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I stopped in my tracks. ‘Yes. No. I don’t know.’
‘He’ll pull the trigger, Mariana. Think. He’ll do something drastic. Kids are sacred to him. Kids are the one thing you don’t mess with.’
I swallowed thickly.
‘Just make sure you got your shit in a row before you start plotting with him, girl, because he’s going to snap, and you’ll be the one in the firing line when Emilio comes looking for penance.’
‘Hard to keep track of all the lies, isn’t it?’ He gave me a knowing smile.
I nodded.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
JOHN
John Portland hated lap dances. Despised strip clubs.
It was an odd fact for a man like him. A biker. A president. A criminal. A murderer. And, ironically, a man who ran a strip club. It was funny, he could stare into the eyes of his victim and pull the trigger, cold as ice, but when a woman lowered her ass into his lap, he suddenly burned up like he had a fever. He didn’t want hands touching him, clammy hands that had touched everybody else. He didn’t even like his wife’s hands when they reached out to him.
He liked Mariana’s hands, though, and that was a problem. A big fucking problem.
She’d almost gotten herself killed today, and only escaped by some survival instinct she possessed, the thing that had carried her through a decade with the cartel. She should have died a hundred times by now, but she wasn’t dead. She was alive. She was beautiful. She was somebody else’s.
Dornan Ross was not like John. Dornan very much enjoyed the attention of women, and their clammy hands. He had a decidedly different way of looking at the world, a more fluid appreciation of relationships and monogamy. He could touch a stripper or a whore, stick his dick inside them, snort flake off their tits, and it didn’t mean anything aside from a good time. If anyone looked at his women sideways, though, he would kill them.
He never used to be like that. John used to like him, trust him. Christ, Dornan was the only one John had trusted with his own baby daughter, fifteen years ago, when he was in prison and Caroline ran away from the screaming newborn who was already a tiny little addict.
Time had worn them both down, two brothers in arms, complete strangers. Now John despised Dornan.
Sometimes, when he was screwing Mariana, he’d fantasise about a world where Dornan Ross did not exist.
His lines had been clearly drawn. But the years and the bodies and the lies wore everyone down in different ways. They were no longer the brothers in arms they’d been as teenagers, setting off on the open road, criss-crossing the country with abandon. They were prisoners of fate now, soldiers of a fortune that they could never have foretold.
Or, perhaps they could have foretold it.
Perhaps they should have.
John had never wanted to be a biker. Fuck! He’d never wanted to kill a man with his bare hands. Had never wanted to be involved in the shit that came with being indebted to a cartel like Il Sangue, carved and sculpted from the ruins of Dornan’s father’s enemies. John was a simple man and he’d wanted simple things. But once you were in with a man like Emilio Ross – just one time, one job, one task, one loan, one favour – before you’d even finished striking the deal with him, he’d already sucked your soul out of your body and put it in his cabinet with the rest of his trophies. Sometimes he did it literally – displaying a photograph of you with your family, with anyone you loved, under the guise of affection and concern; and sometimes he just told you that he owned your ass from now until the day you died. By his hand, if you fucked up.
And now John did want to die. There was a stripper grinding on him, trying to push one of her fat nipples between his lips. He kept turning his head, trying not to offend her, but in the end he had to stand up and grab her by her shoulders. ‘How much do I have to pay you to go away?’ he asked, fishing a twenty out of his wallet. The blonde didn’t smile, but she plucked the money out of his hand and tottered away on her six-inch stilettos.
John turned his attention to Dornan, who was sitting on a low armchair to his left, seemingly fascinated as another stripper shook a line of white powder onto his cock and then snorted it right off. Dornan caught him looking and it seemed to amuse him. He fisted a hand in the woman’s hair and squeezed her cheeks with his other hand. ‘You gonna pay for that?’ he asked, guiding her mouth to his erection. Dornan stared at John as the woman made a gagging noise.
John wanted a fucking drink. Beer wouldn’t cut it, he needed something stronger – like maybe bleach, so he could pour it into his eyes and pretend he’d never seen what he’d just accidentally glimpsed.
‘I can see the cogs turning in your head, Johnny boy,’ Dornan chuckled. His teeth gleamed in the oscillating light, his grin too big and bold to be anything but artificial. He looked like he wanted to lean over and start eating the girl who was gagging painfully on him, and not in a good way. He looked like a wolf. He looked like his father.
‘You celebrating your divorce?’ John asked, his fingers itching for a drink. Whiskey, vodka . . . anything, Christ. He was the president of the Gypsy Brothers and why wasn’t somebody bringing him a fucking drink already?
‘Hey!’ John barked over his shoulder, towards the bar. ‘Two whiskeys. On the rocks.’
He held up two fingers briefly before turning his attention back to Dornan. He focused on his face, not on what was going on in his lap. Because Jesus Christ, could he not get a room?
‘You must be happy,’ John said, choosing his words carefully. ‘To be away from Celia.’
Dornan shrugged, accepting the whiskey that a waitress was holding out to him. John did the same, closing his eyes briefly and tipping the amber liquid down his throat, enjoying the delicious burn that took the edge off his frustration, his terror. ‘Sure. Yeah. I don’t want to talk about Celia right now.’
‘What do you want to talk about, brother?’
