Empire

by Lili St. Germain

  Lindsay left them alone for a moment under the pretence of getting John a chair, but when he peered at them through the one-way glass window, they remained silent. They were smart. They’d almost been smart enough to get out before Lindsay had scooped them up. Almost.

  After a few moments of watching them exchange silent glances, he headed back in, a chair in one hand, coffee in the other. The coffee was for him. Criminals didn’t get coffee until they gave him something. If these two delivered, he’d buy them a lifetime supply of Starbucks to go with their immunity.

  John sat in the chair. Lindsay leaned against the table and sipped coffee. They all looked at each other silently. And then Mariana Rodriguez began to talk.

  ***

  Mariana had insisted on going to the clubhouse to collect the financial evidence herself. She’d also insisted on taking John with her. Said she wouldn’t do a thing if he was out of her sight for a single second. John hadn’t said a damn thing.

  After much toing and froing, Lindsay sent them both with Agent Morgan to recover the evidence Mariana was so adamant about – the financial records that could prove a link between Emilio Ross, the Il Sangue Cartel, and the human trafficking ring. He watched them leave, relieved that he was able to cut a deal that would see Mariana kept safe. He’d only met the woman twice, but he’d watched her for hours upon hours over the last few months. There was something about her that endeared her to him, even if he couldn’t quite articulate what it was.

  His coffee long since cold, Lindsay gathered his files and dumped them on his desk, and then headed down to the lockup to see who he could rattle next. Yeah, he had Mariana’s testimony, but it didn’t mean he couldn’t make his case even more bulletproof with additional testimony. He was looking forward to interrogating Emilio and Dornan Ross. He was practically giddy about the prospect of waving their life sentences in their faces, because that’s what they’d get for the things they’d done. He intended to impress upon them that his case against them would bury them so deep, they’d never see the light of day again.

  He was feeling pretty chipper as he approached the police officer on duty and held out his badge for verification. ‘I’m ready for Dornan and Emilio Ross to be brought upstairs for questioning,’ he said, scanning the lock-up for the father and son.

  The officer shrugged. ‘They’re gone.’

  Lindsay just about died on the spot. ‘I’m sorry, what?’

  A senior officer who was sitting at a nearby desk chimed in. ‘Yeah. Apparently they had some hotshot lawyer down here, demanding to know what they were under arrest for. He got them out, like, three hours ago.’

  ‘We’ll have all the evidence we need to convict those two sorry sons of bitches. It’s being collected right now.’

  ‘Well, you needed it three hours ago,’ the senior officer replied. ‘We had no choice but to let them go.’

  Lindsay was incredulous. ‘It’s an FBI case. It’s called a twenty-four hour hold, for Christ’s sake.’

  The duty officer opened his mouth to speak but Lindsay cut him off as a fresh wave of panic slammed him. ‘Wait, did you say they’ve been gone for three hours? Fuck!’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  MARIANA

  We were completely and utterly screwed. Emilio had somehow skipped his holding cell and beaten us to the strip club, pouncing the moment we’d entered the place with Agent Morgan.

  The same Agent Morgan who was now bleeding to death at my feet, courtesy of a bullet to his chest. Two of Dornan’s sons held my arms behind my back. Viper and two other Gypsy Brothers were holding John. It had taken three men to restrain him.

  Behind the desk John usually sat at, in the office we shared, Emilio paced.

  He’d already filled us in on the information Viper had pieced together. We were fucked. Emilio knew everything. He knew I’d killed Murphy. He knew John and I were together. He knew I’d been skimming cartel money for years. And he knew John had been responsible for Stephanie’s disappearance.

  This was it. Our final moments. I’d always wondered what would happen if the house of cards came crashing down, and now I knew. This.

  Death.

  Turns out, I didn’t much like waiting to die.

  ‘You’re going to kill us,’ I spat at Emilio. ‘What are you waiting for?’

  He didn’t stop pacing as he locked those cold, dead eyes on me. ‘A call. I’m waiting for a call from my son. He went to your house, John, assuming that’s the first place you’d hit. Such a family man, we all thought you’d go back for your daughter before stopping here. Who knew?’

  John growled, straining against the stronghold his three club brothers had on him.

  ‘I wonder what they’ll do with your precious daughter,’ Emilio mused.

  ‘I’ll fucking kill you if you touch her!’ John roared, lunging over the desk.

  Emilio smiled. ‘I won’t touch her,’ he said, smirking. ‘But I will watch.’

  ***

  They locked me in a room by myself and left me there. It was more of a broom closet really, full of cleaning supplies and towels. There was nothing sharp. No windows. The best hope I had was to try to set something on fire. I’d probably die very quickly, though. So I refrained.

  I paced the tiny room, once my eyes had adjusted to the darkness. At least I paced until I heard the screams coming from downstairs. Once I heard those screams I started screaming. It didn’t matter, though. Nobody came to let me out.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  DORNAN

  Dornan didn’t quite know what he was doing. It was as if his need for vengeance had overtaken his mind. He’d gone to John’s house in search of John, with a bag of smack as a bribe to get Caroline to tell him where John had gone if he wasn’t there.

  Caroline didn’t tell Dornan anything. But it didn’t matter. He’d handed over the heroin willingly. He’d taken her child as payment.

  Juliette. The baby he’d taken in after Caroline abandoned her in the hospital in search of her next fix. The baby who John hadn’t been able to meet until she was already months old and staring into Dornan’s eyes like he was her daddy. The only parent she’d known from birth. They’d always had a special bond, he and Julie.

  And now he had taken her from her home, and he was going to hurt her. The darkness inside him clamoured for her blood, even though part of him was distraught at the prospect of what he was about to do. He was about to take that girl he’d once thought of as his own, the girl who meant more to John Portland than breathing, more than air, more than living . . . and Dornan was going to destroy her.

  An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. A life for a life. John had taken everything from Dornan. He’d taken Stephanie. He’d taken Jason. He’d taken Mariana.

  And so Dornan would take Juliette from John. Break her into little pieces so that she could never be put back together again. It was a fitting revenge for such a systematic betrayal.

  ‘Please,’ Juliette begged, tied to a chair on the empty stage of the strip club. Before her stood a video camera on a tripod, a flashing red light indicating that it was recording. He would hurt her. He would break her, and then he would force John to watch the highlights reel.

  ‘Dornan!’ she implored. ‘You don’t have to do this!’

  But he did have to do this. Because in that moment, he didn’t even see Juliette, the girl he’d treated like one of his own. He didn’t see his father, watching silently from the floor below.

  He only saw Stephanie, crying as he beat her half to death. The woman who’d taken his heart, and his son, and his hope that he could ever be something better than what he was.

  He saw John. The man who he’d trusted above all else, the man who’d now taken not one, but two women he loved, and made them despise him. Yes, in the girl’s green eyes he saw treachery and betrayal, but most of all, he saw her fear, and he liked it.

  John had taken Stephanie. Sent her away. John had taken his son in the process, and now Jase hated him. His
own father. John had taken his youngest son once, and now he was planning to take him again? Yes, as if the betrayal was not cutting enough, John and Mariana had been planning to take Jason when they fled town.

  John had stolen Mariana from Dornan. And she had gone to him, like a moth to a flame, like none of the shit they’d been through in the past ten years had ever happened. Dornan had risked his life for her, taken a bullet for her, left his wife and married her! He would have fucking died for her, and none of it mattered, because she wanted John.

  He’d always vowed to protect this girl, Juliette. But he didn’t protect her. He took a knife and cut her clothes from her body, and when she was naked and sobbing he told his sons to destroy her.

  And they had tried. All of them. All except Jason, who’d been found and brought to the strip club, kicking and screaming blue murder, who was now unconscious at Dornan’s feet because he’d been so distraught at the sight of Chad laying his body upon Juliette’s and violating her. All six of his older sons had done as Dornan had told them to. Some more willingly than others. They’d all walked away after committing different variations of the same heinous act upon the defenceless girl, and she was still here. She was still breathing.

  She was a fighter, like her daddy. It was going to take more to break her.

  It was going to take Dornan to break her.

  It was just the two of them now, on the stage; them, and a camera and a small table where Dornan was laying his clothes in a neat pile as he pulled them from his body.

  As she continued to protest.

  ‘You’re supposed to be my family!’ Juliette screamed, bleeding all over the fucking place.

  He stared at the girl in front of him, and something inside him said stop. It was a whimper, not a scream, that voice of dissent that said It’s not too late to let her go. But something else, something much louder and more powerful drowned that protest out. The beast inside him demanded vengeance, demanded destruction. And the beast needed to be fed.

  Dornan swallowed. Took a deep breath, took a step towards her, his belt in his hands.

  And he became the monster he was born to be.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  DORNAN

  ‘Get up.’

  Jason was at his feet, his face bloody and swollen from being beaten unconscious.

  ‘Where is she?’ he begged. ‘Please, where is she?’

  Dornan reached down and grabbed the back of his son’s neck. His anger gave him brute strength, and it was the easiest thing in the world to drag the insolent little fucker away from the stage where a naked Juliette lay, unconscious and bleeding from what Dornan had done to her. In one hand he gripped his son. In the other, the remnants of Juliette’s clothing – a macabre souvenir of the dignity he’d stolen from her.

  He entered the small office where John was being held, still dragging Jase. As soon as they were both safely in the room and the door locked, he shoved Jase away. He fell to the floor and scrambled into the corner, getting as far away from his father as he could.

  ‘Where’s Ana?’ Dornan asked, scanning the faces around him. Viper and Jimmy and . . . oh yes. John. Tied to a chair, his face much like Jase’s – bloody and swollen and bruised.

  ‘She’s down the hall,’ Jimmy replied. ‘Want me to get her?’

  Dornan shook his head. ‘Not yet.’

  He circled John’s chair once before stopping in front of him.

  ‘Johnny Boy,’ he said.

  John refused to look at his oldest friend. Dornan thought that was odd. Shouldn’t he be begging Dornan to let Juliette go?

  But then he remembered, John didn’t know about Juliette.

  Dornan steeled himself, the sticky bunch of fabric in his hand. He dropped the bloodied clothing on John’s lap, piece by piece. John looked at the material, either disinterested or confused, Dornan couldn’t tell which.

  And then he dropped the last piece. The piece of T-shirt with the little rainbow icon that, just two hours ago, had sat above Juliette’s heart as she wore her regular clothes and lived her regular life.

  John’s eyes widened when he saw the rainbow, his head whipping up so that he could look at Dornan.

  ‘No,’ he said hoarsely.

  Dornan smirked.

  ‘No!’ John screamed, bucking against his ropes. ‘No! No! No!’

  Dornan, who’d started pacing in front of his bound, traitorous friend, stopped on his heel and turned in front of John. He stood so close, their legs touching, that had John been able to pry his hands free from their bindings, he’d have been able to swing at him.

  ‘Sixteen years you kept Stephanie from me.’

  John looked down at the bloody ribbons of clothing in his lap, horrified. Transfixed. ‘What did you do?’ he breathed.

  ‘Sixteen years, I could have had my son.’

  ‘WHAT DID YOU DO?’ John roared, his face bright red, his knuckles white as he tried to twist them away from the chair.

  ‘How long were you fucking my wife?’ Dornan asked. It suddenly occurred to him that it was the last time he’d likely refer to Mariana as his wife.

  ‘If you hurt Julie–’

  Dornan tutted. ‘I already hurt Julie. Jesus, John, didn’t you hear her screaming? That was your daughter and my sons, but she was the only one who screamed.’

  John made a guttural noise in the back of his throat, pulling against the ropes that bound him to the chair. He was going to either make himself bleed or snap the rope soon enough.

  Dornan drew his gun and pressed it against John’s lips, against his teeth. ‘We’re talking about my wife first, John. She suck your cock, John? Did my wife suck good cock?’

  John’s eyes flashed with anger. Dornan drew the gun away and used it to pistol-whip him across the face. Blood flew from John’s mouth and through the air, landing on the ground with a sickening splat.

  ‘What else, huh? You steal my wife, you steal my money, you steal my FUCKING SON?’

  ‘Why is there blood on her clothes?’ John panted. ‘Why are her clothes cut up?’

  Dornan grabbed a second chair and planted it right in front of John’s, straddling it. He rested his elbows on the top of the backrest, watching John as an eerie calm descended upon him. Little by little, the angry buzz was starting to recede. This is what it feels like, he realised. To switch it all off and walk away from ever caring about anything else again. This is what it feels like to be my father.

  It felt . . . oddly freeing. No more worry. No more pain. Just the self-assured conviction that the man in front of him – the man he’d trusted with his own life, his own wife, his own fucking kids – that this man would suffer for his betrayal.

  John levelled his gaze at Dornan. ‘Why are her clothes cut up?’ he repeated. ‘ANSWER ME!’

  Dornan responded by taking his gun, pressing it down into John’s groin, and pulling the trigger. The blast was deafening; John’s howl of pain even more so. His pain rocked him to the side and he crashed to the ground, still tied to the chair at an awkward angle. Dornan could only imagine the pain John must have been feeling. A bullet in the cock. There were major arteries down there. The steady stream of blood pouring from John’s lap made sense then. His skin went pasty-white and he started to hyperventilate, gasping for air.

  ‘Now bring her in,’ Dornan said to Jimmy, who obliged, scuttling away and coming back not thirty seconds later with Mariana in tow.

  ‘Oh God,’ she cried, running towards John.

  Dornan stopped her, a hand around her throat as he drove her against the wall. ‘Nuh-uh,’ he said, grinning at her. ‘No touching.’ He pressed his hips against Mariana, effectively pinning her to the wall. ‘Jimmy!’ he barked. ‘Get out your gun. Take all the bullets out. Leave one in the chamber and give it to Jason.’

  Everyone looked at Dornan as if he were mad. ‘What if the little fuck shoots you?’ Jimmy asked. ‘Or me?’

  Dornan glared at him. ‘He won’t shoot you. Just fucking do it.’

 
With great reluctance, Jimmy handed the gun to Jason. He immediately pointed it at Dornan.

  ‘If you want to redeem yourself,’ he said to his youngest son, ‘you’ll put John here out of his misery. He’s in pain. You don’t want him to be in pain, do you, son?’

  Dornan motioned for everyone to leave the room. Soon it was just Jase and John, Dornan and Mariana. She was saying John’s name, over and over. Dornan didn’t like that. ‘Stop, bitch,’ he ground out. She didn’t stop.

  ‘I said STOP, BITCH!’ He pulled her head forward and then slammed it back into the wall, watching in fascination as her eyes rolled back in her head. He dragged her out of the room and closed the door, and waited for the gunshot. Either Jason would kill John to ease his pain, or he’d turn the gun on himself and blow his brains out. There really was no telling which way it would go. But one thing he did know, he couldn’t stay and watch.

  In the hallway, Mariana continued to struggle, and Dornan continued to brace her against the wall. She was fading fast; pretty soon she’d be still. Jimmy and Viper leaned against the opposite wall and said nothing. Dornan wondered where Guillermo was. Whose side he was on. He made a mental note to find out. But first, he had to wait for that blast.

  What he didn’t expect was that Chad would wander up the hallway, looking almost rueful, his hands covered in blood.

  ‘Pop,’ Chad said, holding out his blood-soaked hands. ‘Whatever you did to Julz – I can’t wake her. I think she’s dying.’

  Mariana found a second wind and started struggling again. ‘What did you do?’ she wailed. ‘Oh God. Oh God. What did you do to her?’

  Dornan opened his mouth to speak as a deafening gunshot rang out. He felt his breath hitch for a moment as he wondered who was dead in the office just a few feet away – his best friend, or his son.

  ‘Hold her,’ Dornan snapped, throwing Mariana at Viper. He opened the office door, and saw his son on the floor, the gun to his temple, desperately pulling the trigger over and over again to a series of empty clicks.