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Fuck.
‘Will you help me?’
I hated to ask but it was unavoidable. And of all of them, he was the most trustworthy. It still didn’t mean he wouldn’t betray me, in the end. It just meant he was most likely to keep his mouth shut for longer than anybody else in the Gypsy Brothers.
‘I will always help you,’ he said, some kind of emotion behind his words, and something about the way he said it made me break inside. ‘I’m on my way. Don’t move. Don’t call anybody. Definitely do not answer the door, you hear me?’
‘Thank you,’ I said, and the line went dead.
I tidied up the flour as the coffee machine hummed to life, dripping the precious stuff into a pot that served two. I kept the burner phone out, in case John decided to call me back. My thoughts wandered as I moved around the kitchen on autopilot, a deep grief punctuated by an eerie calm. Indirectly, and without planning it, I had in some way avenged my family’s murders by slaying the person – at least, one of the people – directly responsible. It made my head spin.
And there was one thought louder than the rest, incessant as it sank its barb into me, again and again. I tried to blink it away, even shaking my head from side to side to try and rid myself of the thought, because it was so insignificant it didn’t deserve my attention.
The thought wasn’t what you’d expect.
It wasn’t I just killed someone. Not I’m a murderer.
No.
The thought that buzzed around my head like a heavy blowfly was: I’m going to have to buy a new mattress without Dornan noticing.
I’d just killed a man, and I didn’t even care.
Nine years in hell will do that to a person.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
MARIANA
I was worried that John might call back and cancel on me. I didn’t know where he was, or what he was doing. Shit, he was a busy guy, with a fuck-up for a wife, a teenage daughter who was too pretty to let out of his sight, and a club that needed to be run like a well-oiled machine to keep Emilio happy.
He didn’t cancel. He was at my front door six minutes later, dressed in jeans and a leather jacket, a look of grim determination on his face and a five-o’clock shadow to match.
In the six minutes between him hanging up and then arriving at my door, I’d ventured back into the bedroom and located the gun in between all the blood and brain matter on my duvet. I held the gun loosely at my side and waited for the metallic click that signalled the unlocking mechanism at my front door. The door swung open and I raised the gun slowly, almost lazily.
John eyed me warily. ‘Is that a gun, or are you excited to see me?’
He entered the apartment and kicked the door shut behind him. Satisfied that he was alone, and that he was here to help, I dropped the gun to my side.
‘Is it still raining out there?’ I asked. My throat sounded raw. Probably from having Murphy’s cock rammed down it. Well, you should see the other guy, I thought to myself.
John shrugged. ‘A little.’ He didn’t look wet. Not like Murphy, drenched through with rain and now soaking in all the blood that had once been inside his body.
I padded to the kitchen with John in tow, my stained feet leaving small smudges of blood, and set my gun on the kitchen counter. Taking the two mugs of coffee I’d prepared, I handed one to John, keeping the other for myself.
He took a sip of the coffee and started to choke. He was staring at my chest, I realised. The hallway wasn’t lit, but the kitchen was, casting a bright glow over my current state of mess. John slammed the coffee on the counter, his eyes wide. I followed his gaze down to my dress – of course, I was still wearing the baby blue dress that matched John’s eyes – and saw again just how much blood I had on me.
‘What’d you do?’ John coughed. ‘Kill him and then roll around on top of him?’
I crossed my arms over my chest, suddenly feeling dizzy. ‘Something like that,’ I said.
John was quiet for a moment. ‘Where is he?’ he asked finally.
* * *
He studied the scene for a few moments without speaking, sipping his coffee every now and then. His head tilted to the side, he was like some kind of rogue detective, taking in every detail. The broken whiskey bottle. The blood-soaked sheets. I stood beside him, not so close that our arms touched, but almost. I copied his head tilt, wanting to see what he saw, trying to observe the scene objectively, as if it wasn’t me who’d committed the crime.
Murphy wasn’t a pretty sight. It was as if his body had softened somehow, melting heavily into the mattress. And his death hadn’t been dignified, not one bit. His pants were still around his ankles, his bare legs a pasty white without any blood circulating in them.
