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Their club was falling apart at the seams.
Dornan was still hitting John, but the blows were less forceful now that he had him pinned. Almost like Dornan thought John had given up.
‘Apologise,’ Dornan ground out, his bloody face hovering above John’s. ‘Now.’
Something old and forgotten was unleashed in John. The part of him he tried to hide. The part that enjoyed blood and violence as much as Dornan did. John lived by a different set of morals than Dornan Ross, but that didn’t mean he didn’t take great delight in beating down somebody who had it coming. And Dornan had it coming.
This was overdue.
John’s adrenaline spiked, and he flipped Dornan easily. The tables were suddenly turned, but John wasn’t going to settle for a few punches. No, he wrapped both hands around his best friend’s throat and squeezed hard enough that Dornan was actually scared. He heard Dornan’s breath get stuck in his throat as he struggled beneath him. Whatever Dornan had been snorting off that stripper’s skin might’ve made him feel invincible for a short sprint, but John was filled with enough rage and contempt for a fucking marathon.
‘I will never apologise for telling you the truth,’ John said, his teeth about to shatter they were clenched so tight. ‘You killed Stephanie. The woman you’ve been looking for for fifteen fuckin’ years! Because you were still in love with her! And you killed her, Dee. Why?
‘You tie your own kid up and drug him and dump him in your trunk and leave him there so he pisses himself. He didn’t do anything to you. He didn’t even know you.’
‘Shut up!’ Dornan managed, his words barely audible. He started to prise John’s fingers from his throat, but John wasn’t finished yet. He picked up Dornan’s head with very little effort, slamming it back into the ground. Once. Twice. Three times. Dornan stopped fighting.
‘You beat the woman you say you love until your baby was dead. You say Juliette’s the daughter you never had, but that’s not true, is it? You had a daughter. She was alive. And you beat her mother until you killed the baby inside her.’
Dornan snapped. Perhaps he had seen himself in the mirror John was holding up and decided he didn’t like what he saw. Whatever it was, he managed to break free of John’s grip and then they were on their feet somehow, throwing punch after punch.
John still hadn’t gone for his own gun, but it was only a matter of time. Something had to put an end to this shit. As Dornan punched John in the jaw, he staggered back, the fight clearly wearing on him.
‘Don’t ever fucking talk about Stephanie again,’ Dornan said. ‘About any of it. Do you understand?’
John used the segue to get down low, to kick his leg out and sweep Dornan’s feet from underneath him. He wentdown hard, making a sound as the air knocked out of him again.
The time for games was over.
John pulled his gun, cocking it as he stepped over Dornan. He planted one foot on either side of Dornan’s torso, aiming the gun right between his fucking eyes, and everything in him screamed at him to pull the fucking trigger and end this. Kill the motherfucker, save the girl, and everyone could live happily ever after. Only, it was never going to be that easy. John knew only too well how surrounded he was by people who were firmly in Dornan’s allegiance, people who were probably aiming their guns at him right now. Instead of unloading a round of bullets in Dornan like he wanted to, John changed his grip on the gun and brought the butt down straight into his forehead. Dornan’s eyes rolled back in his head momentarily, before they refocused on John, the fight completely gone.
‘I buried Stephanie!’ John roared, spittle landing on Dornan’s cheek. ‘I will talk about whoever, whenever, because I dug her grave with my bare hands and I fucking buried that poor bitch myself!’
The place was as quiet as the dirt grave John had lowered Stephanie into, back in Colorado. Nobody moved a muscle. Jaws were on the floor and somebody had turned the music off completely. Even the girls who were supposed to be dancing onstage were motionless, their eyes bugging out as they took in the scene unfolding.
Anarchy like this had never existed within the Gypsy Brothers before. The brotherhood was bleeding away in front of everyone, replaced by mistrust and greed. And in Dornan’scase, by a darkness so black he couldn’t even see his way back to the light.
Selfishly, John wanted to reach through and pull him back. To go back to a time when things were simpler. To know who was a friend and who was an enemy.
But it was too late. He’d seen too much. The blood. The death. It was all just too fucking much.
‘Let me tell you what happens if you stay on this road, brother.’ John’s eyes burned, his throat thick. Dornan had been his only true friend. What had gone so colossally wrong? When? Where? Before Mariana, before any of it, where had their paths diverged so violently?
And then, John understood. An epiphany that lay beneath him, beaten and still. Dornan had been born on this road. Naked, bloody, screaming, a pawn in a game much bigger than him. A chess piece that belonged to Emilio Ross, in blood and in name.
John could run.
Mariana could run.
But Dornan would never be able to run from the thing he came from. The thing that created him. The darkness didn’t just exist within him.
Hewasthe fucking darkness.
CHAPTER TWELVE
DORNAN
It was quiet as John left. He didn’t go without leaving his mark – in this case, spitting his own blood on the floor of the strip club before he smashed the doors open and disappeared.
