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Which made Dornan consider the third group of women who were frequently around the club compound.
The transients. The ones who didn’t belong there. The ones who made him slightly uncomfortable, the ones his father insisted on dealing in.
The slaves.
Human trafficking was a nicer term for what they were doing with those girls, but not by much. Typically the girls were an in-and-out job, a truck or a boat or a carload that needed to go from point A to point B; usually teenage girls from out of state or, less frequently, from overseas. Sometimes, the girls would beg him to help them, and it broke his fucking heart every time he turned a blind eye to what his father was doing.
But he still did it, and so he was an asshole. He accepted that. It was part of who he was.
John Portland didn’t like it. He was Dornan’s best friend and the president of the Gypsy Brothers, and he abhorred the practice of taking these young girls and forcing them into a life of prostitution or drug smuggling. He wanted to fucking save everyone all the time. Dornan often had to remind him that his role as president was largely symbolic; he was not the one in charge.
It hadn’t always been that way. The club had been just that — a club. Not a gang. Not organised crime. Just riding, free as birds, setting up camp and sleeping under the stars. They’d both ditched school in favour of seeing the world, riding their Triumphs across the USA, along Route 66 and beyond.
It had been John who suggested the name Gypsy Brothers. They’d jokingly tossed a coin and declared the winner the president, the loser VP. John had called heads, and the coin landed heads up. They’d cut lines into the flesh of their palms with a pocketknife and sealed the deal with a handshake marked in blood. Blood Brothers. Gypsy Brothers who travelled the roads, and had each other’s backs.
And then everything had gone to shit. They’d returned home to LA to find Dornan’s girlfriend, Lucy, pregnant with his baby, John’s younger sister needing cancer treatment that he couldn’t afford, and Dornan’s mafioso father finally having caught up to his wayward son.
It was a complete clusterfuck. John’s sister wasn’t even eighteen, yet she was riddled with cancer. Full of cancer and no insurance meant one thing: John needed money, a lot of money, and fast.
It had seemed straightforward at the time. A road trip, a simple swap. Drugs for cash. But once Emilio had them under his thumb, it happened time and time again. The Gypsy Brothers club expanded to deal with the mounting work Emilio was throwing at them. Dornan liked to claim it was his family obligation, but really, he knew he couldn’t argue. His father was a stone-cold killer from old-school Italia, and Dornan had always known that he would be called to the darkness one day. He’d felt that familiar violence bubble under his skin more than once.
He just didn’t realise his best friend would end up as deep in the blood of innocents as him.
Lucy had crafted the Gypsy Brothers patches and the leather cut-off jackets that John and Dornan wore with pride. Lucy loved to fucking sew, especially when she was eight months pregnant and could barely move. It drove Dornan insane; every time he walked around the house barefoot he’d step on a goddamn sewing pin, sticking precariously out of the carpet. That had been before everything really went to shit, though. Once things got crazy and she was washing blood and pieces of brain matter out of her husband’s clothes on a semi-regular basis, she’d stopped sewing.
It had started in the simplest, most innocent of ways; two friends, drinking beers by an open fire, shooting the shit and talking about how their lives might turn out. Things had been good then. Simple. Fun.
And now . . . now, the Gypsy Brothers dealt in the darkest of sins. They stole lives and they ended them, and they did a damn fine job of both. Dornan sometimes wondered how things would have turned out if he had just kept riding, had never returned home, had never accepted his father’s offer of cash to help John’s sister in return for their souls.
The saddest thing of all was that she died anyway.
She died and Lucy ended up divorcing his ass, two kids and one affair later. So Dornan rarely thought about the old days. Rarely thought about the way he and John had signed their lives away, because, in the end, it had all been for nothing.
* * *
It wasn’t that difficult to ride with a raging hard-on — unless the reason for that hard-on was seated behind you, her delicious warmth pressed up against the small of your back with her legs draped over your bike.
Dornan figured he must’ve had a guardian angel for the ride from San Diego, because there was no blood left in his head to help him think straight. It was all directed into his lap, dangerously close to the girl’s small hands as she clung to him. At one point, when they reached open road and opened up their bikes, she held onto him so hard, her nails were gouging through his leather cut and t-shirt and into the firm flesh of his torso. He didn’t say anything, though.
He enjoyed the pain.
Just before Tijuana, the boys broke up into several smaller groups to avoid attention. The bright lights of the San Ysidro border crossing that straddled Mexico and the United States marked the almost-there point, and Dornan was glad for that. He loved being on the bike, but there was shit to do to sort out this coke shortage, plus his dick wasn’t showing any signs of calming down.
He revved his engine and made the turn into the road that led to his father’s compound, and with one hand he reached behind and pulled the girl closer to him, so her heat was jammed up tight against his back. He thought he felt her gasp, and that only excited him more.
From what his father had said, this girl was going to be staying with them for a very long time. It made him fucking ashamed that he was looking forward to her captivity.
CHAPTER TWELVE
MARIANA
The ride had been hellish. With no reference to time or indication of how far we had left to travel, I had had no choice but to hold on to Dornan or let go and smash myself to pieces on the highway behind the bikes. Not being able to see anything was the worst part, and it made me feel ill, but I couldn’t be sick in the narrow confines of the helmet. I doubted they’d stop to let me clean myself if I threw up, so I clenched my teeth and swallowed down my nausea for what seemed like hours.
And then, finally, the bikes slowed to a stop. Dornan patted my hand and someone else hooked their hands under my arms, pulling me off the bike. I stood on legs that threatened to dissolve underneath me, supporting myself against the bike with one shaking arm. I was sore, I was tired, and the only thing I’d eaten since I had arrived in the States — a greasy burger and fries — sat in my stomach like a rock that wanted to come back up.
My hands itched to pull up the visor, but I didn’t touch it. A cool chill settled on my skin and I guessed that it must have been evening wherever we were.
‘C’mon,’ Dornan said, taking my wrist and guiding me up a flight of stairs, into what I assumed was some kind of building, and back down another flight of stairs. My stomach flipped nervously as I wondered where we were going and what was about to happen.
