Because he was tired of waiting around for answers, and it was time to get them himself.

  The phone was in Dornan’s suitcase now, locked inside his gun case with his Beretta – his other piece, the one he wasn’t currently hiding in the waistband of his jeans. He had a smaller handgun for everyday concealed carry. A Beretta was too fucking heavy to carry around all day, and it made him itch.

  The phone. The phone. The phone.

  Now, if fucking Murphy hadn’t disappeared, he could have checked the official call records for it, subpoenaed information, gotten answers. But Murphy was nowhere to be found, and perhaps that was because he was the one she was calling from this goddamn phone in the first place. Dornan’s other investigative contacts didn’t have FBI clearance, so they had to do some shady shit to get answers. Shady shit took time.

  Fucking Murphy.

  If he was still alive when they found him, Dornan was going to murder him.

  If she was going to double-cross the cartel, it made sense that Ana would work with Murphy. He was a DEA agent. He was shady as fuck. And Dornan hated him.

  But Ana hated Murphy, too. So if the phone had come from him, then he was either blackmailing her somehow, or giving her something she wanted.

  But what?

  Her family? The people who thought she was long dead?

  What was he missing?

  Was it somehow tied to Guillermo, the man Dornan had entrusted with Mariana’s security detail? He’d been loyal to Dornan always, but everybody had a weakness. He’d put the hot-headed Mexican in Mariana’s apartment for protection, but was he sticking his dick in Dornan’s girlfriend – wait, his wife – behind his back? If that was the case, he’d chop the fucking thing off and barbecue it, and force Guillermo to eat it.

  ‘Nice ring,’ Mariana said, peering at the rock on her hand. ‘Who’d you steal it from?’

  Dornan grinned, but inside he felt cold. This wasn’t the future he’d imagined for them. This wasn’t how he’d pictured their wedding.

  He hadn’t even asked her to marry him, he’d forced her.

  If she’s betrayed us, I will fucking kill her. I will rip her fucking head off, and Murphy’s too.

  ‘It was my grandmother’s,’ he said, a hollow ache inside his chest. He’d had that ring since his mother’s mother died and he was a young man, unwed and sowing his wild oats. He’d intended to give it to Stephanie, but then she left him. He’d never felt Celia was worthy of it. And somewhere in the depths of his black soul, he imagined Mariana would be buried in the ground wearing it, very soon.

  ‘Oh,’ Mariana said quietly.

  Dornan got the driver to take a detour on the way back to the hotel: Franco’s ink shop, right on Freemont. He knew Franco well. He’d been tattooing Gypsies for years, until he moved out to Nevada and started making bank by tattooing tramp stamps on drunken brides instead.

  Mariana glanced at the store’s sign warily as Dornan pressed his hand into the small of her back, directing her into the front of Franco’s studio. Needles whirred noisily, the air-conditioning so cold it was like being in the fucking Arctic.

  Better than sweating, Dornan thought. He pulled Mariana right up to the counter and knocked his fist against the glass display case once, twice, three times. A young punk girl wandered out, and Dornan couldn’t help but stare at the stretcher earrings that had turned her earlobes into giant holes.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she asked, clearly unimpressed by him. That’s right, he wasn’t in LA. Nobody knew him here, at least not by sight, and definitely not when he was in civilian clothing, nary a Gypsy Brothers patch to be seen.

  He looked the punk bitch up and down. ‘Tell Franco that Dornan Ross is here,’ he said, the smile he flashed her more like a wolf baring teeth. The girl’s eyes went wide and she nodded, scurrying away.

  ‘Wow,’ Mariana said, leaning back against the glass counter. ‘The place where everybody knows your name.’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘They got Cheers on TV in Colombia, wife?’ He liked the sound of that word when he said it. She was his wife. And she’d come around to embrace her new position. Eventually. Probably.

  She didn’t really have a choice.

  She frowned. ‘I haven’t been in Colombia in ten years, husband.’

  She said the word like she was talking about stepping in dog shit. It brought that rage out of him, that cloying, violent need for blood.

  ‘Where’d you watch Cheers?’ he asked, not really caring, but needing to fill the silence until Franco got his ass out here.

  ‘In the apartment,’ she replied. ‘Guillermo and I watch reruns.’

  ‘He rub your back and fix you tea, too?’ Dornan asked. That fucker better not have laid a hand on her.

  ‘Sometimes,’ she said, catching his eye. She was fucking with him, and he hated it, but it didn’t matter, because he was about to fuck with her.

  Franco, a short, rotund man with a white beard and a shiny bald head, barged out of the back of the shop, making a beeline for Dornan. They exchanged pleasantries, Dornan slapping the man on the back hard enough that he thought he might break him, and then the three of them went into a back booth.

  ‘Alrighty,’ Franco said, peering up at them from his five foot nothing stance. ‘What’s the big bad biker getting today?’

  Dornan smiled. Gotcha. He gestured to Mariana, draping an arm over her bare shoulders. ‘My wife would like a more lasting reminder of our union. Apparently a ring isn’t good enough these days.’

  Mariana’s head snapped around like the kid in the fucking Exorcist movie. She tried to pull away, but Dornan was strong. He held her to his side, squeezing her shoulders under his broad arm.

  ‘What the fuck?’ she hissed. Franco looked between the two of them, apparently not in a hurry at all. ‘Do you want a moment to talk amongst yourselves while I get the needles?’ he offered.

  Dornan nodded. ‘Sounds like a plan, Franco.’

  Franco wandered out back and Dornan released Mariana. She backed up, away from him, but it didn’t matter. He had her cornered, and she knew it.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she snapped. ‘Are you out of your fucking mind? You want to brand me like I’m an animal?’

  He grabbed her wrist, not bothering to be gentle, thinking she fucking deserved it rough after the performance she’d put on. He’d done everything for her, and she was freezing him out at every turn.

  ‘It’s tradition,’ Dornan said. ‘All the wives of Gypsies get a tattoo. It’s part of your role. Or would you prefer to be marked with cum and lines of coke like all the club whores? Like I said, we can get a fucking divorce. But I need me a wife, babe. If it’s not you, I’ll have to donate you to the fine members of my club.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ Mariana said, shoving him in the chest. Of course he didn’t move. ‘As if you’d share me.’

  Dornan chuckled. ‘I might not like it, but, darlin’, I’d do just about anything to prove a point.’

  Mariana’s smirk dropped, replaced by unadulterated horror.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Don’t do this. You don’t have to do this.’

  Dornan guided her to the chair and sat her down, marvelling at how beautiful his trapped little bird was, now.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ he said, nodding to the ring on her finger. ‘Take that off and put it on the other hand. It’ll be a few days until the swelling goes down.’

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  MARIANA

 
; I slammed the door in Dornan’s face, closed the lid of the toilet seat, and sat. I looked at my ring finger, swollen, hurting so fucking brutally I wanted to rip the whole finger off. I wondered if the needle and the tattooing equipment had even been sterile.

  I didn’t want this fucking abomination on my finger. A skull. He’d had them tattoo a skull on my finger, and a matching faux band so that it represented a ring. Because a piece of paper legally binding us together and a diamond the size of my pinkie fingernail wasn’t enough to seal the deal. I was surprised he hadn’t just tattooed PROPERTY OF DORNAN ROSS over my face for everyone to see.

  I didn’t want this marriage.

  I didn’t want to be holed up in a fucking bathroom in Las Vegas while Dornan raged outside the door, ravenous for the release that only my body could give him. He had wed me, and now it was pretty clear that he wanted to fuck me. Consummation of a commitment ten years in the making.

  Fuck that.

  I didn’t want him on me. In me. Near me.

  I wanted John.

  But John wasn’t here. He was somewhere else, and I was here, and nothing else mattered.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing in there?’ Dornan asked. ‘You can’t stay in there forever.’

  ‘Fuck you!’ I yelled back, wrapping my arms around myself and resting my forehead on my knees. I knocked my finger against my leg and cried out. Goddamn it. It hurt.

  I caught sight of myself in the mirror across from me. Pale. Not the actual colour of my skin – I was Colombian, after all – but the pallor. It screamed misery. So did my eyes. Red and bloodshot. My hair was messed up. My stomach was screaming for food and my hands shook from stress and lack of sugar.

  I’m married to the man who is going to kill me if I don’t get away from him.

  I was a mess.

  More than that – I was fucking doomed.

  I rested my face in my hands and cried.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  DORNAN

  Mariana hadn’t said a word while Franco was tattooing the ring onto her finger. It was tradition, but neither of his other wives had gotten them, and Dornan hadn’t pressed the issue. But his Mariana . . . she was something to be coveted. She was something to be marked.