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Dornan grinned, blood seeping from his nose and down his chin, staining his teeth a ghoulish red. It gave him the appearance of a vampire, one who’d just been feeding on some poor victim.
Dornan didn’t put it away. He stepped into John’s space, so their noses were almost touching, and he rammed the barrel of the gun underneath John’s chin. It was hard to breathe with a metal gun barrel pressing against your windpipe, but it wouldn’t exactly be the first time John had been at gunpoint. It was, however, the first time he’d experienced it at the hands of one of his own men.
John was aware of the crowd gathering around them. Nobody spoke. Over Dornan’s shoulder, John saw Viper, an original Gypsy Brother, circling behind as if to offer assistance. John gave him a sharp look that stopped him in his tracks. He didn’t need assistance. He would beat down this motherfucker for his transgression all by himself.
‘You’ve lost your fucking mind,’ John said to his oldest friend, his voice barely above a whisper. Dornan stared at him, his pupils and irises the same black in the low light of the club. He looked possessed. Demonic. John suspected both were true.
‘You gonna shoot me?’ John asked, bringing his hand up and tightening it around Dornan’s wrist. ‘Your oldest friend. The one who would do anything for you. If you shoot me, who would ever have your back?’
‘I don’t need anyone to have my back,’ Dornan seethed. ‘I got my back.’
John smacked the gun away, taking Dornan by surprise as he grabbed his throat. He had always been an excellent hand at poker. Maybe he should have played more, gotten a nice stash of cash happening so he could get out of this fucking place.
Hindsight’s a cruel bitch.
John tightened his grip around Dornan’s neck and drove him into the wall, hard. He heard his skull hit the brick wall with a loud thwack, and took the opportunity to bend Dornan’s arm until it was almost at breaking point. The gun dropped out of his grip, and John kicked it away, using both hands to grab hold of Dornan’s shirt.
‘Don’t you EVER pull a fucking gun on me!’ he roared. Dornan shoved him away, throwing him off balance. He was heavier than John, higher than John, crazier than John. Insanity seemed to breed a strength that normal men could not possess. Dornan kept coming at John, who’d now lost the element of surprise. He charged John, tackling him around his waist as they both slammed to the floor. Dornan straddled John, bloodthirst in his eyes, as he rained blows down on his face.
Nobody was stepping in to stop this, and John understood why. For a club that had always prided itself on being a singular organism, two factions had slowly started to emerge. Without voicing it, people were starting to bleed towards one side or the other. Towards John, or Dornan.
Their club was falling apart at the seams.
Dornan was still hitting John, but the blows were less forceful now that he had him pinned. Almost like Dornan thought John had given up.
‘Apologise,’ Dornan ground out, his bloody face hovering above John’s. ‘Now.’
Something old and forgotten was unleashed in John. The part of him he tried to hide. The part that enjoyed blood and violence as much as Dornan did. John lived by a different set of morals than Dornan Ross, but that didn’t mean he didn’t take great delight in beating down somebody who had it coming. And Dornan had it coming.
This was overdue.
John’s adrenaline spiked, and he flipped Dornan easily. The tables were suddenly turned, but John wasn’t going to settle for a few punches. No, he wrapped both hands around his best friend’s throat and squeezed hard enough that Dornan was actually scared. He heard Dornan’s breath get stuck in his throat as he struggled beneath him. Whatever Dornan had been snorting off that stripper’s skin might’ve made him feel invincible for a short sprint, but John was filled with enough rage and contempt for a fucking marathon.
‘I will never apologise for telling you the truth,’ John said, his teeth about to shatter they were clenched so tight. ‘You killed Stephanie. The woman you’ve been looking for for fifteen fuckin’ years! Because you were still in love with her! And you killed her, Dee. Why?
‘You tie your own kid up and drug him and dump him in your trunk and leave him there so he pisses himself. He didn’t do anything to you. He didn’t even know you.’
‘Shut up!’ Dornan managed, his words barely audible. He started to prise John’s fingers from his throat, but John wasn’t finished yet. He picked up Dornan’s head with very little effort, slamming it back into the ground. Once. Twice. Three times. Dornan stopped fighting.
‘You beat the woman you say you love until your baby was dead. You say Juliette’s the daughter you never had, but that’s not true, is it? You had a daughter. She was alive. And you beat her mother until you killed the baby inside her.’
Dornan snapped. Perhaps he had seen himself in the mirror John was holding up and decided he didn’t like what he saw. Whatever it was, he managed to break free of John’s grip and then they were on their feet somehow, throwing punch after punch.
John still hadn’t gone for his own gun, but it was only a matter of time. Something had to put an end to this shit. As Dornan punched John in the jaw, he staggered back, the fight clearly wearing on him.
‘Don’t ever fucking talk about Stephanie again,’ Dornan said. ‘About any of it. Do you understand?’
John used the segue to get down low, to kick his leg out and sweep Dornan’s feet from underneath him. He went down hard, making a sound as the air knocked out of him again.
The time for games was over.
John pulled his gun, cocking it as he stepped over Dornan. He planted one foot on either side of Dornan’s torso, aiming the gun right between his fucking eyes, and everything in him screamed at him to pull the fucking trigger and end this. Kill the motherfucker, save the girl, and everyone could live happily ever after. Only, it was never going to be that easy. John knew only too well how surrounded he was by people who were firmly in Dornan’s allegiance, people who were probably aiming their guns at him right now. Instead of unloading a round of bullets in Dornan like he wanted to, John changed his grip on the gun and brought the butt down straight into his forehead. Dornan’s eyes rolled back in his head momentarily, before they refocused on John, the fight completely gone.
‘I buried Stephanie!’ John roared, spittle landing on Dornan’s cheek. ‘I will talk about whoever, whenever, because I dug her grave with my bare hands and I fucking buried that poor bitch myself!’
The place was as quiet as the dirt grave John had lowered Stephanie into, back in Colorado. Nobody moved a muscle. Jaws were on the floor and somebody had turned the music off completely. Even the girls who were supposed to be dancing onstage were motionless, their eyes bugging out as they took in the scene unfolding.
Anarchy like this had never existed within the Gypsy Brothers before. The brotherhood was bleeding away in front of everyone, replaced by mistrust and greed. And in Dornan’s case, by a darkness so black he couldn’t even see his way back to the light.
