Cartel

by Lili St. Germain

  The VP was as terrifying as he was handsome. He looked to be around thirty, maybe a little older, the few fine lines around his eyes and slight peppering of grey through the front of his hair only adding to his raw appeal. He wore three-day-old stubble like it was his bitch, his deep brown eyes so dark, they blended almost seamlessly with his black pupils. VP — vice-president? The way he carried himself made me wonder who could possibly preside over somebody like him. I must have been staring for a moment too long. I caught the glint in his eye as he stared right back at me, the raw power in his eyes almost like a jolt to my system. His wide, sensual lips tugged up at one side in amusement.

  ‘Thought you said she was a screamer,’ he said to Murphy, never taking his eyes from me. ‘She looks more like a crazy one to me.’ When he spoke, his voice was like gravel. It was so deep, each of his words reverberated in my chest. It was the kind of throaty sound that would either terrify or reassure.

  I wondered which one it would do to me.

  My small smile turned to a look of derision as I glared at Murphy. ‘A screamer?’

  ‘More of a moaner,’ Murphy said stiffly, like a geek trying to fit in with the popular guys.

  ‘Too bad you’ll never know,’ I shot back at him. He narrowed his freakish blue eyes at me, and my skin crawled.

  ‘Shut your mouth,’ Murphy said, but the biker in front of me seemed utterly absorbed in what I was saying. His mouth twitched at the side again, and he rubbed his stubbled chin with his fingers.

  ‘What’s your name, sweetheart?’ he asked, a wolfish grin spreading across his face.

  I resisted the strange impulse to smile along with him. Just because he’s smiling doesn’t mean he’s a nice guy.

  ‘Go fuck yourself,’ I replied. Go fuck yourself seemed to be my go-to response when cornered by strange men.

  ‘Huh,’ he said, something I couldn’t decipher coming alight in his eyes. Anger? Excitement? Whatever it was, it thrilled down my spine even as it scared the crap out of me. ‘I don’t blame you for being shy,’ he said, jerking a thumb at Murphy. ‘I wouldn’t want to spend one more minute with him than I had to, either.’

  I shot Murphy a fuck-you smile, and to my surprise, he grinned.

  ‘Oh, honey,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Good luck.’ He walked to the door, picking up his duffel bag on the way. ‘You’re gonna need it.’

  ‘Wait,’ the VP said, addressing Murphy but still not taking his eyes from mine.

  Murphy stopped stiffly in the doorway, his gaze fixed firmly on his car outside.

  ‘Did you touch her?’

  Murphy chuckled. ‘Sure. A little. I didn’t sample the merchandise though, if that’s what you’re asking.’

  I glanced down to see the biker’s fist clench tightly.

  ‘Did he hurt you?’ he asked, his gaze intense enough to make the tiny fine hairs on the back of my neck prickle.

  I shook my head slowly, unable to form words under the pressure of his black eyes.

  ‘Get the fuck out of here,’ he said to Murphy. Murphy was out of the door and shutting himself in the car before anyone else could stop him. Asshole.

  ‘You two, wait for us outside.’

  Without hesitation, the two other bikers hauled out of the room, slamming the door in their wake.

  And then, it was just me and the VP who thought I looked crazy.

  ‘My name’s Dornan,’ the biker said.

  Dornan? My blood turned to ice in my veins as I realised who he was. Dornan Ross. I’d never laid eyes on him, but the chatter among the families of my father’s business associates had painted a picture of cruelty and bloodshed that was just as bad, if not worse, than Emilio’s lethal reputation.

  ‘Emilio’s son Dornan?’ I asked, hoping desperately that I was wrong.

  He gave a short nod. Great.

  ‘Seems an awfully big party to greet one little girl, Dornan,’ I said, looking outside to the assembly of bikers. I desperately wanted to change the subject before he asked me my name. Before he asked me anything about myself. Because he was so suave, I was afraid I’d spill all my secrets before he’d even asked me. ‘You afraid I’ll do something?’

  He dropped his gaze only to check me out. I felt naked under his eyes as he let them roam slowly over every part of me.

  ‘Are you afraid you’ll do something?’ he asked. He still looked amused. Beneath my latent fascination with him, I felt the vague stirrings of irritation at his casual nature. I was a piece of property, for shit’s sake. And he was talking to me like he was about to hit on me in a bar and buy me a goddamn strawberry daiquiri.

  ‘You do this a lot?’ I asked abruptly.

  He took a step closer. I took a step back. It was timed so well, it was almost as if we were dancing some sort of macabre waltz.

  He laughed when we moved in unison.

  ‘Depends,’ he replied, ‘on what this is.’

  ‘Pick up pretty girls for your daddy?’ I shot back.

  Something passed over his face for a moment and settled in his eyes. Something hard. And then, I blinked, and it was gone again.

  ‘Sure,’ he said, and his voice had changed somehow. Become more reserved, more guarded. Damn. The only person who’d shown me the tiniest bit of normality, and I had just alienated him. As usual, I was running off at the mouth before I thought about what I was actually saying.

  ‘None as pretty as you, though,’ he added. My gut twisted painfully at his words. I want you to look pretty. His father’s words came back to haunt me.

  He was silent for a beat. And then, ‘I didn’t catch your name.’

  I weighed my decision for a few moments before deciding he’d find out as soon as he spoke to his father, anyway.

  ‘Mariana,’ I said softly. ‘People call me Ana.’

  ‘Ana,’ he said, smiling. ‘Welcome to the United States. The land of the free and the home of the brave.’

  ‘Really?’ I asked dubiously. ‘You’re quoting “The Star-Spangled Banner” to the girl who your father owns like a slave?’

  ‘For now,’ he replied.

  ‘For now, what?’ I asked, confused. ‘You going to start quoting Backstreet Boys next?’

  His grin was maddening and thrilling all at once. ‘For now, my father owns you. But my father isn’t here,’ he said, gesturing with his open palms around the motel room. ‘It’s just me and you. And I like you. You’re feisty. I think I might just keep you for myself.’

  I swallowed thickly at what that could mean.

  Outside, the bikers were getting restless. It was hot, and I could see beads of sweat glistening on Dornan’s forehead and cheeks. ‘Straight home, boys,’ he ordered, making a twirling motion with his index finger. Within seconds the air was filled with the deafening noise of over a dozen Harleys gunning it down the road.

  Dornan handed me a black helmet and I lifted it onto my head without arguing. It was weird, but I was so relieved to be away from Murphy, and so far from Emilio, that I was willing to do whatever Dornan said. Which made no sense at all because his reputation preceded him. He was a bad motherfucker, as bad as they came, and he was merciless. I had heard stories of the things he’d done, the ways he had killed people. His trademark was decapitation: cutting off the heads of the people who’d pissed him off and sending them to whoever needed to be sent a message.

  I really hoped I wouldn’t piss him off.

  The inside of the helmet was blacked out, so I started to push the visor up with my hand.

  ‘Leave it down,’ he cautioned, grabbing my wrist as my world was engulfed by darkness. ‘You try to open it while I’m riding, and I will pull over and hit you until your eyes swell shut. You hear me?’

  I nodded, causing the too-large helmet to rattle around on my head, and he let my hand drop.

  ‘Hold on, little lady,’ he said, guiding me onto the back of a bike. ‘We ride fast.’

  A nervous thrill ran through me as he slipped onto the bike seat in front of me, reachi
ng behind and curling his fingers around the backs of my knees. I yelped as he pulled, wedging me firmly against his leather-covered back.

  He wasn’t lying. As the last of the motorcycles tore out of the lot, we joined them, the drone so loud it felt like my teeth were coming loose.

  I hung on to the man in front of me as tightly as I could, wanting to cry as I dug my nails into his washboard abs.

  I didn’t know if I was driving to my actual death, but part of me was dying as the wind tore at my loose hair and froze my neck.

  I might just keep you for myself.

  His words tore at the very fabric of my existence as I turned them over and over in my mind.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Dornan

  She was pretty, but he’d seen pretty. Dornan Ross, vice-president of the Gypsy Brothers motorcycle club, had seen hundreds of pretty girls, broken and abused, usually by someone else but occasionally by him. As soon as the little minx had opened her mouth, his dick had twitched in his jeans at the thought of all the deplorable things he could do to her. She had sass, and spunk, and something else that he couldn’t quite figure out.

  She’s a survivor. The phrase jumped into his head. She wasn’t like the girls they typically had under these circumstances.

  Women in the Gypsy Brothers world were divided firmly into three camps: Old ladies, who were wives or partners of the bikers and not to be shared around. Usually, they weren’t welcome at the club, but occasionally they wheedled their way in. Then there were party girls, who were usually young and fucking stupid, and would pretty much let you stick it anywhere you wanted. Dornan had his favourites, the ones he used and abused, and he didn’t feel guilty about it one little bit, because they chose to stay. They each got their pay-off in some way — drugs, protection, the thrill of danger. Sometimes they left the club, and other times, if they were found to have divulged club information — hell, even if they had seen something potentially incriminating — they were taken up to the roof of the clubhouse and given a bullet. Quick, efficient, and more often than not, nobody even reported them as missing, let alone actually missed them.

  Yeah, it was a pretty bleak way to handle things, but the smart ones stayed alive because they knew what would happen if they stepped out of line.

  Which made Dornan consider the third group of women who were frequently around the club compound.

  The transients. The ones who didn’t belong there. The ones who made him slightly uncomfortable, the ones his father insisted on dealing in.

  The slaves.

  Human trafficking was a nicer term for what they were doing with those girls, but not by much. Typically the girls were an in-and-out job, a truck or a boat or a carload that needed to go from point A to point B; usually teenage girls from out of state or, less frequently, from overseas. Sometimes, the girls would beg him to help them, and it broke his fucking heart every time he turned a blind eye to what his father was doing.

  But he still did it, and so he was an asshole. He accepted that. It was part of who he was.

  John Portland didn’t like it. He was Dornan’s best friend and the president of the Gypsy Brothers, and he abhorred the practice of taking these young girls and forcing them into a life of prostitution or drug smuggling. He wanted to fucking save everyone all the time. Dornan often had to remind him that his role as president was largely symbolic; he was not the one in charge.

  It hadn’t always been that way. The club had been just that — a club. Not a gang. Not organised crime. Just riding, free as birds, setting up camp and sleeping under the stars. They’d both ditched school in favour of seeing the world, riding their Triumphs across the USA, along Route 66 and beyond.

  It had been John who suggested the name Gypsy Brothers. They’d jokingly tossed a coin and declared the winner the president, the loser VP. John had called heads, and the coin landed heads up. They’d cut lines into the flesh of their palms with a pocketknife and sealed the deal with a handshake marked in blood. Blood Brothers. Gypsy Brothers who travelled the roads, and had each other’s backs.

  And then everything had gone to shit. They’d returned home to LA to find Dornan’s girlfriend, Lucy, pregnant with his baby, John’s younger sister needing cancer treatment that he couldn’t afford, and Dornan’s mafioso father finally having caught up to his wayward son.

  It was a complete clusterfuck. John’s sister wasn’t even eighteen, yet she was riddled with cancer. Full of cancer and no insurance meant one thing: John needed money, a lot of money, and fast.

  It had seemed straightforward at the time. A road trip, a simple swap. Drugs for cash. But once Emilio had them under his thumb, it happened time and time again. The Gypsy Brothers club expanded to deal with the mounting work Emilio was throwing at them. Dornan liked to claim it was his family obligation, but really, he knew he couldn’t argue. His father was a stone-cold killer from old-school Italia, and Dornan had always known that he would be called to the darkness one day. He’d felt that familiar violence bubble under his skin more than once.

  He just didn’t realise his best friend would end up as deep in the blood of innocents as him.

  Lucy had crafted the Gypsy Brothers patches and the leather cut-off jackets that John and Dornan wore with pride. Lucy loved to fucking sew, especially when she was eight months pregnant and could barely move. It drove Dornan insane; every time he walked around the house barefoot he’d step on a goddamn sewing pin, sticking precariously out of the carpet. That had been before everything really went to shit, though. Once things got crazy and she was washing blood and pieces of brain matter out of her husband’s clothes on a semi-regular basis, she’d stopped sewing.

  It had started in the simplest, most innocent of ways; two friends, drinking beers by an open fire, shooting the shit and talking about how their lives might turn out. Things had been good then. Simple. Fun.

  And now … now, the Gypsy Brothers dealt in the darkest of sins. They stole lives and they ended them, and they did a damn fine job of both. Dornan sometimes wondered how things would have turned out if he had just kept riding, had never returned home, had never accepted his father’s offer of cash to help John’s sister in return for their souls.

  The saddest thing of all was that she died anyway.

  She died and Lucy ended up divorcing his ass, two kids and one affair later. So Dornan rarely thought about the old days. Rarely thought about the way he and John had signed their lives away, because, in the end, it had all been for nothing.

  It wasn’t that difficult to ride with a raging hard-on — unless the reason for that hard-on was seated behind you, her delicious warmth pressed up against the small of your back with her legs draped over your bike.

  Dornan figured he must’ve had a guardian angel for the ride from San Diego, because there was no blood left in his head to help him think straight. It was all directed into his lap, dangerously close to the girl’s small hands as she clung to him. At one point, when they reached open road and opened up their bikes, she held onto him so hard, her nails were gouging through his leather cut and t-shirt and into the firm flesh of his torso. He didn’t say anything, though.

  He enjoyed the pain.

  Just before Tijuana, the boys broke up into several smaller groups to avoid attention. The bright lights of the San Ysidro border crossing that straddled Mexico and the United States marked the almost-there point, and Dornan was glad for that. He loved being on the bike, but there was shit to do to sort out this coke shortage, plus his dick wasn’t showing any signs of calming down.

  He revved his engine and made the turn into the road that led to his father’s compound, and with one hand he reached behind and pulled the girl closer to him, so her heat was jammed up tight against his back. He thought he felt her gasp, and that only excited him more.

  From what his father had said, this girl was going to be staying with them for a very long time. It made him fucking ashamed that he was looking forward to her captivity.

  CHAPTER TWELVEr />
  Mariana

  The ride had been hellish. With no reference to time or indication of how far we had left to travel, I had had no choice but to hold on to Dornan or let go and smash myself to pieces on the highway behind the bikes. Not being able to see anything was the worst part, and it made me feel ill, but I couldn’t be sick in the narrow confines of the helmet. I doubted they’d stop to let me clean myself if I threw up, so I clenched my teeth and swallowed down my nausea for what seemed like hours.

  And then, finally, the bikes slowed to a stop. Dornan patted my hand and someone else hooked their hands under my arms, pulling me off the bike. I stood on legs that threatened to dissolve underneath me, supporting myself against the bike with one shaking arm. I was sore, I was tired, and the only thing I’d eaten since I had arrived in the States — a greasy burger and fries — sat in my stomach like a rock that wanted to come back up.

  My hands itched to pull up the visor, but I didn’t touch it. A cool chill settled on my skin and I guessed that it must have been evening wherever we were.

  ‘C’mon,’ Dornan said, taking my wrist and guiding me up a flight of stairs, into what I assumed was some kind of building, and back down another flight of stairs. My stomach flipped nervously as I wondered where we were going and what was about to happen.

  What did happen to slave girls, anyway?

  Was he going to beat me? Force himself on me? The shock of Este’s death and the past twenty-four hours were still clinging to my consciousness and making me act in a kind of weird, detached way that was completely foreign to me. I was normally feisty, determined and demanding. Not a meek, quiet girl who let herself be blindfolded and led into the pits of hell.

  Este. I ached to weep for him, to unleash my anger with fists to the walls, to smash my knuckles into something until they bled. I wanted to hurt something, or someone. I wanted to hurt my father. But he wasn’t here, so maybe I could hurt Dornan, instead. A door slammed and the helmet was finally removed.