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All these things occurred to him as he watched six Gypsy Brothers lower John Portland’s coffin into the earth. The day was brilliant, the normally hazy Los Angeles sky clear and blue. Sweat gathered around Dornan’s collar as he tugged at his tie. It seemed like far too nice a day to bury the best friend you’d murdered. He glanced across to the second slightlysmaller coffin that contained John’s daughter’s remains. Yes, the sky was much too blue to be burying the girl he’d once thought of as his own.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
COLOMBIA, 2014
MARIANA
‘Lindsay,’ I said, smiling broadly as two machine-gun toting guards flanked me – one male, one female. You could never be too careful when the world believed you were dead. Especially when you alone controlled an eighty-something per cent stake in the South and Central American cocaine trade. ‘It’s been a long time.’
Lindsay smirked back at me, raising his arms as Guillermo patted him down for weapons or wires. I might have been happy to see my old FBI handler, but that didn’t mean I trusted him. Men – especially extremely attractive men – were not to be trusted.
After finding nothing, Guillermo slapped him hard on the back and Lindsay lowered his arms to his sides.
My two guards, a black-belt badass by the name of Maria, and a hulk-sized Colombian called Alejandro, followed Guillermo out of my sitting room, the door closing behind them.
Lindsay shoved his hands in his suit pockets and paced the length of the large room where I spent most of my time. It’s not that I was afraid to go outdoors, but it was summer in Colombia, and as soon as I went outside my flesh turned an angry red. For a native Colombian, it was annoying that I could no longer tolerate the sun in my own country, but ten years spent largely indoors had made my skin and my eyes incredibly sensitive.
‘You haven’t been here in months,’ I said.
Lindsay threw his hands up in mock frustration. ‘You won’t let me see you.’
‘I let you today.’
He laughed.
‘You look beautiful in that dress,’ he said in Spanish. He spoke the language almost as well as I did, a girl who was born and raised speaking the mother tongue.
‘Thank you,’ I replied, in English, smoothing down the black dress I wore. I would only address him in English, which annoyed him greatly, since he’d learned the language purely to impress me. I didn’t need his silver tongue or his sweet Spanish adorations turning me soft. I knew he wanted me; I wanted him, too, and it had been a very long time between lovers. The last man I had slept with was Dornan. But I couldn’t trust anyone, and so I was alone.
It was easier that way. Men only broke your heart. Burrowed in and settled, and then shattered you from within.
My heart was mine alone. It belonged to my children. No man would ever breach its solid walls again.
‘Uncle!’ Adelita cried, her long, messy hair flying behind her as she ran into the room and barrelled straight into Lindsay.
His eyes lit up, a smile he only smiled for her. They were not related to each other in any way, and they didn’t see each other for months or years at a time, but Adelita loved Lindsay as if he were her family.
My darling Adelita. Almost six years old now, and beautiful, a female version of her father.
The blue eyes. The wide cheeks and angular cheekbones. The dirty blonde hair, thick and impossible to untangle. They have the same toes, the same fingers. Until the day I gave birth to her, I did not know who her father was. Whether I’d carried a part of Dornan or a part of John for nine dangerous months, as I fled and hid and swelled with a baby I was terrified to bring into my chaotic existence, where we’d be forced to live in the shadows until fate caught up with us.
I loved her anyway, my baby girl. I didn’t care who her father was. I didn’t hope one way or the other, because despite everything, despite the blood and the lies and the betrayal, Dornan had let me run.He had let me go. Even as I hated him bitterly for everything he’d done – for murdering John, and Juliette, for beating me so badly that I’d miscarried the baby that was his – I still loved him, deep down, somewhere where the light could never quite get in, in the dark. I loved him because he let me go free.
But when I’d given birth in a makeshift hospital room inside an FBI safehouse, Lindsay by my side, Luis pacing anxiously in the hallway, I’d known. My Adelita had cried, and before they’d even placed her wet, howling little body on my bare chest, I saw a tuft of her blonde hair sticking up, and I knew she was John’s daughter.
‘Lindsay, are you staying for dinner?’ Adelita asked.
He shrugged his shoulders, looking to me. I nodded. ‘Of course I am!’ he said, wrapping her up in another hug, her little face pressed up against his neck. For a moment I imagined Lindsay was John and my throat ached.
‘Why don’t you go play,bebe,’ I said to Adelita. ‘We need to talk for just a minute. Can you find Lindsay some of that cake you baked the other day?’
Adelita agreed, skipping off to the kitchen in search of cake. That would keep her busy for at least a few minutes, and I could figure out what Lindsay was here for. Once she was gone, I gestured to the couch. ‘Sit. You want a drink?’
‘Please,’ he replied, sitting down.
I went to the large oak cabinet that ran along one wall, and selected a bottle of whiskey. I grabbed two tumblers and poured us each a double, because from the look on Lindsay’s face, we were going to need it. I handed one to Lindsay and sat beside him, waiting for him to speak.
‘You look pale, Ana,’ Lindsay said finally, his smile shrinking. ‘You look tired.’
