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It was Emilio who finally broke the silence.
‘You broke procedure when you took this kid to the hospital.’ He gestured at the ashes for effect, then tapped his own cigarette ash on the top of the kid’s remains, making Dornan’s stomach turn violently. It just kept getting worse.
‘We should never have been transporting somebody that pregnant in the first place,’ Dornan replied, unable to tear hisgaze from the spot where Emilio’s light-grey cigarette ash had crumbled on top of the darker, sandier remains. He sucked desperately at his own cigarette, knowing that wasn’t what he needed, but utterly bereft at the thought of what he did need. He needed some fucking peace. He needed to not be doing this shit anymore. He needed his father to either stop what he was doing, or die, neither of which was likely to happen any time soon. The old bastard would outlive all of them. Of that, he had no doubt.
‘That’s not your concern,’ Emilio replied, waving his hand dismissively. ‘Your concern is to get the package from A to B. Your concern is to do what you’re told so I don’t have the fucking FBI breathing down my neck.’
Dornan baulked. ‘The FBI aren’t after you because I let some kid live after I shot his mother. The FBI are after you because your fucking business partner double-crossed you to go sun himself in the fucking Bahamas with his new piece of ass and a bunch of our money.’
Emilio’s smile had dropped completely. ‘Are you quite finished?’
‘The mother was dead,’ Dornan continued. ‘The kid was still worth something. I did what I thought best at the time. Dump the kid, let the hospital do their thing, and then go in and get the kid back once we knew it was viable.’ It was a lie, but one he’d had plenty of time to construct. ‘I didn’t know I was about to get fuckin’ shot, did I?’
‘The kid would have been fine,’ Emilio replied. ‘You should have called me.’
Dornan itched to get up and leave, get away from the oppressive stare his father was beaming down on his face like twin fucking laser beams that were burning holes in his skin.
‘The kid didn’t look right. He would have died. I made an executive decision. Thatkidwas worth a lot of money.’
Emilio brushed some of the ash away from where he’d been resting his clasped hands. ‘Come on, son. We both know you didn’t take pity on that child because of money.’
Dornan didn’t respond. Of course he hadn’t. He’d taken the kid to a hospital because he wasn’t about to kill an innocent fucking baby that had just been born.
At least, not purposely. An image swam in his vision – Mariana’s pale face as she sat on a hospital stretcher, her accusing eyes, the blood that still stained her thighs. He’d accidentally killed his own unborn baby, so why not somebody else’s?
Emilio let his previous words hang in the air for an excruciating moment before he cleared his throat, pressing on again. ‘Here’s what I think happened,’ he said. ‘I think your pretty little whore batted her eyelashes at you – and, son, they’re powerful fucking eyelashes, I get it – and you handed her your dick, and you let her wrap her fingers right around the shaft andlead you astray.’
‘You’re wrong,’ Dornan snapped. ‘That bullet fucked things up.’
Emilio raised his eyebrows at the sudden rise in Dornan’s voice. ‘Speaking of that bullet. Any ideas on who fired it?’
‘No,’ Dornan said warily, ‘but I’m betting you have some.’
Emilio opened the drawer in his desk, pulled out a specimen jar, and slid it across the dark mahogany surface to his son.
‘Somebody wanted you dead, my boy.’
My boy.His father hadn’t said that since Dornan had been an actual little boy. When his brother had still been around.Before he was gunned down in front of their house and Dornan had been left all alone with an unhinged mother and a megalomaniac for a father.
Something about those two words hurt more than that damn bullet had.
Dornan picked up the small jar, marvelling at the piece of twisted metal within. It no longer resembled a bullet. It had punctured his chest cavity and exploded inside him, blooming fatal shards of metal that shredded his insides like ribbons. It was ironic that something that started out smooth and oval-shaped spread into something that looked eerily flower-like when it pierced flesh. This had beeninsidehim. Dornan’s chest ached as he remembered the shot, out of nowhere. He’d been so confused, the pain not beginning right away. It had felt more like somebody had punched him square in the middle of his chest, like some kind of pressure had exploded inside him. He remembered the broken glass all around his face, in slow motion. The rain, as it battered them inside the car.
He remembered Mariana, her small hands pressing over his bloody chest as she tried to stop the bleeding. He remembered voices, even after he’d lost the ability to keep his eyes open and he’d tasted his own blood bubbling up in his mouth, drowning him from the inside. He’d been too far away to understand what the voices were saying.
He remembered a second gunshot. Mariana had shot somebody, or at least, she’d shot at somebody. The memory jerked him out of his daydream with a violence that was as unsettling as it was fierce. Fuck. Mariana had shot at somebody? He’d never remembered that before.
Did she know who had tried to kill him?
No, it couldn’t be possible. She’d told him, in the hospital, that she had driven him to the hospital as soon as she’d managed to move him out of the driver’s seat of his truck. That John and Viper and some of the other brothers had met them there, taken care of the surveillance footage.
He had almost died – half an inch to the right and the bullet would have hit his heart – but he hadn’t died, anddid she know who had shot him?
‘I want you to take care of that little bitch for me.’ Emilio’s words roused Dornan from his macabre reliving of his near-death experience. He pushed those thoughts away, struggling to focus.
‘You want me to kill her?’ Dornan asked, confused. ‘The best money launderer we’ve ever had? Because she didn’t like that you delivered a dead baby to her doorstep?’
Emilio laughed, grinding his cigarette butt into the pile of ash on the desk in such a casual manner, it made Dornan cringe.
