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‘It was easy, really,’ Emilio said. I didn’t look away from Dornan as Emilio continued to speak. ‘I used a pillow. Didn’t take more than a few minutes. He struggled, a bit, but then he stopped. He looked so peaceful, Mariana. It made me wonder what your child would have looked like if it hadn’t died inside of you.’
I saw the light die in Dornan’s eyes as his father spoke so casually about murdering an infant. The subtle way his broad shoulders curved inward, the way his whole body seemed to deflate. He took his hands off me, let them hang at his sides.
‘Go home,’ Dornan bit out, his eyes pained. He put his hands on his hips, shaking his head as he finally broke our gaze.
‘We still have our meeting,’ I replied, feeling like my insides had been hollowed out with a melon scoop. Like someone had taken out every bit of energy and life inside me, and left a vacuous nothingness in its wake.
‘The meeting is cancelled,’ Dornan said, the first trace of decisiveness I think I’d ever seen him display around his father. Dead kids brought out the rebel in him.
‘Good,’ I replied. ‘It’s my birthday. I’m taking the day off.’
Without looking back at Emilio, I slung my bag over my shoulder and brushed past Dornan without giving him eye contact.
My hand was on the door handle when Emilio chuckled. It was a noise that made me want to go on a murderous rampage. I felt the weight of the gun in my handbag and briefly contemplated if I could get off a couple of bullets before Dornan could stop me. He was, after all, blocking my aim.
I swallowed down the need for immediate violence and turned on my heel, my eyes landing directly on the man I most hated. ‘Do I amuse you?’ I asked softly.
Emilio grinned, wiping some of the ashes off the desk and onto the floor as he held my gaze. ‘I’ve finally driven you mad,’ he whispered, the delight – the wonder – clear in his raspy voice.
I stilled. Was he right? ‘I was mad when I met you,’ I said bitterly, opening the door. ‘No sane person would have agreed tothis.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
DORNAN
Mariana slammed the door so hard, it was a wonder the fucking thing didn’t fall off the hinges. He listened to the click of her high heels as they disappeared down the hallway, away from them.
And then he turned and faced his father, and whatever the fuck it was that was on the desk in front of him.
‘I should follow her,’ Dornan said, his eyes lingering on the closed door.
Emilio slapped the desk, making little pieces of bone bounce in the shockwave of his gesture.
‘Sit. Your goon will watch her. If he can move his fat ass fast enough to catch her.’
Dornan sat in the chair across from his father, his fingers itching for a cigarette. Fuck it. Why had he quit smoking again? It was something he’d done just recently, after Mariana had lost the baby. If he wanted to get her pregnant again, he couldn’t be going around smoking all the damn time and snorting flake off strippers’ tits. He needed to take care ofhimself so they didn’t lose another pregnancy. Somehow, in his mind, this self-enforced penance made it easier to believe that she’d forgive him one day, that they’d have a family of their own. In the wake of his divorce from Celia, marrying Mariana was something he was determined to do.
Fuck it. ‘You got any cigarettes?’
Emilio watched his son wordlessly, dragging a packet of expensive-looking Italian cigarettes from his top pocket and sliding them through grimy ash towards his son. Dornan picked up the packet gingerly, shaking off ash before he opened it and withdrew a smoke. Placing it between his teeth, he took the lighter from inside the packet and lit up.
It tasted good. So good. Emilio raised his eyebrows as if to sayWhat about me?and Dornan slid the packet back, making sure to avoid the mess Mariana had made on the table.
‘She didn’t call you,’ Emilio said, lighting up his own cigarette. ‘I’m surprised. If not you – who?’
Dornan had to think about that for a moment. Who had Mariana called when she’d received a dead child on her doorstep? The thought of her in that moment was horrifying to Dornan. He loved her more than almost anything. He loved her so fiercely, sometimes it scared him. And she hadn’t called him when something so monumental had happened.
Dornan knew what his father was doing. Trying to drive a wedge between them, to make him distrust Ana. And even though he knew this on an intellectual level, it was still impossible not to let that question burrow into his head like a fat worm and sit there, in the middle of his brain, burning him. Who had she called?
‘Guillermo was already there,’ Dornan said dismissively. ‘That’s what I pay him for. To be with her. Always.’
‘Where you’d like to be, no doubt,’ Emilio mused. ‘Ana’s a very beautiful woman, son. Beautiful women have needs. Do you really think it’s a wise idea to have a thug like Guillermo living with her? On her couch. In her kitchen. Maybe even in her bed, who knows? You think he’s licking that Colombian kitty of hers while you’re hard at work, earning the money for your family?’
It took every ounce of self-control that Dornan possessed to keep from flying across the desk and smashing his fists into his father’s face, but that self-control unfortunately didn’t extend to the visual image Emilio had just implanted into Dornan’s mind. Guillermo’s fat fucking bald head perched between Mariana’s thighs as she moaned and writhed on the bed. Whether it was true or not was completely irrelevant. Just the act of imagining the scene was enough to make Dornan want to go to Ana’s apartment and put a bullet between Guillermo’s eyes.
He needed to talk about something else before he killed somebody, right now.
They observed each other for a little while, Dornan smoking angrily, Emilio puffing away leisurely, as if the remains of a dead kid weren’t right in front of him.
