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‘For a life!’ I answered.
He just chuckled. ‘That’s funny,’ he said cruelly. ‘I thought you understood after all this time. There’s only one way out of here, baby, and it’s not pretty.’
There has to be a way, I thought to myself. There has to be something.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
DORNAN
Dornan moved the food around on his plate.
‘You don’t have to eat it,’ Celia said quietly. She took the plate from in front of him and held a cool palm to his throbbing forehead. ‘You feeling okay?’
Dornan grunted in response and leaned back so his wife wasn’t touching him anymore. Her touch made his skin crawl, made him want to lash out and strike her. But tonight he couldn’t even be bothered making a shitty remark about her cooking, so he said nothing. For some reason, ever since he’d been shot, he couldn’t stomach eating. The thick steaks Celia had cooked were still bloody in the middle, and that was probably the issue. He’d seen too much blood lately.
Celia – cold, beautiful Celia – shook her head, and then left the kitchen. Dornan didn’t care. After this many years of marriage, he was completely disillusioned with the concept. He had thought about divorcing her, but he needed to be close to his kids. He’d been able to get sole custody of his three older sons when he divorced his first wife, Lucia, but her family was nobody special. Celia, on the other hand, had powerful mafia connections on the east coast, their grandfathers very distant relatives somewhere along the line, and she’d probably be able to wrangle shared custody.
Dornan wouldn’t have that, and he’d told her exactly that on more than one occasion when she demanded a divorce. The only way she’d be getting away from him was through death. Over the years, their marriage had turned into something of a business alliance. Celia was smart, she was feisty, and she was crucial to getting their east coast relatives to play fair. Their current arrangement worked well enough.
But it wasn’t a marriage, and he didn’t love her, and he knew every time she looked at him she was probably counting down in her head the minutes until he’d leave again.
He didn’t even care anymore. Having Celia – who, he knew for a fact, was fucking somebody else – gave him a measure of protection, a cover story, something to distract people from asking what he was really doing. Sometimes he fantasised about somebody kidnapping Celia, holding her for ransom, and then going to collect her and to pay the kidnappers off, and shooting her in the face instead. Because even though she was his wife, she was also a rather heavy piece of baggage he had to drag around. The thought of getting rid of her tantalised him. Because if she was gone, he’d be able to spend every goddamn night buried balls-deep inside Mariana, fucking her into oblivion and then laying tender kisses on her afterwards.
Dornan wasn’t a tender man — in fact, he was the opposite — but Mariana made him want to be a better person. At least she had, until he’d found the fucking cellphone buried in the back of her kitchen cupboard. The question had been on his lips in the truck, just before the deafening bullet had torn apart his chest and his sanity. Who’s the phone for, Ana? He’d convinced himself that there was a perfectly legitimate answer for the secret phone. It could be Guillermo’s. It could be he’d forgotten about it. Because if it was anything else – if she had betrayed his trust – he couldn’t bear to think what would come next. What he’d have to do to her. How he’d have to punish her.
His chest was aching, that phantom bullet still metaphorically jammed up against his heart, its shards spreading through his ribcage, tiny specks of poisoned lead. And it ached for her. He couldn’t bear that she might have already betrayed him. He couldn’t deal with that shit. It was easier to pretend like he’d never seen the phone, or at least keep the knowledge of its existence in his back pocket, ready to pull out when she was least expecting it. He imagined her eyes widening in fright, because he knew he frightened her. Would she try to lie about it? Or would she confess? Had she been calling somebody without him knowing? The thoughts were like a cancerous rage, swirling inside him. He had to fucking stop thinking about it before it consumed him.
His stomach twisted uneasily again. Maybe he’d caught something. He never got sick, though. Ever. It was something else.
Yeah, come to think of it, he wasn’t any better than his father and the rest of the Il Sangue Cartel. He thought of Mariana’s face when she’d realised what exactly it was keeping her alive, Dornan’s end of the grisly bargain he’d struck with Emilio all those years ago. One life in exchange for many. He tried to forget the horror in her eyes when she’d learned the truth, just before he’d been shot, but it was impossible.
He was snapped back to the present moment by the urge for a cigarette. He could light up, inhale and try to burn the memory of her sad eyes from his brain, one puff at a time. His cigarettes were in the bedroom. He pushed back from the table and made his way to the master bedroom, finding his pack of smokes and lighter in the pocket of his leather jacket.
The light was dim in the cool and quiet bedroom. The kids were always loud, and sometimes this was the only place he could find any peace in this fucking house. As he lit up, he continued to think of Mariana, always alone in her apartment, always lonely. Always begging him to stay.
He thought of the way she’d cried out as he fucked her perfect round ass, the way her light brown skin shimmered as he pulled those tight globes of her ass onto his cock again and again, and the thought made his dick grow hard almost instantly.
He shifted slightly to relieve some of the unbearable pressure of denim on his growing erection, and saw movement out of the corner of his eye.
‘Dear husband,’ Celia said, leaning against the doorway. ‘Care to spare a smoke for your lovely wife?’
Dornan raised an eyebrow and stuck his cigarette between his teeth. ‘Knock yourself out,’ he said around the stick of tobacco, gesturing to the packet on the bed beside him.
She ignored the packet, instead slinking towards him. Kneeling on the floor in front of his legs, she burrowed her lithe body into the V between his open knees. Her mouth curled up into a smile as she looked towards his lap.
‘Happy to see me?’ she asked, reaching for his zipper and boldly tugging it down. Dornan watched his wife like one would watch a snake, keeping his eye on her so she didn’t suddenly strike. He didn’t respond, just watched with detached indifference as she pulled his straining cock out of his jeans and wrapped her lips around the head. It felt good, but knowing it was her made his blood run cold. Didn’t make his dick any less stiff, though. He was a man, and what man didn’t enjoy a surprise blow job?
She must have wanted something. That was the only explanation for her sudden interest in his dick, after so many years.
He rested back on his hands, cigarette still between his teeth, as he watched his beautiful, cruel wife suck him. She was really getting into it, using both hands. Taking one of his hands off the comforter, he threaded it into her hair and pulled her head back. ‘What do you want?’ he muttered around the cigarette.
She pouted, her hands still around his erection. ‘Nothing. Can’t a woman give her husband a blow job anymore?’
He let go of her hair and gestured as if to say, Don’t stop on my account.
She resumed her sucking, making a small gagging noise as he hit the back of her throat. That amused him more than it should, and he found himself holding back a snicker. His cell vibrated in his pocket and he pulled it out. It was Viper. Christ, what now? Last time Viper had called him, he’d ended the night with a bullet to the chest.
‘Yeah?’
