Cartel

  ‘I promise. I swear! I was just scared after what Murphy tried to do, and I slipped. Dornan, I’m sorry.’

  He breathed heavily as the woman behind the door continued to wail. I cried, pressing my hands to my ears to try and drown her out. ‘Please,’ I begged. ‘Please, Dornan.’

  The woman let out a bloodcurdling scream and Dornan snapped back to reality.

  He started dragging me back down the way we’d just come, back towards people and the safety of the clubhouse. The safety. It sounded ludicrous, yet I knew it was much more preferable to be up there with those bikers than down in the basement being tortured. Thank God.

  He dragged me back to the bedroom and shut the door, pushing me onto the bed.

  ‘Stay here,’ he barked. He went to leave, then turned back, yanking the phone cord from the wall and taking the phone with him.

  As the door slammed behind him, I began to sob heavily. Soon I was hysterical. But the last thing I needed was to attract any more attention.

  I slid off the bed and crawled underneath, lying on my side among years of dust and other, nastier things. I pressed my face into my knees as I drew them up to my chest. I would hide here. I would hide here and cry and maybe nobody would ever find me.

  I could only hope.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Dornan

  Bella was a mess. Literally. Someone had punched a couple of nails into her forehead, reducing her to a mumbling zombie. Her eyes couldn’t focus, and her blood was everywhere. Thank fuck he’d come to his senses before he’d opened the door and shown Ana. It was something she would never be able to get past. If she had seen Bella in this state, it would have ruined her.

  Dornan shook his head. Whoever the fuck had done this was an evil, twisted son of a bitch. Even he couldn’t do this shit, and he was pretty fucked up. This had all the markings of his father. The man was as dead inside as this girl was about to be all over.

  He drew his gun from his belt and shot her twice, in the heart. She died immediately, and for that, he was glad.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Mariana

  When Dornan came back, he was calmer, and he’d removed his shirt. I was still hiding underneath the bed. The first thing he did after locking the door behind him was push the bed to the side and crouch in front of me.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, offering me a hand.

  I trembled at the sight of him. At the touch of his hand, I cringed.

  ‘I’m not asking,’ he said.

  ‘What did you do?’ I whispered.

  He tugged my arm, and reluctantly I uncurled myself, letting him pull me to my feet.

  He had ignored my question. But I’d heard two faint pops, and somehow, I knew they’d come from him.

  ‘Did you shoot someone?’ I asked. ‘Are you going to kill me?’

  He set his jaw as he glanced between the door and me, his hands coming to rest possessively on my shoulders.

  ‘I put her out of her misery,’ he said. ‘She was too far gone. Do you understand?’

  I nodded. Honestly, I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.

  But then — I remembered the papers at the burlesque club, and I choked.

  ‘The accountant?’ I asked, hearing the pitiful desperation in my voice. ‘It was her, wasn’t it? Oh, God. Oh my God.’

  I broke away from him and started to pace nervously. The accountant who had cooked the books had died a horrible death.

  ‘She died because of me,’ I said, raking my hands through my hair. ‘I didn’t mean for her to die!’

  Dornan’s hands shot out and grabbed me, pulling me to his chest in a crushing embrace. I couldn’t decide if he was trying to comfort me or just trap me.

  ‘I need to throw up,’ I said dully. He immediately let go of me, and I made it to the rubbish bin just in time to decide I didn’t need to be sick, after all.

  I might have held some hope before, but the woman’s last death scream had wiped hope clean away, and replaced it with nothing but fear and despair.

  I stood, and Dornan handed me a glass of water. I drank it all, and he took the glass from me again.

  He held my shoulders as I stared up at him, I saw that animalistic look in his eyes that usually meant one thing. Oh, Jesus. I couldn’t. Not now. I burst into tears, shaking my head frantically as I pushed him away.

  ‘I just want to hold you,’ he said. He pressed my arms to my sides as he crushed me once more, an embrace that took away my breath and left me gasping. He kissed me on the top of my head, and I shivered at the intimacy. He doesn’t want to fuck me, I realised with a start, suddenly understanding that I’d misread that fierceness in his eyes. He wanted to comfort me. I pressed my face into him, breathing in the leather and salt air smell that seemed to cling to him. His arms were so strong, his embrace so tender, that it almost brought me to tears.

  After a moment, he released me, tipping my chin up with his finger so I had to meet his gaze.

  ‘You’re so pale,’ he said, cupping my jaw in his hand. ‘You’re wasting away, Ana.’

  I swallowed back the rock in my throat, a couple of tears welling out of my eye and splashing down onto my cheek.

  He’s trying to protect me from this monstrous world.

  That singular thought spun around and around in my head, like some grotesque merry-go-round, gaudy flashing lights in shades of bloody red. I leaned into him as he brushed his thumb against my cheek. It confused the hell out of me that he would risk everything to protect me. It made me uncomfortable, because I liked it.

  ‘You never let me go outside,’ I whispered, nestling my face into his grasp. I was sad. I was so very, very sad. And I was pale, he was right. No sun and a life spent wallowing in the artificial world he had constructed for me meant my bronzed, sun-kissed skin had dulled to a sickly white pallor.

  I was trapped. Forever. Within a world that dealt in lives and in blood. I was sinking deeper and deeper into an abyss that was claiming me, one drop of blood at a time. One day soon I was going to drown in all that blood.

  He kissed me, and I hesitated a moment too long. Stupid girl. His grip on my neck tightened, becoming painful. I pleaded for him to let go with my eyes, but he didn’t waver.

  ‘Tell me what you’re thinking right now,’ he commanded. I was too afraid to lie. I was too afraid, in that moment, of the possibility that he was already reading my thoughts.

  He loosened his grip enough for me to take in a small breath and whisper my response.

  ‘I’m scared,’ I said, tears slipping down my face.

  ‘Mmm-hmm,’ he said, pressing me to the wall, trailing rough, forceful kisses up my neck. Pressing his lips through the salty tears and onto my skin. Marking me. Because I was his.

  ‘What else?’ he asked, between kisses. His breath was hot on my cold skin, and I shivered violently.

  I choked. ‘Don’t make me say it,’ I pleaded, utterly broken. I thought again about the dead accountant downstairs and wanted to be sick.

  ‘What else?’ he repeated, squeezing my neck again.

  ‘I think I love you,’ I whispered, bursting into tears. I didn’t know if I meant it. God, I was so close to the brink of insanity, I could feel the imaginary straitjacket being laced up at my back. But the things I felt for this man, the way he made my heart beat furiously, the thrill he sent through me whenever his fingers brushed against my skin — there was no denying the things we provoked in each other.

  He smiled. A delighted look that held my entire existence within it. Because I was his. And there was nothing I could do about it. I tensed as he gripped the back of my head, relaxing when I realised he was only bringing my face to his shoulder. A gesture that was meant to be comforting.

  ‘Of course you do,’ he said, running his thumb along my lower lip. At that moment, there was a sharp rap on the door. I recoiled as I heard Emilio’s voice.

  Dornan stepped away from me as Emilio unlocked the door, letting it swing open.

  ‘Am
I interrupting?’ he asked, one eyebrow cocked as he looked from Dornan to me and back again.

  Dornan shoved me hard enough that I hit the wall. ‘Absolutely,’ he said. ‘Can’t a man get his cock sucked in private around here?’

  I fixed my face into a blank stare — my favourite expression around Emilio, it seemed — and sat back down on the edge of the bed. My cheeks burned as I waited for Emilio to hurry up and leave the room and put me out of my gut-wrenching anxiety.

  ‘You shot the lying bitch?’ Emilio asked Dornan, obviously referring to the accountant.

  Dornan nodded, gesturing to the blood that was spattered over his skin. ‘Yeah, Pop,’ he said. ‘And now I’m gonna take a fuckin’ shower.’

  He left the room, brushing past Emilio, who didn’t budge from where he stood in front of me. I didn’t dare look up at him, but the weight of his stare burned into my skin.

  ‘Cholita,’ he said finally. I pressed my palms flat on the bed on either side of me to stop them from shaking.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I responded, meeting his cold black eyes.

  He studied me for a long moment, while I pictured him as a rat. The long nose and the way he spoke reminded me of a rodent.

  ‘Are they treating you well in casa Gypsy Brother?’ He pursed his lips together as he studied me some more.

  Fear prickled on my skin as I remembered all of the stories Dornan had made me memorise.

  ‘Please,’ I begged Emilio. ‘I don’t want to upset any of them —’

  He cocked his head to the side, putting up a hand to silence me. ‘Never mind about them,’ he said. ‘The only person you need to worry about upsetting is me.’

  I nodded, licking my lips. ‘I, uh, well … a lot of them like to do … strange things. Things I haven’t ever seen before.’ I was lying out loud. I’d never even seen the inside of the clubhouse until today.

  He grinned like a Cheshire cat. ‘Oh?’

  ‘They take turns,’ I said. A total, outrageous lie. Would he buy it?

  ‘Do they hurt you?’ he asked, his eyes suddenly lit up like Christmas trees. He was probably going to find a blonde and get her to relieve him after he’d listened to my imaginary tales of sexual deviance and submission at the hands of his employees. I tucked a stray hair behind my ear, thanking the sweet Lord in heaven that I’d been born a brunette.

  ‘Yes,’ I whispered.

  His mouth stretched impossibly wide, baring his teeth. He looked like he could tear me limb from limb with those teeth. Especially the fake one. I fought the urge to shudder in disgust.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Some time, I’ll have to call your father and tell him all about it.’ I looked up in confusion as he beamed down at me. ‘Oh, no,’ he said, ‘that’s right. They think you’re dead.’

  Motherfucker.

  ‘I assume you know what happened to our last accountant?’ he asked casually.

  It took me a moment to catch up with the change of topic. Oh, yeah. The girl downstairs who had been screaming so loud I could still hear the noise reverberating in my ears. The girl who was dead now, thanks to Dornan.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I said again.

  ‘Let that be a warning,’ Emilio said, turning and walking to the door. ‘Let that be a lesson in what not to do, and you’ll go far.’

  He closed the door behind him. As soon as he was gone I heaved a sigh of relief, slumping further down onto the bed.

  This is way too precarious, I thought to myself. This existence is actually terrifying.

  In that moment, I longed for Dornan. He’d know what to say. He always had the words — or the touch — to take that choking loneliness away.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Dornan

  It killed him to walk out of that room and leave her with his father. She was good with the books, so good that Emilio would hopefully consider her valuable and keep her around. In the meantime, though, it was going to be up to Dornan to keep her out of harm’s way, while at the same time not alerting his father to how he felt about the girl.

  I think I love you.

  Her words ran through his head, over and over again, filling him with fear, with wild rage. When he reached the small bathroom he locked himself in, shedding bloody clothes on the floor.

  Fuck, how he wanted her to be here with him. If she were here, he’d throw her up against these tiles, wrap her legs around his waist, and drive into her until he was feeling good again. Because around her, all he felt was arousal and fear, fear that she would be taken from him, fear that he’d lose the best thing that had ever happened to him.

  Dornan turned the water on and stepped into the shower, that familiar rage at his father duelling with his constant need for approval from the man. Blood is thicker than water, he told himself. The family comes before the girl.

  But even as he repeated those words to himself, he knew he didn’t really mean them. He craved his father’s approval; but his heart didn’t know that. The things he felt for Mariana, he’d never felt before for anyone. It was a dangerous proposition, to be falling in love with a woman who was owned by the cartel. At any moment, Emilio could decide to move her, or just kill her, and there was not a thing Dornan could do about it.

  The last woman he’d truly loved wasn’t even owned by the cartel, and she’d still been taken from him. Eight years, and nothing. Her memory taunted him as he thought of Mariana, as he wondered if their fates would be the same.

  He roared, lashing out with his fists. He connected with hard tile, his knuckles blossoming with pain as they smashed into the unforgiving wall, the pain bringing him some strange sort of calm, some clarity among the chaos that raged within him. He might not be able to fully control what happened to Mariana, but he had to at least try. After all, he’d kept Emilio away from John all these years, kept him from killing the man who had too much of a conscience, in Emilio’s words, to be a part of their world, much less be in control of the Gypsy Brothers. Yes, Dornan decided, he could do this. He would do it, for her, because she’d been terrified when she had let those words fall from trembling lips — I think I love you — and he couldn’t bear the thought that she would fall in love with a man like himself, only to be punished with a bullet to the head.

  He bore the afternoon patiently, not daring to go back to the bedroom and seek her out. When it came time to leave, he entered the bedroom to find her still sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at her hands. When she saw him, the relief on her face was palpable. It almost broke his black heart when she looked at him like that — when she was so fucking happy that her monstrous hero had returned.

  They didn’t speak. He led her downstairs, into the garage, and jerked his thumb at the bike. His heart thumped wildly as she climbed on behind him.

  When they got back to the apartment, he acted casually. After all these years, he still didn’t know if he was paranoid, or if his father’s eyes really did follow him everywhere he went. As soon as the front door closed behind them, he pointed to the bathroom. ‘Get in the shower,’ he ordered. ‘Now.’

  For once, she didn’t argue. Maybe she had heard the desperation in his voice. The fear. He followed her, like a lion stalking its prey, slow and methodical.

  She undressed quickly, turning on the water and standing under the spray. Waiting for him. His cock stirred at the sight of her naked body, the way her full breasts practically begged him to grab them, the slight wave in her dark brown hair that reminded him of the times he’d wound it around his fist and pulled.

  He undressed, stepping in beside her, relieved that they could finally speak somewhere safe.

  He pressed her against the wall and lowered his mouth to her ear.

  ‘That was too close today,’ he murmured. ‘Too close.’

  She nodded feverishly at his words.

  ‘If my father finds out about us, Ana, he’ll kill you. You know that, right?’

  Another emphatic nod. Dornan drew back so he could take in her face.

  ‘I would die if anyth
ing bad happened to you,’ he said firmly, and her eyes widened slightly at his admission. ‘We have to be more careful, you understand?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, biting her lip. ‘Yeah, I understand.’

  I think I love you. Her words came back to haunt him.

  ‘And darlin’?’ he added. She raised her eyebrows in response.

  He grinned, resting one hand in the hollow of her throat as he caged her against the wall.

  ‘I think I fuckin’ love you, too.’ He pressed his lips to her forehead, knowing that with his own admission, he had probably damned them both to hell.

  He drew back to see her reaction, laughing when he saw the smirk on her face.

  ‘I don’t know if I believe you,’ she said playfully, running a finger down his arm. ‘I think you should show me.’

  His grin grew so wide, he thought his face might break.

  ‘You are gonna be the death of me,’ he growled, grabbing her and picking her up effortlessly. He pinned her to the wall, spreading wet kisses down her neck.

  ‘Oh, God,’ she moaned underneath his touch, ‘I can think of worse ways to die.’

  To be continued in

  Kingpin …

  THE CARTEL SERIES CONTINUES

  KINGPIN

  The second scorching novel in the Cartel trilogy

  Mariana and Dornan struggle to define their twisted relationship amid the wreckage of their warring families. With their forbidden love built on a foundation of lies, it’s only a matter of time before everything they’ve built comes crashing down around them.

  EMPIRE

  The irresistible conclusion to the Cartel trilogy

  As dark secrets come to light, and with the blood of innocents on her lover’s hands, Mariana is forced to choose between the man she loves and the man who threatens to destroy her carefully built web of deceit.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  So many people have been instrumental in making this book come to life. Firstly, thank you to my beautiful husband for giving up your career so that I could pursue my dreams. It’s no small thing to agree to and I can’t thank you enough. The cups of tea, the baguettes, the dinners cooked while I stared at a screen, unmoving, for hours upon end. For taking care of Ruby so I could finish drafts and drafts and more drafts, and edits and edits and more edits. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. I love you to the moon and back.