Cartel (10 page)

When Dornan left, promising to return with something for me to eat, I didn’t anticipate him returning ten seconds later with his father in tow.

I could tell that Emilio was annoyed, but I had no idea why. I’d done as I was told. Flown thousands of miles with his psychotic employee. Ridden on the back of his son’s bike, effectively blindfolded. Gone to my dungeon like a good little girl.

And then I remembered the blood.

‘What the
fuck
is this?’ Emilio asked, after he’d burst past his son. Dornan said nothing as Emilio snatched up my arm, tearing at the bandage. He glared at his son. ‘I specifically said not to mark her. Did you do this?’

Dornan remained blank. ‘No,’ he said. As soon as Emilio turned back to me that glint of amusement sprang forth in Dornan’s eye.

‘Who did this to you, girl?’ Emilio demanded. ‘I’ll skin their fucking hide.’

His concern was odd and I was terrified of telling him that I had cut myself.

‘She fell off the bike,’ Dornan broke in unexpectedly. ‘Fainted. It’s lucky she didn’t hurt herself any worse. I don’t think that fucker gave her anything to eat the whole time he had her.’

Emilio ground his teeth around the toothpick that was jammed between his lips, muttering obscenities in Italian. ‘Fucking Murphy,’ he said.

He shook his head, hands on his hips. He looked like the damn Godfather in his tailored suit. ‘Have you checked her out yet?’ he asked Dornan, with such a casual tone it made my skin crawl.

‘Checked me out?’ I repeated.

Emilio threw me a look of derision before looking back to his son.

Dornan shook his head. ‘I was busy cleaning her up. I know you hate mess.’ His jaw clenched as he spoke, and it was obvious to me that he didn’t like the power his father wielded over him.

Interesting.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked, louder this time. ‘What does he mean?’

‘Shut up, bitch,’ Emilio said, clearly annoyed that I was speaking.

‘Whatever, old man,’ I replied.

He paused, turning slowly.

‘What did you say?’

‘I said,
whatever
,’ I repeated. ‘I might have offered myself up as a trade for my family’s lives. Doesn’t mean I need to
enjoy
it.’

He chuckled, the rage still evident in the way his neck tensed. ‘You’d be a sick little whore if you did enjoy it here.’

‘You’re an asshole,’ I answered.

I was rewarded with a punch to the jaw. Seemed his rage overrode his desire not to mark me. It fucking hurt, too, propelling me backwards. I fell against the bed in a pile of limbs, covering my face with my hands.

‘Wait,’ I said, panting a little. ‘So you get to call me bitch and whore, but I don’t get to call you what I want? That’s hardly fair.’

His smile vanished and he spat the toothpick out, stalking towards me.

‘Life isn’t fair,’ he said emphatically. ‘If life were fair, your stupid father wouldn’t have LOST MY FUCKING COCAINE!’

His tone terrified me, and I couldn’t help but close my eyes as Emilio’s spittle landed on my cheek.

My reaction seemed to calm the beast, to satisfy him. He sucked in a breath and let his shoulders drop, as if composing himself.

‘My name is Emilio,’ he breathed, his gold tooth glinting in the harsh light of the bare bulb above us. ‘But you will call me
Master
.’

Before I could protest or cry or make some smartass joke, before I could even decide how to react, he reached around and grabbed the back of my neck, pulling me from the bed and slamming me forcefully to the ground. The damp concrete knocked the air from my lungs, and I gasped.

Crack!

He kicked me in the ribs, forcefully enough for me to hear a snap as something broke. White-hot pain sang in my bones, reaching a brutal climax when my nerves relayed the searing message to my brain.

I thought I’d be braver. I thought I’d be able to take his torment, his violence, and smile at him with blood-smeared teeth. But I wasn’t brave. I was scared.

I broke.

I opened my mouth, and screamed.

He left the room after that. I curled into an awkward ball, not too tight, because my ribs were screaming in agony, but as tight as I could, because it was freezing in the room.

Time stretched out, as my stomach rumbled and my ribs protested their pain.

Hunger. Pain. Sadness. Despair. They all threw a party inside me, and all I wanted was for them to go away, to give me some peace for a few brief moments.
All I wanted was for the pain to go away.

I recoiled as I saw a boot appear in my vision.

‘Hey,’ the voice that belonged to the boot soothed. Dornan. ‘It’s okay. I’ll save my beating for tomorrow.’

I frowned, looking up at him as he knelt beside me; he was smiling and I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.

‘I think my ribs are broken,’ I wheezed.

He nodded. ‘Probably. I heard something snap.’

I moaned, trying to roll over. I eventually managed to get to my knees, and he helped me to my feet like I was as light as a feather.

I sat on the edge of the bed gingerly, trying not to move anything. Each time I took in a breath, white-hot pain radiated from a spot underneath my heart. He broke my ribs! Beneath the fog of pain, I was furious. Wasn’t taking me from my family enough? Wasn’t killing my boyfriend enough? Wasn’t forcing me to swallow those fake cocaine capsules
enough
?

Of course it wasn’t enough. He would keep hitting, keep hurting, keep taunting, until I stopped responding. He was a power-hungry psychopath. He did a
magnificent
job of playing the bastard. He didn’t care if I suffered; in fact, my suffering was essential to him.

I chastised myself for being so receptive to Dornan. He was the enemy. It was like a really shitty version of good cop / bad cop, and I had fallen for it hook, line and sinker.

‘I’ll get you something to eat,’ Dornan said. ‘I’ll be right back.’

I looked at him with all of the disgust I could muster.

‘Don’t bother,’ I said mechanically, no emotion in my tone. He was Emilio’s son, not my friend, and though he’d bandaged me up, and said he liked my blood, it would be the last of my blood he would get to touch without a fight.

I wasn’t falling for his bullshit act. He was a Gypsy Brother. They might own me now, but it didn’t mean I had to like it. Like
him
.

Dornan raised an eyebrow. ‘Lost your appetite? Yeah, he does that to me, too.’

I didn’t respond, and eventually he took the hint, and left.

I fell into a broken sleep shortly after Dornan left me alone with my broken ribs and rumbling stomach. I was so worn out, so beyond thought, that I no longer cared if someone murdered me in my sleep. I just needed to pass out for a couple of hours and regroup. But nightmares of my mother’s crying face taunted me, making me twist and turn, my ribs protesting with white-hot pain every time I did so.

Morning came eventually, and with it, a fragile sense of calm. The hum in my ribs was still high, but it had settled down from its original peak.

Este
. I couldn’t bear to think of him, the way his eyes had glazed over as his life had ebbed away, his blood dripping into the cracks of the cobblestoned street beneath him and leaving an empty void.

I sat up with a start as something banged on the other side of the door. ‘Christ,’ I muttered, as the sudden movement shifted my ribs painfully. It hurt so much, it took my breath away. Dornan stood in the doorway, a troubling look on his face. It looked somewhere between amusement and cool detachment, the smile of his mouth saying one thing but the fact that it didn’t reach his eyes saying another.

‘Here to check me out?’ I asked sarcastically.

His smile blossomed into a wide grin. He thought I was funny?

‘I’m so glad my questions entertain you,’ I said, getting to my feet. ‘Can I please go to the bathroom now?’

I was ready to burst. It’d been a long time between visits.

‘Sure,’ he said, opening the door wider and stepping to the side. I looked up, startled, and this time he did laugh at me.

‘There are armed guards all the way down the hall,’ he said. ‘So yeah, I’m letting you take a piss. You’ve got five minutes.’

I glared at him, my bladder winning the battle between running and staying put. As I sidled past him, our hands brushed together, and I recoiled at the sudden spark that seemed to ignite between our skin.

He’s the enemy.

It bothered me that I even had to remind myself of that fact.

He was right. There was a guard near the bathroom, holding one of the same sub-machine guns as the ones my father and brother had had pointed at their heads. Berettas. I was going to end up with a urinary tract infection pretty soon, unless I was granted a toilet break more than once every twelve hours.

I contemplated asking to take a shower as I gazed longingly at the small, screenless cubicle beside the vanity.

‘Hurry up,’ Dornan called from my room, and I sighed, trudging back.

I froze when I saw what he had in his hand.

Years ago, my highly paranoid father had insisted on having all of us microchipped, in case we went missing. In case we were abducted, to be more accurate. Some schemer had spun him a story about the microchips having GPS capabilities, but he had been lying. They were the same chips people put into their pets in case they went missing, so that if someone found them, they could scan the chip, return the pet to its owner and everyone could live happily ever after.

Or, in our case, so that our bodies could be identified.

I snapped from my thoughts back to the scene in front of me — Dornan, standing in the middle of the small room in his full biker garb, holding a microchip scanner in his hand.

Shit.

I feigned indifference, walking slowly into the room and trying to look anywhere but at what he was holding. The small scar in my unharmed wrist throbbed painfully, threatening to burst and spill all of my secrets.

Dornan watched me enter the room with amusement, licking his lips as he took me in from head to toe.

‘What’s this?’ I asked, picking up on the vibe that something was different about today. Different from his friendly manner of yesterday, when he’d liked my blood and bandaged me up.

‘Clothes off,’ he said.

I choked. So this was really happening. My skin burned at the thought of being separated from my dress.

‘Why?’ I asked.

He waved the scanner in his hand. ‘A little bird told me you’ve got treasure hidden somewhere. I want to go treasure hunting.’

Asshole.

‘What are you talking about?’ I stalled.

He took a step towards me, erasing the space between us. I tried to back up and ended up with the backs of my calves pressed against the bed frame.

‘I think you know what I’m talking about,’ he said. ‘If you tell me where it is, you can keep your dress on.’

I glared at him.

‘Or maybe you want to take it off for me?’

‘Go fuck yourself,’ I muttered.

He tensed momentarily. ‘Dress off it is. Hurry up. Or I’ll kick your ribs until the rest of them are broken, too.’

I scowled at him, but I started to lift my dress up, praying that the chip was redundant and that his scanner wouldn’t pick it up. I was terrified of him finding the chip and having a reason to cut me. I might have hurt myself sometimes and relished the pain, but it was about emotion, about the control I sought to wield over those emotions.

Just because I sometimes enjoyed cutting into my own flesh didn’t make me want someone else cutting into it.

Just because I was becoming accustomed to being in pain didn’t mean I enjoyed it.

My eyes watered as fresh pain spiked in my chest. I gasped and dropped the hem of my dress.

‘I can’t,’ I said, clutching my side.

He rolled his eyes and set the scanner down on the small pine table that stood next to my bed.

I didn’t fight when he reached out and slid the thin strap of my dress over my shoulder and down my arm, then repeated the action with the other side. He gave a solid tug, and I looked away as my lace-covered breasts emerged from the dress, popping out dramatically as the tight material slid down and over my waist. He whistled in appreciation, and my cheeks burned in response.

‘You could just tell me where it is,’ he said, chuckling. ‘Then I wouldn’t have to do this.’

I stared at the floor. Screw him. Although it killed me to be so exposed, I refused to give him the satisfaction of my complicity. If he wanted to find a microchip underneath my skin he could damn well go searching for it.

The dress pooled at my feet and I cringed at the sudden exposure. I was well aware of how I looked in the very revealing, plunging, boosting and altogether ridiculous black lace underwear that Murphy had insisted on buying when he stocked my suitcase for our fake-cation.

Dornan took a step back and grinned. ‘I didn’t pick you for a lingerie model,’ he said appreciatively.

I snapped my gaze up to his, furious. ‘It was that asshole Murphy,’ I spat. ‘He said if I didn’t wear this —’

Oh.

Dornan frowned. ‘If you didn’t wear this, what?’

I searched my mind for a suitable lie, something that didn’t involve the knowledge of my son.

‘He said he’d make me regret it,’ I said, technically not lying.

‘Huh,’ he said. ‘Well, now that I know he chose these, I’d like to rip them off you and burn them.’

My face burned, never mind my clothes. I had never in my life felt more exposed.

‘Please don’t,’ I replied sharply.

‘For now, you can keep ’em. Arms out, little lady.’

I rolled my eyes and held my arms straight out in front of me.

‘Let the treasure hunting begin,’ he said gleefully, taking one of my arms and wrapping his fingers around my wrist. I glanced at the scanner, lying silently on the table, but thought better of mentioning it.

As Dornan’s fingers skated smoothly over my skin, I fought the urge to shudder violently. My flesh rose in goosebumps and I curled my toes to stop from squirming.

His touch was feather-light. It wasn’t a search — it was a caress. As he locked his gaze on me and continued to poke at the skin around my bandaged wrist, I realised he didn’t really give a shit about any microchip.

And I didn’t really give a shit that I was standing in front of the son of the man who owned me, in gaudy lace underwear, being felt up by him.

I should have cared, though. I should have been disgusted.

What was wrong with me?
He shouldn’t have been making me feel like this.

It was the loneliness, I decided. I was only feeling the way I was around him — flushed, unable to keep still, with an itch that wanted to be scratched by him — because I was so terribly lonely.

I rationalised things in my head. It was okay. I was confused. And him touching me didn’t change the way I felt — because as soon as I got my chance, I would kill him.

I acted bored as his grip tightened on my forearm. He placed his thumb and forefinger over a thin, hard rod embedded under my skin.

‘What’s this?’ he asked.

‘Contraceptive implant,’ I replied quickly, immediately regretting uttering those words.

His eyes lit up at that as his gaze travelled across my chest and wandered down to the most private of places. I was clothed and covered in the right places, but in front of him, I felt completely naked. The feeling was unnerving and delicious all at once, which only confused me further.

So he’s sexy as hell. It doesn’t matter. He’s the enemy.

‘It doesn’t matter anyway,’ I added hastily. ‘I’ve got a nasty case of the clap. Better not rape me or your
pico
might fall off.’ I thrust my chin out as I used the Spanish term for ‘small dick’, smirking at the Gypsy Brother as his warm hands continued to roam every bit of bare flesh on my arms.

Dornan laughed at my admission, a throaty noise full of gravel and insolence that made me increasingly unsteady on my feet.

‘I’m not going to rape you,’ he replied, amusement dancing in his dark eyes. ‘And you don’t have the clap. So don’t use that one on me.’

I rolled my eyes at him as he continued his probing of my flesh with his rough hands. I spied a gold wedding band on his finger, something that hadn’t been there yesterday — I was certain, because I’d specifically looked for one. ‘What does your wife think of what you’re doing?’ I asked sharply.

Dornan snickered. ‘My wife is a cunt,’ he replied, without missing a beat.

Dornan placed his fingers in the space just below the crook of my elbow, then slowly walked his fingers down towards my wrist. He smiled smugly.

Shit.

‘Bingo,’ he said, pressing the pad of his thumb against the tiny microchip all the Rodriguez children had been given several years ago. An ineffective insurance policy in case we were ever taken.

My eyes filled with saltwater and anger as my heart sank. I didn’t enjoy suffering, and I knew what was about to come next.

It was going to hurt.

Sucking on his bottom lip, Dornan seemed to enjoy my reaction to his discovery. He didn’t tear his eyes from mine as he reached into his pocket and withdrew a slim, sheathed switchblade, flicking it open with a casual precision that suggested he had done it countless times before.

My eyes widened slightly as the blade snicked open. I didn’t dare move as he balanced the knife in his open palm, hovering in the space between us.

‘You want to cut it out, or should I?’ he asked.

And in that fraction of time, I saw my way out.

Before he could blink, I snatched the knife out of his hand and, without hesitating, leapt forward, plunging the blade into the meaty section of his left shoulder.

He swore and staggered back. As he moved, I used every ounce of energy I still possessed to wrench the blade free. I wasn’t about to give up the only weapon I’d managed to grab hold of during my captivity.

I took a step back and widened my stance, shifting my weight to the balls of my feet and raising onto my tiptoes, ready to move swiftly.

‘That was unnecessary,’ Dornan growled, touching a finger to his bleeding shoulder before pressing it to his mouth, tasting his own blood.

I tried to fight the urge to lick my lips as I revelled in the satisfaction of spilling his blood. I couldn’t help myself and my tongue darted out over my lips as I tasted the blood in the air between us.

Apparently unconcerned, Dornan held his palm out in front of me. ‘Give me the knife,’ he said, wiggling his fingers for effect. I just smiled at him, ready to lunge forward, waiting for the right moment to attack.
As if I’d give it back.

Dornan shrugged and reached into the waistband of his jeans. Before I could blink, the cold, smooth barrel of a gun was wedged firmly underneath my chin, forcing my head back at an uncomfortable angle.

Damn it!

‘Ever heard the expression, “Don’t bring a knife to a gun fight?”’ Dornan asked, clearly happy to once again have the upper hand. I let the knife go, wincing as it clattered to the ground beside my bare feet. Dornan kept the gun trained on me as he knelt to pick up the knife, then stuffed the gun back into his waistband.

With rough fingers he seized my arm once more, hovering the bloodied blade over the spot where my useless microchip was implanted.

‘Sweetheart,’ he said, grinning widely. ‘This is gonna hurt.’

He wasn’t gentle as he brought the blade down across my flesh.