‘Where’s Dornan?’ I asked immediately, and John’s face fell.
‘Not here,’ he said, his mouth twisting. ‘Not yet, anyway.’
I nodded, squeezing his hand.
‘What did he do before I found you?’ John asked. ‘He says he hit you, but not hard enough to hurt you.’
I laughed mirthlessly. ‘It was hard enough,’ I said.
‘You lost the baby,’ John blurted out.
I nodded again. I looked at the ceiling for a moment. When I looked back to John, I saw angry tears in his eyes.
‘I’m okay,’ I said, ‘really.’
He shook his head, standing and pressing his lips to my forehead. It felt good. It felt wonderful.
‘What do you want to do?’ he asked me.
I looked at the door, making sure we were still alone. ‘I want to take these kids. I want us to get Juliette, and Jason, and I want us to leave, before it gets any worse.’
John swallowed thickly, nodding. ‘I have to get Juliette from school,’ he said, placing my hand back on the bed and stepping back. ‘I’ll come back to check on you. You want me to call Guillermo to come sit with you?’
I shook my head. I wasn’t afraid of Dornan showing up. I had nothing left to lose.
John just stood there, his leather jacket over one arm. He didn’t want to go. I could see that it was killing him to leave me.
‘Go,’ I said. ‘I’ll be here when you get back.’
Eventually he left, trudging down the hallway until I couldn’t hear his boots any more.
It was strange that I wasn’t bawling my eyes out. But I was eerily calm. Maybe even grateful, in some small way. My love for Dornan had been the thing that was keeping me stuck, stopping me from taking any real action in my life. I had a son waiting for me in Colombia and access to millions of dollars in cartel money, and yet I’d been sitting on my hands waiting for something I could react to.
But now I could see my future, and it was as stark as it was brutal. If I stayed, I was going to end up like Stephanie and Murphy and Allie and everyone else who had ever been touched by the cartel – dead or, worse, like Dornan. I’d already killed two people. How long would it take for me to kill five? Ten? How long would it be before I started to accept what they did to those girls, before I grew totally complacent?
I was thinking about all of this when Dornan arrived. His helmet in one hand, tears on his cheeks as he stared at me with those midnight eyes. He looked positively grief-stricken, and his indulgence in such a display of emotion at something he had caused made me turn cold and dead inside.
He made a beeline towards me, dropping his helmet on the floor and gathering me in his arms. I didn’t return the embrace, freezing until he finally pulled away.
‘Did you know?’ he whispered, his low voice vibrating in my chest.
I nodded. ‘I was going to tell you, but then Colorado happened.’
‘Fuck,’ he said, falling into the chair by my side, covering his face with his hands. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, taking my hand and pressing his lips against my fingers. His kiss was cold. He must have ridden with his visor open, the wind chilling his skin.
I didn’t reply.
He leaned over and pressed his cheek against my stomach. ‘I’m so fucking sorry,’ he said, his deep voice breaking.
I should have felt something. Pity. Anger. Hatred. But I didn’t. I felt nothing for the man who had once been my entire universe.
‘You didn’t mean it,’ I said blankly, threading my fingers through his hair. In my head, I was already planning how to get away from him because he’d destroyed our love so swiftly, so brutally, I barely remembered what it was that had tethered us together for so many years.
‘Daddy?’ Juliette said, her big green eyes welling up with tears as she craned her neck to look at him. ‘Daddy, what happened?’
She darted a hand towards his cheek, touching the bloody skin before he could catch her wrist. As his hand grasped her small arm, her eyes went wider, her skin paled and she flinched, as though he was going to hurt her.
‘Shhh,’ he ground out, trying to sound comforting as he released her wrist. ‘It’s okay. Everything is okay.’
He clamped his teeth down on the inside of his lip, hard, so he wouldn’t argue with her.
‘Who did this to you?’ she whispered, drawing her hand back to her side.
John couldn’t help but stare at her hand, transfixed, as though she might become infected now that she’d seen and touched the horror that he was trying to keep away from her.
‘It’s not my blood. It’s Mariana’s. She . . . She fell. She was hurt, badly. It’s her blood.’
That was the moment something broke inside him; first strung tight, like a bowstring, a delicate cord that snapped under the weight of her words.
Who did this to you?
He was ashamed that he didn’t have a good answer, that nobody had done anything to him, that he had done nothing to stop this from happening, and that Mariana had almost died because he’d let Dornan walk her inside without following.
Part of him wished that Dornan had just knocked him out when he’d had the chance.
But another part of him, a part that sounded extremely familiar, like a beautiful young seductress, had the loudest voice of them all. We have to take these kids, and we have to leave.
Six weeks later
Nine years is a long time, and it isn’t.
Nine summers.
Nine falls.
Nine winters.
Nine springs.
Nine anniversaries that marked the night Este bled to death, a bullet in his chest, his only crime the fact that he was with me.
I thought I knew how my life would end. In fact, I’d fantasised about it enough times to know the details intimately. I’d drive my car off a bridge and let myself drown. Or I’d cut into the soft flesh at my wrists until I hit an artery, letting my life force pour from me until I was a bloodless husk, floating in water that would grow cold. Or, more realistically, I wouldn’t have to end my own life at all: it’d be snuffed out by Emilio, or Murphy, or even by Dornan himself. I imagined a smooth silver bullet, puncturing my skull at point-blank range, tearing through bone as it bedded into my brain and exploded.
I’d resigned myself for so long to the fact my life was in somebody else’s control, that I assumed my death would be as well.
But that was before, when I was selfish, when I only thought about myself. That was back when I was in love with the man who’d saved me, instead of just afraid of him. And I was afraid of Dornan. Afraid of what he was. Afraid of what he was becoming. There was a darkness within him – there always had been – but it was growing, threatening to swallow up everything else in its wake.
I was terrified.
I held John’s hand in the dark. Nobody knew he was here with me. He’d come in like a ghost and he’d leave the same way. We were lying on the floor in my bedroom, the door locked in case Guillermo got back to the apartment and came knocking. We were on our backs, side by side, and we’d just done something very, very wrong.
But it had felt so good.
I rolled onto him again, feeling his bare skin underneath mine. I straddled him, splaying my palms over his warm chest as he grew hard underneath me once more.
We didn’t speak. Didn’t make any noise. I lowered myself onto him, stretching around him until I felt like I could barely breathe. Slowly, gently, I rocked against him as we tried to devour each other with our mouths.
He was everything Dornan was not. He wasn’t a fucker. He was a lovemaker. I didn’t even know what I felt for John, but when he moved inside me it felt like he was loving me, even if only for a fleeting moment.
But it wasn’t just some kind of love that drew us together, at least not in the typical way.
It was desperation.
He kissed me, his lips soft, his stubble deliciously rough, lifting my hips up and pressing me into his lap as he thrust into me. We came at almos
t the same time, so, so quietly, and that made it feel even more illicit, more exciting. Even when Guillermo wasn’t around, after I’d relayed news of Agent Lindsay Price bailing me up in the gym showers, we’d convinced ourselves that we were being watched. And who knows? Maybe we were, even then.
John supported himself on his hands, covering my body with his as he withdrew from me and went in search of his clothes.
I heard the shower start, decided I might as well join him. We didn’t turn any lights on. I’d already lit candles everywhere, and they illuminated the bathroom enough that we could see.
Somehow, it felt safer in the dark. Part of me couldn’t believe how brazen we were being – carrying on while Guillermo could come back to the apartment at any moment.
I slipped into the shower and found John, pulling him towards me. He held me tight, pressing his lips to the top of my head. I didn’t even know how this had happened, but it had.
‘What’s going on in that head of yours?’ John asked, cupping my chin and bringing it up to meet his eyes. They shone bright blue, even in the dim flicker of candlelight.
‘Hawaii,’ I said, smiling tiredly.
He grinned. ‘Hawaii?’
‘Yeah,’ I said, leaning my head against his chest as he held me tightly. ‘We could do it. Take these kids and get the hell out of here.’
‘If they found us, they would kill us,’ John said soberly. ‘Remember Colorado?’
‘Of course,’ I said, pulling away so I could see his eyes. ‘Of course I remember. That’s why, if we did leave, we’d have to kill them first.’
To be continued in
Empire . . .
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The
series continues . . .
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.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LILI ST. GERMAIN is a phenomenon. The first of her seven serialised dark romance novellas, Seven Sons, came out in early 2014, with the following books in the series released in quick succession and selling over half a million copies worldwide. The bestselling Gypsy Brothers series focuses on a morally bankrupt biker gang and the girl who seeks her vengeance upon them. Kingpin is the second instalment in the Cartel series, a prequel trilogy of full-length novels that explores the beginnings of the club.
Lili quit corporate life to focus on writing and is loving every minute of it. Her other loves in life include her gorgeous husband and beautiful daughter, good coffee and Tarantino movies. She loves to read almost as much as she loves to write. Find out more about the author at lilisaintgermain.com
COPYRIGHT
HarperCollinsPublishers
First published in Australia in 2016
by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited
ABN 36 009 913 517
harpercollins.com.au
Copyright © Lili St. Germain 2016
The right of Lili St. Germain to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Saint Germain, Lili, author.
Kingpin / Lili St. Germain.
978 1 4607 5005 6 (paperback)
978 1 4607 0429 5 (ebook)
Series: Saint Germain, Lili, Gypsy brothers.
Erotic stories.
Love stories.
813.6
Cover design by HarperCollins Design Studio
Cover images by shutterstock.com
Tattoo on cover drawn by Arijana Karcic
Kingpin Page 24