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The engine had barely stopped when John was out of the car, his legs burning as he scaled the stairs up to the front door two at a time. He burst into the unlocked door to absolute silence.
‘Juliette!’ he yelled, checking the kitchen. Empty. Living room – empty. Every room was empty.
Fuck.
She was fifteen. Sometimes she did things like ride her bike to the gas station a couple of blocks away for milk or candy, but she always left a note.
A note. Yes. It’d been dark in the kitchen – had he missed a note from her? John left his daughter’s bedroom, sensing movement as he passed his own. He stopped, pivoting and gripping the two sides of the doorframe.
A familiar sight, but one that never ceased to terrify him.
His wife, Caroline, was in the throes of a heroin high. It wasn’t hard to tell. She was on her back in the middle of their bed – a bed he hadn’t shared with her in months, opting instead to crash on the couch with a gun beside him – and she was laughing. There was something invisible on the ceiling, and it was fucking hilarious.
‘Caroline,’ he hissed. She didn’t flinch. John took a step into the room he’d long since abandoned and was immediately hit by the smell of junkie. It was a unique smell – body odour,but mixed with some kind of sweet scent, sickly, like rotting oranges. Maybe it was Caroline’s perfume. He’d never lived with another junkie to compare.
‘Hey,’ John said, more forcefully this time. He reached out to touch her arm and recoiled when he saw the fresh needle still hanging from the crook of her elbow. Fucking hell. John had no idea where she’d gotten the money for a hit. He didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to have to imagine his wife doing all manner of terrible things – fucking, stealing, bribing – to get the white powder she so viciously craved. He didn’t have to worry about other Gypsy Brothers, who all respected John and had far more desirable options to choose from on the female menu at the clubhouse. But there were plenty of men in Los Angeles who owed John no respect, or Caroline, for that matter. Men who would pay good money to disrespect her. All of these things crossed John’s mind as he watched Caroline laugh, her eyes rolling back in her head every so often.
He’d liked to have thought that his next move was unconscious, but it was a very deliberate one. He reached behind his back to the gun tucked snugly into his waistband and pulled it out, resting it against Caroline’s forehead. If she felt it, or even knew he was there, she didn’t show it. She was too busy focusing on something over his shoulder, something that only existed in her opiate-soaked haze.
He looked at the fit still around her arm, the needle that hadn’t quite been emptied still resting in her vein. If he pressed down, would she die? Would it be too much? Or what if he shot her in the head and made it look like she’d shot herself?
The woman whose only service to John Portland in their entire time together had been the child she bore him chosethat exact moment to start a high-pitched giggle. It was loud. Frenzied, even. But her eyes weren’t laughing. They were vacant. Haunted. He didn’t need to put a bullet in her to send her to hell. She was already there.
Taking a deep breath, John put his gun back into his waistband. ‘Caroline,’ he barked, flicking his wife’s forehead with his thumb and middle finger. ‘Hey! Where’s Juliette?’
Caroline finally seemed to hear him. ‘School,’ she muttered.
John ground his back teeth in frustration. ‘It’s fucking night time, Caroline,’ he said. ‘She’s not at fucking school. Did she come see you before she left?’
Of course she would have. She was a good girl. She’d always check with whichever parent was home before she went anywhere.
Caroline sat bolt upright in bed, reaching for John’s belt buckle. ‘Twenty,’ she said. ‘Twenty.’
John had the sudden urge to smash his fist into her head so hard she’d be decapitated, but he suppressed that urge, because he wasn’t Dornan and he didn’t hurt women, even when he thought they well deserved it.
‘Dornan,’ Caroline said, and the hairs on John’s arms stood up.
‘Dornanwhat?’ John ground out. Dornan’s been giving you twenty dollars to suck his dick?John highly doubted it, but then he’d also doubted Dornan was capable of cold-blooded murder of a woman he’d once professed to love.
Caroline flopped onto her back again. ‘Julie’s at Dornan’s,’ she whispered, and then she passed out cold.
Fuck. Double fuck. Of all the places in the world, the one he least wanted to find his daughter was anywhere near DornanRoss. John sped the whole short drive to his house. It was only a couple of blocks, but it felt like an eternity.
Take my cunt wife, he mused as he walked up to Dornan’s front door and knocked sharply, three sharp raps that shook the door.Burn my house to the ground. You can have everything of mine, but you cannot have my daughter.
Or my Mariana, he realised a moment later.
Dornan’s oldest son, Chad, answered the door. He opened it without a word, and John noticed his knuckles were raw and bloody. He nodded in greeting, walking past Chad and down the long hallway that demarcated the rooms in Dornan’s Spanish-style abode. So many rooms for so many sons – six there had been, and it seemed once you had six, you got one for free. At least that was the way it had gone, with Dornan stumbling upon his unknown son, his seventh progeny, the secret John had kept for sixteen years as he broke his ass sending Stephanie money to keep them from starving and losing their goddamn house, far away from Dornan’s lethal lifestyle.
John wondered how long it would be before Dornan figured out that he’d known of this seventh son all along, from the moment he’d personally purchased the pregnancy test and made Stephanie take it in a McDonald’s bathroom in West Hollywood. He couldn’t remember what the fuck he’d been doing all the way up in Wankville that day – no doubt something to do with drugs or cash or beating somebody up for payments owed – but he did remember how pale Stephanie’s face had turned when she handed him the piss stick with two lines in it. And hedidremember shelling out three hundred bucks in twenties, a greyhound ticket to Colorado purchasedwith a fake ID, and a promise that he’d help her if she decided not to come back.
Dornan had blamed Stephanie for stealing his son away all those years ago, but if he found out his best friend was the instigator of the entire ‘Get the fuck away from the Ross Family’ plan, John knew he’d retaliate. Painfully. And Dornan knew Juliette was John’s entire existence. He’d give anything, kill anyone, for his only child.
His only child, who right now was applying an ice pack to Dornan’s nose as he sat and smoked and drank whiskey at his dining table. He grinned when he saw John, but it wasn’t a friendly gesture so much as a warning.
‘Juliette,’ John said, aiming for casual yet loving father, but ending up sounding strangled. She turned sharply, her face drawn, concern etched in her features.
‘Hey, Dad. I’m just helping Uncle Dornan.’
