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Emilio leaned back in his chair. ‘She’s not wrong,’ Emilio countered. ‘You two left quite the mess for me to clean up. You should be thanking me for tying up your loose ends.’
I laughed mirthlessly. ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ I exclaimed. ‘Seriously. We should thank you.’
Emilio didn’t respond. His smile started to shrink a little. His amusement, it would seem, was turning to displeasure.
‘How did you do it?’ I asked, smacking my palms down on the desk as I stood over the man I’d once feared too much to even look in the eye. ‘Did you even do it yourself? Or did you make somebody else, you fucking coward!’ I picked up the closest thing to my right hand – ironically, a framed photograph of Emilio with several of his grandchildren, Dornan’s sons – and drew my arm back, aiming right for Emilio’s face. I was going to smash that framed photograph into his face so hard he’d see stars. He’d need stitches from where the glass shattered and cut his face. He’d probably kill me for my transgression.
I no longer had the capacity to care if I lived or died.
But somebody else did. Out of nowhere, Dornan was behind me, his hand around my wrist, twisting painfully so that my grip on the photo frame faltered. With an angry cry, my fingers loosened and the photo fell to the floor, bouncing harmlessly.
Dornan pulled my arm, hard enough that I was forced to face him. ‘Hey!’ he said. ‘Look at me. What do you think you’re doing?’ His fingers were squeezing my upper arms so hard, it ached. I struggled in his grip, my eyes only for Emilio.
‘Look at me!’ he roared. It was like time stood still for that moment, our tragic tableau representative of our entire lives – Emilio, smirking as he crossed his leather shoes on the edge of the desk where a dead child’s ashes lay scattered; Dornan, hurting me, always hurting me. And me. Useless. Pathetic. Emilio had killed a baby. He was a human trafficker. He dealt in women and children like it was nothing. I’d known the depths of his depravity for almost a year now, ever since that night when Dornan had been shot, when he’d revealed to me the cost of keeping me alive was to do his father’s bidding – transporting human beings across state lines, across countries, stealing people and selling them. Selling them! And I’d sat on my hands and blamed my need to protect Luis and done nothing.
In some ways, I was just as bad as them. Worse. Because I couldn’t help feeling – knowing – that if I’d done things differently, the nameless baby Emilio had killed would be alive right now. Maybe even his mother, if we’d taken her to a hospital instead of Dornan shooting her in the back of his truck to relieve her suffering as she slowly bled out after giving birth. I could have done something, anything, and I’d been sitting on my hands for a year, hell, for ten fucking years, and I had nobody to blame but myself.
‘Look at me, goddamn it,’ Dornan muttered. I did. I raised my eyes. I could only imagine what they looked like. Wild. Empty. I was empty inside. Dornan’s dark eyes widened a little when he saw my gaze. I think I must have repulsed him, then. With my face twisted into a mask of rage and grief, my eyes blank and hollow, it was a wonder he recognised me at all.
‘It was easy, really,’ Emilio said. I didn’t look away from Dornan as Emilio continued to speak. ‘I used a pillow. Didn’t take more than a few minutes. He struggled, a bit, but then he stopped. He looked so peaceful, Mariana. It made me wonder what your child would have looked like if it hadn’t died inside of you.’
I saw the light die in Dornan’s eyes as his father spoke so casually about murdering an infant. The subtle way his broad shoulders curved inward, the way his whole body seemed to deflate. He took his hands off me, let them hang at his sides.
‘Go home,’ Dornan bit out, his eyes pained. He put his hands on his hips, shaking his head as he finally broke our gaze.
‘We still have our meeting,’ I replied, feeling like my insides had been hollowed out with a melon scoop. Like someone had taken out every bit of energy and life inside me, and left a vacuous nothingness in its wake.
‘The meeting is cancelled,’ Dornan said, the first trace of decisiveness I think I’d ever seen him display around his father. Dead kids brought out the rebel in him.
‘Good,’ I replied. ‘It’s my birthday. I’m taking the day off.’
Without looking back at Emilio, I slung my bag over my shoulder and brushed past Dornan without giving him eye contact.
My hand was on the door handle when Emilio chuckled. It was a noise that made me want to go on a murderous rampage. I felt the weight of the gun in my handbag and briefly contemplated if I could get off a couple of bullets before Dornan could stop me. He was, after all, blocking my aim.
I swallowed down the need for immediate violence and turned on my heel, my eyes landing directly on the man I most hated. ‘Do I amuse you?’ I asked softly.
Emilio grinned, wiping some of the ashes off the desk and onto the floor as he held my gaze. ‘I’ve finally driven you mad,’ he whispered, the delight – the wonder – clear in his raspy voice.
I stilled. Was he right? ‘I was mad when I met you,’ I said bitterly, opening the door. ‘No sane person would have agreed to this.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
DORNAN
Mariana slammed the door so hard, it was a wonder the fucking thing didn’t fall off the hinges. He listened to the click of her high heels as they disappeared down the hallway, away from them.
And then he turned and faced his father, and whatever the fuck it was that was on the desk in front of him.
‘I should follow her,’ Dornan said, his eyes lingering on the closed door.
Emilio slapped the desk, making little pieces of bone bounce in the shockwave of his gesture.
‘Sit. Your goon will watch her. If he can move his fat ass fast enough to catch her.’
Dornan sat in the chair across from his father, his fingers itching for a cigarette. Fuck it. Why had he quit smoking again? It was something he’d done just recently, after Mariana had lost the baby. If he wanted to get her pregnant again, he couldn’t be going around smoking all the damn time and snorting flake off strippers’ tits. He needed to take care of himself so they didn’t lose another pregnancy. Somehow, in his mind, this selfenforced penance made it easier to believe that she’d forgive him one day, that they’d have a family of their own. In the wake of his divorce from Celia, marrying Mariana was something he was determined to do.
Fuck it. ‘You got any cigarettes?’
