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‘My turn,’ he said. ‘Tell me something about you, Ana.’
I squirmed. ‘I just spent forever telling you all about me in the bath.’
‘No you didn’t. You told me all about Esteban. You told me nothing of you. What you think. What you feel in here,’ he took his finger from my lips and tapped it against my chest.
His question affected me more than I could’ve anticipated. I swallowed, tears forming at the corners of my eyes.
‘My dad is a disaster,’ I said, almost fondly. ‘He used to get drunk and think he was Muhammad Ali or something. Only, he’d hit me and my brother and sister and my mama.’
Dornan moved his hand to my arm and squeezed tightly. ‘What did he do to you?’ he asked, and I heard the thinly veiled rage in his voice.
I laughed. ‘What did I do to him, you mean? He was such a clumsy drunk. I broke his nose once. He never could finish what he started.’
Dornan’s grip loosened, and I heard him release his breath. ‘He sounds like an asshole.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘It could be worse.’
‘How?’ Dornan asked.
Without thinking, I replied, ‘He could be your father.’
Dornan breathed out. ‘Pretty and smart. What else is in that pretty head? Something you’ve never told anyone before. Anything.’
I thought about that for a moment, mentally cataloguing all of my dark secrets before selecting one of the more ambiguous ones. A safer one.
‘Sometimes I’m so lonely,’ I whispered, and I was. ‘Sometimes, I’m so lonely, it hurts.’
He wrapped his big arms around me and drew me into his chest, almost crushing me with the intensity of his embrace.
We lay there like that for a long time, while my head whirred and tilted painfully. I was dizzy with it all.
‘What was her name?’ I whispered. ‘The girl — the girl you loved? The one who disappeared?’
He tensed, letting out a sigh. ‘No. You don’t get to ask me that.’
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
MARIANA
The next day was a Monday, and it marked a change in my life.
I woke naked and alone, to the sounds of the coffee machine and the smell of bacon.
‘It’s a big day today,’ Dornan told me, as I slid onto a seat at the breakfast bar.
I cocked an eyebrow. My eyes still felt puffy from all the crying I’d done the night before, and I was beginning to wonder if I was going crazy. It wasn’t right to feel attached to my captor.
‘Work, baby. You didn’t think spreading your legs was going to pay off your debt, did you?’
The words affronted me. Of course I hadn’t thought that.
He winked at me as he jammed thick slices of bread into the toaster. He was having a dig at me. ‘Time to show us those laundering skills.’
* * *
I’d assumed we would be going to the biker headquarters, or compound, or clubhouse. Whatever they called it. I couldn’t keep the terms straight in my head. I needed another coffee just to get through the day without collapsing in a grief-induced coma.
Pablo. Karina. My parents. Este. Este.
