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He shoved his cellphone into his jeans pocket and pulled on his helmet, gunning the engine before he roared down Venice Boulevard.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
JOHN
He drove around in circles after smashing his fists into Dornan’s face; windows down, radio blasting. Anything to drown out the blood that roared and pulsed at his temples, in the tips of his fingers, that steady smash of blood around his heart as rage pumped through him, alive and bright red. Red stoplights and red road signs and red gas station signs, Dornan’s red blood splashed across John’s torn knuckles, the world a haze of John’s anger and Dornan’s violence. The old Dornan never would have killed Stephanie. The old Dornan would have thrown himself off a roof sooner than laid a hand on a woman, his pregnant mistress at that.
He had changed. Embraced his darkness, gone full circle. He’d pulled away from his father in the early days, resisted his vacuous demands for bloodshed and absolute loyalty – loyalty he had given, bloodshed he had kept to a minimum – but now it seemed Dornan Ross relished the hunt of bloodletting as much as his soulless father.
After driving aimlessly for what seemed like an hour, John pulled in to Redondo Beach and parked on the shoulder of the road. Hands shaking, he took out his cellphone and called home.
He called twice, each time getting the red ‘busy’ symbol flashing up on the screen. More red.
His daughter was probably still on the phone to that fucking kid, the one she and Mariana seemed obsessed with. Dornan, too, for that matter. Everyone was so concerned for this kid who’d found his poor mother dead in a bathtub full of blood, but nobody seemed to care that John had had to dig her goddamn grave in the dirt behind her house. Nobody seemed to care that he’d had to spend hours wiping down every surface for prints and possible DNA, especially when he was a mechanic and most definitely not a crime scene cleaner.
Then he felt like shit, because of course poor kid. John felt bad for him. He was so young, and he’d just been stolen from the only life he’d ever known. Of course John’s sweet daughter was going to try to help him. She was a little naïve when it came to club matters, his Juliette, and he had to wonder if protecting her from the worst of his role as president of the MC had unwittingly sheltered her from being safe in the midst of monsters and killers. The body count around a Sunday church meeting at the Gypsy Brothers clubhouse was in the hundreds. Thousands if you counted all the deaths from the drugs they’d sold over the years. From two guys – himself and Dornan – making some shit up on a road trip on their motorcycles, John could never have imagined that this would end up their fate.
The red tinge started to dissipate a little from John’s view of the world, and with that he pulled back onto the road and pointed his car home. He’d have to sneak in, get his face sorted and wash off the bulk of all this blood before Juliette saw and freaked out.
About thirty minutes later, he turned into his driveway, uneasiness pooling in his gut, thick and anxious, as he observed his dark, quiet house. Julz always left a light on for him.
The engine had barely stopped when John was out of the car, his legs burning as he scaled the stairs up to the front door two at a time. He burst into the unlocked door to absolute silence.
‘Juliette!’ he yelled, checking the kitchen. Empty. Living room – empty. Every room was empty.
Fuck.
She was fifteen. Sometimes she did things like ride her bike to the gas station a couple of blocks away for milk or candy, but she always left a note.
A note. Yes. It’d been dark in the kitchen – had he missed a note from her? John left his daughter’s bedroom, sensing movement as he passed his own. He stopped, pivoting and gripping the two sides of the doorframe.
A familiar sight, but one that never ceased to terrify him.
His wife, Caroline, was in the throes of a heroin high. It wasn’t hard to tell. She was on her back in the middle of their bed – a bed he hadn’t shared with her in months, opting instead to crash on the couch with a gun beside him – and she was laughing. There was something invisible on the ceiling, and it was fucking hilarious.
‘Caroline,’ he hissed. She didn’t flinch. John took a step into the room he’d long since abandoned and was immediately hit by the smell of junkie. It was a unique smell – body odour, but mixed with some kind of sweet scent, sickly, like rotting oranges. Maybe it was Caroline’s perfume. He’d never lived with another junkie to compare.
‘Hey,’ John said, more forcefully this time. He reached out to touch her arm and recoiled when he saw the fresh needle still hanging from the crook of her elbow. Fucking hell. John had no idea where she’d gotten the money for a hit. He didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to have to imagine his wife doing all manner of terrible things – fucking, stealing, bribing – to get the white powder she so viciously craved. He didn’t have to worry about other Gypsy Brothers, who all respected John and had far more desirable options to choose from on the female menu at the clubhouse. But there were plenty of men in Los Angeles who owed John no respect, or Caroline, for that matter. Men who would pay good money to disrespect her. All of these things crossed John’s mind as he watched Caroline laugh, her eyes rolling back in her head every so often.
He’d liked to have thought that his next move was unconscious, but it was a very deliberate one. He reached behind his back to the gun tucked snugly into his waistband and pulled it out, resting it against Caroline’s forehead. If she felt it, or even knew he was there, she didn’t show it. She was too busy focusing on something over his shoulder, something that only existed in her opiate-soaked haze.
He looked at the fit still around her arm, the needle that hadn’t quite been emptied still resting in her vein. If he pressed down, would she die? Would it be too much? Or what if he shot her in the head and made it look like she’d shot herself?
The woman whose only service to John Portland in their entire time together had been the child she bore him chose that exact moment to start a high-pitched giggle. It was loud. Frenzied, even. But her eyes weren’t laughing. They were vacant. Haunted. He didn’t need to put a bullet in her to send her to hell. She was already there.
Taking a deep breath, John put his gun back into his waistband. ‘Caroline,’ he barked, flicking his wife’s forehead with his thumb and middle finger. ‘Hey! Where’s Juliette?’
Caroline finally seemed to hear him. ‘School,’ she muttered.
John ground his back teeth in frustration. ‘It’s fucking night time, Caroline,’ he said. ‘She’s not at fucking school. Did she come see you before she left?’
Of course she would have. She was a good girl. She’d always check with whichever parent was home before she went anywhere.
Caroline sat bolt upright in bed, reaching for John’s belt buckle. ‘Twenty,’ she said. ‘Twenty.’
John had the sudden urge to smash his fist into her head so hard she’d be decapitated, but he suppressed that urge, because he wasn’t Dornan and he didn’t hurt women, even when he thought they well deserved it.
‘Dornan,’ Caroline said, and the hairs on John’s arms stood up.
