Gypsy Brothers: The Complete Series

by Lili St. Germain

  He tips his head back and laughs, a long, booming noise that rattles my chest and makes me want to scream.

  “Oh, Julie,” he says. “You’re in my world now. You know what they call a man who can take life and give it, too?”

  I stare at him, guessing what he’s about to say. And true to form, he doesn’t disappoint me.

  “They call him a god.”

  I would laugh if I had anything in me, but I’m empty and cold.

  I close my eyes again. “So, what?” I ask. “You’re just going to keep killing me and bringing me back to life? I don’t think it works like that. My body will give out eventually. And then you’ll be left here all by yourself with nobody to hurt.”

  He shrugs. “You’re young and healthy. I think you’ll last awhile.”

  “Whatever,” I snap, opening my eyes and staring at the ceiling. I don’t want to look at him, and I’m so goddamn tired I just want to sleep, but I need to keep him in my field of view in case he does something.

  In case? Huh. More like for when he does something.

  “I’ve spent so long daydreaming about all the ways I’m going to make you suffer. And now we’re finally here, and you know you’re never getting away from me.”

  I got away from you once, I think. But he’s right. I am never getting away from him this time.

  “Who’s going to save you this time?” he asks. “The rookie cop who happened to stick his nose in where it didn’t belong? I don’t think so.”

  My entire body freezes as he mentions Elliot. Holy fuck.

  “I’m going to find him, Julie. Your little boyfriend thinks he can hide from me, but I’ll find him soon. And when I do, I’m going to make you watch while I gut him like a fish.”

  He knows about Elliot. What else does he know about? Does he know about Jase?

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say stubbornly, staring at the ceiling.

  He laughs, a deep, throaty chuckle that shakes me from my scalp to my toenails. “You’re a terrible liar, baby girl. You should’ve stayed in Nebraska with Grandma. I’m gonna find her too, and I’m gonna make her die slowly for hiding you away from me. Everybody will know. You. Are. Mine.”

  I blink back tears as he falls silent for a while. I don’t care about me. This is what I deserve for playing with fire. To burn and suffer. But Elliot? Grandma? Kayla? The thought of Dornan hurting them is too much to bear.

  His cold fingers fidget with mine. I don’t even have the strength to pull my hand away. “You understand, don’t you, baby girl? That I’m just cleaning up your mess. These people are going to die because you’re a selfish bitch.”

  A wave of anger builds inside my chest. “You want me to understand you?” I bite out. “I’ll never understand you. I’ll never understand the things you’ve done.”

  His voice is a gravel whisper, a rock tugged along my bare nerves. “That’s where you’re wrong, baby girl. You’re just like me. I killed your father, I ruined your mother, and you tried to wreak your revenge on me.” He pauses, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “But I’m smarter than you, better than you, more depraved than you, little girl. You ventured into my playground and now I’ve got you in my web.”

  I turn my head to the side, my eyes boring into him, and if looks could kill, he’d be convulsing on the ground right now.

  “What do you get when you cross two vengeful beasts?” His teeth gleam in the dim light the naked bulb throws off, and I imagine him cutting my heart out and devouring it whole. I can’t help but ponder his question. What do you get? You get him and me locked in a battle of wills, trapped together in this place of torture and pain. You get two animals fucking and killing and biting and tearing each other apart in pleasure and pain. You get blood and agony and ultimately, one of you ends up dead.

  I just didn’t think it would be me.

  “You get a war,” he answers his own question. “And I’m the fucking winner.”

  “Really?” I murmur. “Body-count wise, I’d say I’m winning.”

  He smacks the smile right off my face, a mighty backhand that rattles my cheek and leaves a metallic taste in my mouth. I’m so used to tasting my blood now, it’s no longer foreign. It’s just part of my existence. I’m glad I affect him, glad my words cut him the way his knife cuts me every day.

  “You think you’re winning?” he asks, standing so that he is towering over me as I lay tied to the bed. I shrug. He must have no idea about Jase, I think. That reassures me. I want to keep it that way. And if he says he can’t find Elliot, then hopefully that means Elliot is smart enough stay hidden until things blow over.

  Which, knowing Dornan, means forever.

  “Mark my words, baby girl. Everyone who ever helped you is going to die.”

  He winks at me, grinning as he leaves the room. As the door slams behind him, I feel the bed frame shake, and silently pray to anyone who’s listening that he’s just bluffing.

  But I know Dornan Ross.

  He doesn’t bluff.

  TEN

  Another couple of days pass, and I’m in real trouble. I’m sick - really, really sick, and Dornan hasn’t come back. Once a day, The Prospect unlocks the door and slides a tray of food to me, before slamming it shut again. I wish he’d talk to me. But he doesn’t, nobody does - and I huddle in the corner, wheezing and coughing until I throw up.

  And nobody fucking cares.

  I’m burning up before long, and this time I know it’s not just the lack of temperature control in my windowless dungeon. Sweat pours from my forehead and makes my back itch, and my lungs feel thick and full. It’s impossible to take a full breath.

  I can’t breathe in here.

  One day, they’ll slide a food tray in here and find me dead.

  I decide that might not be so bad, but my stubborn primitive brain demands that I try and survive. It’s so annoying - I try to squash the thoughts like ants, but they keep multiplying like toxic amoeba, urging me to fight.

  And I just want to give up.

  In the end, I get creative. Or maybe, just desperate. Instead of trying to call for help—because they’d never answer, anyway—I switch positions, laying my body on the floor across the doorway. The door to this room opens inwardly, so somebody is going to have to hit me with the door to get in here. Maybe it’ll work, maybe not, but I need something to change before I go completely insane.

  In the times when I’m asleep, I have vivid nightmares. A knife through Elliot’s chest, a pillow over Grandma’s face, and I can’t even say what I dream of him doing to Elliot’s daughter, it’s so depraved.

  So when the door slams into my stomach, and the person attempting to open it swears loudly, I respond with a low, guttural groan. I scrabble to my knees, head still spinning, and I’m relieved when I see it’s The Prospect. The dude who let me shower. The nice one who told me I had eyes just like her.

  “I’m sick,” I say to him, backing up my story with a genuine hacking cough. My chest rattles with mucous; my breathing is ragged and desperate.

  “Please,” I say, my arm darting out to close around his wrist. “You said I looked just like her. My mother’s here. She’s a nurse, she can help me.”

  He snatches his hand away, narrowing his eyes at me. “What the fuck do I care if you’re sick?” he asks.

  I feel my face fall. “Where’s Dornan?” I demand, trying to peek down the hallway. A look of annoyance passes across his face as he kicks at me with his steel-capped black boot. “Get back inside,” he says, pressing himself and the food tray through the narrow opening and slamming the door shut behind him.

  I scoot away, giving him some room to stand.

  “That’s your mama out there?” he asks, his eyes darting around the room.

  “Caroline?” I reply. “Yeah.” I fucking knew it. I knew that bitch would be here with Dornan.

  “You know she’s got no idea who the fuck you are, right?”

  I stare at the ground. There’s an aw
kward silence, until finally he nudges me with his boot. I look up to see he’s extending his hand to me. “Come on,” he says. “Get up. Eat something.”

  I look at the tray of food in his other hand with renewed enthusiasm. “The starve-out’s over?”

  He shrugs, hauling me to my feet with zero effort. He seems like an incredibly intense asshole, but he’s somehow different to the rest of Dornan’s mongrels. Is it my imagination, or does he seem to dislike Dornan? I wonder if I could somehow convince him to help me.

  I bat my eyelashes at him, smiling as much as I can while I feel like I’m dying from the fucking plague, and search his face for any indication of his intentions.

  “What’s your name?” I ask softly.

  He laughs, plonking the tray on the small wooden table beside him. “Oh no, nina bonita. Don’t flutter your pretty eyelashes at me. I’m not going to help you.”

  My heart sinks, but somewhere in the back of my mind, that phrase registers. Nina Bonita. The pet name Mariana had for me.

  “You just called me pretty girl,” I say excitedly.

  “Oh yeah?” He chuckles. “The girl speaks Spanish. Good for you. Eat your food and stop blocking the fucking door.”

  He turns to leave, and I catch his sleeve as he moves. He freezes, staring at my hand like it’s bird shit on his shirt.

  “You’re Colombian,” I whisper.

  His face turns to thunder, his hands to tight fists. I back away as fast as I can without even thinking.

  He stalks over to me—his steps slow and agonizing—and it’s all I can do not to throw my arms up in front of my face.

  “I’m Mexican,” he says darkly, towering over me. “Born and fucking bred. Don’t ever fucking mention Colombia again in this house or I will shoot you in your Nina Bonita face. Got it?”

  I’m shaking. I nod my head.

  “Words, girl. A nod means shit to me.”

  “Yes,” I say dejectedly.

  “I thought you were nice,” I call out as he opens the door. I almost stamp my foot, but I’m not five years old. Fuck. I really did think he might be useful in getting out of here.

  He pauses, chuckling dryly. “The boss thought you were nice too, baby. Look how that turned out.”

  He slams the door with force. As I stare at it, I think to myself, yeah, you’re right.

  But you’re Colombian.

  Mariana was Colombian.

  I have to wonder if he’s somehow connected to her. A younger brother, perhaps? A son? She would have been young to be his mother, but it’s entirely plausible. But if so, what’s he doing here, now, under Dornan’s thumb?

  Is he like me?

  My mind goes full speed with wild conspiracy theories for the next hour, until I have to stop myself and think about something else. I’ll go insane otherwise, and I’m already pretty close to insanity as it is.

  But his face doesn’t leave my thoughts. Should I remember him?

  ELEVEN

  Despite The Prospect’s threats to kill me after I called him a Colombian, it seems he doesn’t want me to die.

  A few hours later, there’s a soft knock at the door, before the key turns and my mother enters the room.

  I stare at her in shock. I’m sitting on the edge of the bed frame, my mouth falling open as she enters. Because despite my vague suspicions, I didn’t dare hope that she would actually be here.

  She could be my way out.

  My mother enters the room with a stack of clothes and a first aid kit. She doesn’t look at me right away. She stops in front of the small wooden table that sits between the bare bed frame and my chair. I watch idly from the corner of my eye, my vision rejoicing at finally having something new appear in front of it. It’s been too many hours of counting the cracks in the floor and alternating between being so hot I want to explode, and so cold I feel like my veins are ice. I’ve stopped throwing up now, because there’s nothing left inside me to throw up, and the bucket next to me now contains only yellow bile.

  I’m sick. Really fucking sick.

  As I watch her movements, I can’t help but wonder if she’s been taking drugs - or if someone else drugged her. As I catch a glimpse of her vacant green eyes, I guess that it’s the second one. Her gaze is completely empty. There’s nothing there.

  “What did they do to you?” I whisper as she moves around. She mostly ignores me, fussing with food trays and piss buckets and cleaning the blood from the floor as well as she can.

  And this time is no different. She carries on her tasks as if I’m not there, an invisible girl strapped to a chair in a dungeon of horror and doom.

  “Mom,” I say. “It’s me, Juliette.”

  She doesn’t give the slightest indication that she’s even heard what I’ve said. I grasp for something, anything that might snap her out of her drug-addled haze and back to me. I search my childhood memories for a story, an event, a stuffed toy that might jolt something within her.

  It was a shitty childhood. I can’t think of anything.

  “Take your shirt off, please,” she says. I look at her oddly, before shrugging my shoulders. What the fuck? I don’t care anymore. I shrug the T-shirt off and drop it beside me. I cover my breasts with one arm, lifting them up to give her a clear look at the mess that used to be my stomach and hip. Used to be a tattoo, and before that, used to be my scars. But now, it’s just a mess of dried blood and flesh that can’t heal. It’s a fucking mess.

  “This is getting infected,” she says softly, taking a piece of gauze and dabbing at my stomach. As soon as she touches the raw wound I scream out, and she pulls her hand back.

  “You need antibiotics,” she says. “I’ll get some for you.”

  My first thought is to wonder how the hell she can be so drugged, but still lucid enough to diagnose me so effortlessly. Maybe her years of nursing training are imprinted on her brain somewhere, untouched by the heroin. Who knows?

  She goes to leave again and I panic, thinking over my options. What do I do? What if she doesn’t come back? Could I take her as a hostage? But instead, she opens the door slightly and speaks to someone outside. I crane my neck, trying to see who it is, but I can’t.

  She closes the door and returns to her first aid kit, busying herself with packets of gauze and things while I watch with disinterest.

  She turns back to me. “I’ll bandage it in the meantime.”

  When she pulls out a pair of surgical scissors, my eyes light up. Fuck, yes. A weapon. A sharp one. That I can hide. I fight to keep my face neutral, and watch with painstaking patience as she cuts around a large piece of thick gauze. She places the scissors on the table beside her and kneels in front of me, pressing the gauze to my large wound. I wince—the slightest pressure on my stomach agonizing—and try to focus. I look straight past the traitorous bitch who birthed me once upon a time, and feast my eyes upon the pair of scissors that I could stick in Dornan’s jugular.

  She finishes sticking the gauze to my skin with surgical tape, leaning back to study her handiwork. I choose this moment to reach over to my left and grab the surgical scissors, quicker than her drugged eyes can comprehend. At the same time, the door opens, and The Prospect steps in. As soon as his eyes land on me, he’s airborne, launching onto me and crushing my hand with his.

  “Drop,” he demands, squeezing my hand. I keep hold of the scissors, his weight on me agonizing as he presses against my freshly bandaged wound. I don’t let go of the scissors, instead trying to snatch my hand away.

  But it’s useless. He’s incredibly strong—hell, a five-year-old would be stronger than me right now—and he pulls my arm around, smashing my fist against the hard side of the metal bed frame, sending the scissors flying. “Ahhh!” I yell, as my weapon is lost. I feel tears prick my eyes and angrily blink them away, trying to kill this dude with my eyes alone.

  He glares at me, shifting off the bed. “I help you and this is how you repay me? Fuck, girl. That’s the last time I’m nice to you. The big man’s gonna let you
rot in here.”

  I tear my gaze from him, staring at my mother again. She’s fiddling with her first aid kit, drawing something up into a needle.

  “What’s that?” I ask, sliding off the bed and backing away. I don’t want any more drugs. I’ve been numbed enough. I’m sick of floating in a half-conscious void of marshmallowy pain. It’s fucking depressing. And it sure as shit doesn’t help me breathe any easier.

  The Prospect shoves my shirt back at me. “Put that on,” he says. “While you’ve got the chance. It’s the middle of fucking winter, cholita, you’ll freeze to death before Dornan gets back.”

  I pull the T-shirt over my head, his words hitting me a few seconds later. “What did you say?” I whisper.

  He just stares at me. “Hurry up, nursey. We gotta clear out of here.”

  I back away, trying to get away from the needle. The Prospect puts his hands up in a placating gesture. “It’s fucking medicine. You don’t let her do it, I’ll flip you over and stick it in your bare ass.” My eyes go wide, which seems to amuse him. “The medicine, I mean. Damn, girl, he’s really done a number on that pretty little head of yours.”

  I roll my eyes. I’m backed into the corner of the room, and there’s nowhere I can go.

  My mother speaks softly, her words devoid of any emotion. “You need antibiotics. Your cut is infected.”

  I hold my arm out to her, shaking my head in disbelief. “It’s not a cut,” I say, tears in my throat like a tight, hot lump of bitterness as I speak angrily. I wince as she jabs the needle into my upper arm and presses down on the plunger. It stings. A lot.

  “Fuck!” I yell, snatching my arm back.

  She shrugs. “It’s thick medicine. It needs a big needle.”

  Now I wish it had been heroin.

  “Fuck!” I repeat, massaging my arm. My entire upper arm is on fire, reminding me of the tetanus booster I had to have before I went to Thailand for my plastic surgery. Just a few short months ago. And that reminds me again.

  “It’s winter?” I ask The Prospect. “What month is it?”

  He waggles his eyebrows. “Now that would be telling.”