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He knelt beside her, his boots crunching on the broken glass. ‘Let’s get you cleaned up,’ he said, smiling. ‘Where’s your bathroom?’
She whimpered. She didn’t answer. Sighing, he balled his fist up and slammed it into the side of her face. Not too hard, because he didn’t want her to pass out. Just hard enough to hurt like a motherfucker.
‘Let’s try that again. Where’s your bathroom?’
She pointed down the hallway. Smiling, Dornan grabbed a fistful of her long blonde hair and started dragging her. She half-crawled, halflimped alongside him, crying out in pain the whole time.
She had a bathtub. Excellent. Dornan rolled his eyes as she started to beg, scooping her up and throwing her hard into the bottom of the tub. She struggled to sit up and he hit her again. His fist throbbed in pain. It felt good. He’d never hit a woman before, not like this.
But she deserved it for what she’d done.
‘Here’s the deal,’ Dornan said, crouching beside the tub and brushing her fringe from her face. ‘You tell me when my son is due home, and I promise I won’t kill either of you.’
She swallowed thickly. ‘School finished at three-thirty,’ she said shakily. ‘He’s usually home by four.’
Dornan nodded, taking a syringe from his pocket, and a vial of morphine he’d made damn sure to bring with him on his long journey. Stephanie stared in horror as he stabbed the syringe into the vial and drew up a colourless liquid. He filled the syringe, and her eyes grew wide as she realised what it was.
‘Please,’ she begged.
‘You remember this, don’t you? Just like smack, only better. You liked it the first time. Remember how you used to come underneath me? How I’d give you a hit of the sweet stuff at just the right time? Do you remember that, Stephy?’ He wrapped a rubber tourniquet around her arm.
‘Dornan!’ she cried. ‘Please don’t do this. My boy needs me, I’m all he has . . .’
My boy. That made Dornan angry. He pulled the tourniquet tighter and a juicy blue vein popped up against her pale arm.
‘You promised,’ she said, blood spilling out of her mouth from the spot where he’d punched her. ‘You promised!’
Dornan smiled, pushing the plunger down and delivering enough morphine to stop her heart five times over. ‘I did promise,’ he replied cheerily. He felt crazed. He felt high. He’d loved her, and he’d mourned her, and now he would end her.
‘Remember how you promised you’d love me forever? How you’d never leave me? You lied, baby.’
Her eyes started to flutter shut. ‘You promised,’ she whispered.
He grinned wickedly. ‘I know. I lied, too. How does it feel?’
She couldn’t answer him, though, because she was dead.
* * *
A few hours later, the boy came home. Jason. His son’s name was Jason.
He was exquisite. Dornan could think that without feeling stupid, because he was laying his eyes on his son for the first time, as if he’d just been born, only fifteen years too late.
The boy found the kitchen a mess, and soon after his mother. Dornan confronted him, told him who he was. The boy put up a solid fight, made Dornan proud at the way he punched and kicked, but he had twenty-five years and change on the kid. He knocked him out, injected him with some tranquilliser to keep him subdued, and placed a call to John.
He answered on the second ring.
‘Hey, Dee,’ John said.
Things had been tense between them of late. Dornan knew the shooting had been stressful for John, and the mystery surrounding Murphy’s disappearance hadn’t helped matters. He’d also heard through the grapevine that Caroline was up to her usual, so it was no wonder he hardly saw his best friend outside of official club business these days.
‘Hey, buddy,’ Dornan said, a strange calm descending upon him as he surveyed the damage he’d done to his first love and their son. ‘Something’s come up. I need you in Colorado, now. Bring Ana.’
While John asked questions, Dornan picked through Stephy’s groceries, finding things to fix himself a sandwich. He poured himself a fresh glass of milk and sat at the table, which was covered in Stephanie’s blood, and proceeded to eat his first meal of the day as he waited for John and Mariana to arrive.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
JOHN
