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He studied me for a long moment, while I pictured him as a rat. The long nose and the way he spoke reminded me of a rodent.
‘Are they treating you well in casa Gypsy Brother?’ He pursed his lips together as he studied me some more.
Fear prickled on my skin as I remembered all of the stories Dornan had made me memorise.
‘Please,’ I begged Emilio. ‘I don’t want to upset any of them —’
He cocked his head to the side, putting up a hand to silence me. ‘Never mind about them,’ he said. ‘The only person you need to worry about upsetting is me.’
I nodded, licking my lips. ‘I, uh, well . . . a lot of them like to do . . . strange things. Things I haven’t ever seen before.’ I was lying out loud. I’d never even seen the inside of the clubhouse until today.
He grinned like a Cheshire cat. ‘Oh?’
‘They take turns,’ I said. A total, outrageous lie. Would he buy it?
‘Do they hurt you?’ he asked, his eyes suddenly lit up like Christmas trees. He was probably going to find a blonde and get her to relieve him after he’d listened to my imaginary tales of sexual deviance and submission at the hands of his employees. I tucked a stray hair behind my ear, thanking the sweet Lord in heaven that I’d been born a brunette.
‘Yes,’ I whispered.
His mouth stretched impossibly wide, baring his teeth. He looked like he could tear me limb from limb with those teeth. Especially the fake one. I fought the urge to shudder in disgust.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Some time, I’ll have to call your father and tell him all about it.’ I looked up in confusion as he beamed down at me. ‘Oh, no,’ he said, ‘that’s right. They think you’re dead.’
Motherfucker.
‘I assume you know what happened to our last accountant?’ he asked casually.
It took me a moment to catch up with the change of topic. Oh, yeah. The girl downstairs who had been screaming so loud I could still hear the noise reverberating in my ears. The girl who was dead now, thanks to Dornan.
‘Yes, sir,’ I said again.
‘Let that be a warning,’ Emilio said, turning and walking to the door. ‘Let that be a lesson in what not to do, and you’ll go far.’
He closed the door behind him. As soon as he was gone I heaved a sigh of relief, slumping further down onto the bed.
This is way too precarious, I thought to myself. This existence is actually terrifying.
In that moment, I longed for Dornan. He’d know what to say. He always had the words — or the touch — to take that choking loneliness away.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
DORNAN
It killed him to walk out of that room and leave her with his father. She was good with the books, so good that Emilio would hopefully consider her valuable and keep her around. In the meantime, though, it was going to be up to Dornan to keep her out of harm’s way, while at the same time not alerting his father to how he felt about the girl.
I think I love you.
Her words ran through his head, over and over again, filling him with fear, with wild rage. When he reached the small bathroom he locked himself in, shedding bloody clothes on the floor.
Fuck, how he wanted her to be here with him. If she were here, he’d throw her up against these tiles, wrap her legs around his waist, and drive into her until he was feeling good again. Because around her, all he felt was arousal and fear, fear that she would be taken from him, fear that he’d lose the best thing that had ever happened to him.
Dornan turned the water on and stepped into the shower, that familiar rage at his father duelling with his constant need for approval from the man. Blood is thicker than water, he told himself. The family comes before the girl.
But even as he repeated those words to himself, he knew he didn’t really mean them. He craved his father’s approval; but his heart didn’t know that. The things he felt for Mariana, he’d never felt before for anyone. It was a dangerous proposition, to be falling in love with a woman who was owned by the cartel. At any moment, Emilio could decide to move her, or just kill her, and there was not a thing Dornan could do about it.
The last woman he’d truly loved wasn’t even owned by the cartel, and she’d still been taken from him. Eight years, and nothing. Her memory taunted him as he thought of Mariana, as he wondered if their fates would be the same.
He roared, lashing out with his fists. He connected with hard tile, his knuckles blossoming with pain as they smashed into the unforgiving wall, the pain bringing him some strange sort of calm, some clarity among the chaos that raged within him. He might not be able to fully control what happened to Mariana, but he had to at least try. After all, he’d kept Emilio away from John all these years, kept him from killing the man who had too much of a conscience, in Emilio’s words, to be a part of their world, much less be in control of the Gypsy Brothers. Yes, Dornan decided, he could do this. He would do it, for her, because she’d been terrified when she had let those words fall from trembling lips — I think I love you — and he couldn’t bear the thought that she would fall in love with a man like himself, only to be punished with a bullet to the head.
