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‘I’m okay,’ I said, ‘really.’
He shook his head, standing and pressing his lips to my forehead. It felt good. It felt wonderful.
‘What do you want to do?’ he asked me.
I looked at the door, making sure we were still alone. ‘I want to take these kids. I want us to get Juliette, and Jason, and I want us to leave, before it gets any worse.’
John swallowed thickly, nodding. ‘I have to get Juliette from school,’ he said, placing my hand back on the bed and stepping back. ‘I’ll come back to check on you. You want me to call Guillermo to come sit with you?’
I shook my head. I wasn’t afraid of Dornan showing up. I had nothing left to lose.
John just stood there, his leather jacket over one arm. He didn’t want to go. I could see that it was killing him to leave me.
‘Go,’ I said. ‘I’ll be here when you get back.’
Eventually he left, trudging down the hallway until I couldn’t hear his boots any more.
It was strange that I wasn’t bawling my eyes out. But I was eerily calm. Maybe even grateful, in some small way. My love for Dornan had been the thing that was keeping me stuck, stopping me from taking any real action in my life. I had a son waiting for me in Colombia and access to millions of dollars in cartel money, and yet I’d been sitting on my hands waiting for something I could react to.
But now I could see my future, and it was as stark as it was brutal. If I stayed, I was going to end up like Stephanie and Murphy and Allie and everyone else who had ever been touched by the cartel – dead or, worse, like Dornan. I’d already killed two people. How long would it take for me to kill five? Ten? How long would it be before I started to accept what they did to those girls, before I grew totally complacent?
I was thinking about all of this when Dornan arrived. His helmet in one hand, tears on his cheeks as he stared at me with those midnight eyes. He looked positively grief-stricken, and his indulgence in such a display of emotion at something he had caused made me turn cold and dead inside.
He made a beeline towards me, dropping his helmet on the floor and gathering me in his arms. I didn’t return the embrace, freezing until he finally pulled away.
‘Did you know?’ he whispered, his low voice vibrating in my chest.
I nodded. ‘I was going to tell you, but then Colorado happened.’
‘Fuck,’ he said, falling into the chair by my side, covering his face with his hands. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, taking my hand and pressing his lips against my fingers. His kiss was cold. He must have ridden with his visor open, the wind chilling his skin.
I didn’t reply.
He leaned over and pressed his cheek against my stomach. ‘I’m so fucking sorry,’ he said, his deep voice breaking.
I should have felt something. Pity. Anger. Hatred. But I didn’t. I felt nothing for the man who had once been my entire universe.
‘You didn’t mean it,’ I said blankly, threading my fingers through his hair. In my head, I was already planning how to get away from him because he’d destroyed our love so swiftly, so brutally, I barely remembered what it was that had tethered us together for so many years.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
JOHN
‘Daddy?’ Juliette said, her big green eyes welling up with tears as she craned her neck to look at him. ‘Daddy, what happened?’
She darted a hand towards his cheek, touching the bloody skin before he could catch her wrist. As his hand grasped her small arm, her eyes went wider, her skin paled and she flinched, as though he was going to hurt her.
‘Shhh,’ he ground out, trying to sound comforting as he released her wrist. ‘It’s okay. Everything is okay.’
He clamped his teeth down on the inside of his lip, hard, so he wouldn’t argue with her.
‘Who did this to you?’ she whispered, drawing her hand back to her side.
John couldn’t help but stare at her hand, transfixed, as though she might become infected now that she’d seen and touched the horror that he was trying to keep away from her.
‘It’s not my blood. It’s Mariana’s. She . . . She fell. She was hurt, badly. It’s her blood.’
That was the moment something broke inside him; first strung tight, like a bowstring, a delicate cord that snapped under the weight of her words.
