AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Even if it means I have to kill him to be free.
* * *
I loved Dornan Ross once. I loved him so much that he became a part of me. I loved him despite his darkness, despite the impossibility of us ever being able to have a real life together.
I fucking worshipped the man. But false Gods always betray your devotion eventually. They peel off their mask, and you stare at a stranger. They are the shark and you are the prey, and you wonder how you ever thought you could trust them not to devour you on sight.
CHAPTER ONE
MARIANA
You might’ve walked past us and wondered why a woman like me – twenty-eight years old, no tattoos, modestly dressed – was with him.
The president of the most lethal biker club in California, the Gypsy Brothers MC – John Portland. Covered in tattoos, smoking, the crest of his brotherhood inked on the flesh above his heart. That tattoo was hidden from public view as we stood side by side on the Santa Monica Pier and watched his daughter and my kind-of-not-really stepson ride the Ferris wheel, two teenagers clearly experiencing the first stages of love. Fifteen and sixteen. When I was their age I’d already given birth to my only child and had him taken from me. I’d already been tainted by life.
My not-stepson had found his mother dead, murdered by his father – my lover – a few months earlier, and it was safe to say he’d been tainted by life, too.
John’s daughter had been too, to a lesser extent. Junkie mother. A father who presided over criminals and murderers. Despite her beginnings, she still had traces of the naivety that summer love and an overprotective daddy provided. She still slept soundly at night, from what I could gather.
Sadly, it wouldn’t always be that way, but on that pier, in the sunshine, none of us had any way of knowing the horror that lay ahead, its gaping maw ready to scoop us up when we least expected.
‘We’ll have to watch out for him,’ I teased, tilting my head towards Dornan’s youngest son, Jason, as he rode the Ferris wheel with John’s daughter, Juliette.
Beside me, leaning against the railing that flanked the pier, the man I was secretly in love with shook his head. ‘Don’t even,’ he murmured, rubbing his stubbled chin with his palm.
I started to laugh, until I saw John wasn’t laughing. Or smiling at all. I gestured to the two teenagers as they rode in a carriage high atop the Santa Monica coastline. ‘They’re kids. You can’t seriously be worried about him.’
John’s eyes cut through me, making me wonder if I should be worried.
‘John,’ I tried again, ‘he’s a kid. He’s sixteen years old.’
John’s knuckles turned white as he gripped the railing feverishly. ‘He’s not a kid. He’s Dornan’s kid.’
I rolled my eyes. ‘He didn’t even know Dornan until a few months ago.’
‘Yeah, but he’s still Dornan’s blood. Still Emilio’s blood.’
I shrugged. ‘She’s not that much younger than I was when Emilio came for my family.’ And left with me as a consolation prize.
John appeared pained. ‘Jesus Christ, Ana,’ he said, his words like bullets, forceful and cold, metallic. This was our eternal impasse, our universal hesitation. We were in love. We wanted to run away, to flee Los Angeles and the eventual death it promised us.
But he wouldn’t leave with Dornan’s son, Jason.
I wouldn’t leave without him.
And so we were stuck.
‘Will you miss him?’ John asked me.
My heart squeezed painfully. ‘I’m not leaving Jason, John.’
He shook his head, his eyes glued to his daughter as she laughed and pointed out things to her crush. ‘Not Jason. Dornan.’
Oh.
Dornan Ross, the man who’d been my lover for almost ten years, since the day he collected me from a dirty motel in San Diego and claimed me as his own. From the instant he’d stopped his drug kingpin father from selling me as a sex slave to cover my father’s impossible debt.
John Portland had been Dornan’s best friend for longer than I’d known either of them – twenty years or more, I’d guess. I knew they’d met as teenagers, formed a fast friendship, a friendship that soon became a brotherhood of bikers called the Gypsy Brothers, a club that John had presided over since its inception.
