Gypsy Brothers: The Complete Series

by Lili St. Germain

  Elliot returns below deck to where I’m waiting, closing the hatch behind him with a resounding thunk. As if to say, the others aren’t welcome down here. He’s protecting me yet again, and I’m so relieved I could cry. Instead, I stare into space, thoughts buzzing in my head like angry wasps.

  Soon enough, we’re sailing out of the port and into open ocean. It’s choppy today, rough but not unbearable, or at least it wouldn’t be if I weren’t suffering from the most pathetic morning sickness ever. One minute I’m fine, and the next, I feel positively green.

  “Julz,” Elliot says after a while.

  “Yeah?”

  He stares at me for a long moment, chewing his lip as if he’s nervous.

  “Your mom’s not dead.”

  It’s like I’ve been punched square in the face again. “What? Yes she is. The Pros-Luis told Dornan this morning in front of me….” I trail off as I remember whose side Luis has been on the entire time.

  “Where is she?”

  Elliot begins to pace, and it’s really hard to follow him with the way the boat is rocking to and fro.

  “She’s safe,” he says. “They took her to a rehab center to try and get her off some of the drugs.”

  That familiar feeling of nausea swells within me again, and I swallow thickly, trying to push it down. It doesn’t work, though, and a moment later I’m rushing to the small bathroom, getting there just in time to puke my guts up in the sink.

  Several lurches later, I rinse everything away. I cup my hands under the running water and take a long drink. Much better.

  Elliot appears behind me, one hand lightly on my shoulder. I turn quickly, not used to a friendly touch, and he takes his hand away like it’s been burnt. “Sorry,” I say, reaching out to take his hand in mine.” I….” I don’t know what to say.

  “It’s okay,” he says, his forehead pinched with stress. “What’s happening in here?

  I panic. I can’t tell him. Sickness rushes up in my throat again and I turn, throwing up again in the sink.

  “I’m seasick,” I say, after I’ve finished.

  He looks very, very troubled, glancing down at my rounded belly.

  “You don’t get seasick,” he says quietly. “You’ve never been seasick.”

  I think of the week we spent on the Mississippi river, catching fish and making love and sunning ourselves on the deck of the houseboat he had hired. It was right before he left me.

  He’s right. I never got seasick. Not even on the days when the water was so choppy, we were forced to stay inside and ride out the tide.

  He sees right through my lie even as he suspects the truth. It’s something I’ve always been able to do - decipher Elliot’s expression quicker than he even realizes what he’s thinking.

  It is absurd how closely we mirror the Elliot and Juliette of six years ago, me puking my heart out and him beside me, his face resigned and stricken.

  He makes a pained coughing noise as he realizes I have carried a piece of the devil out of the compound inside me, a shard of glass embedded into my womb, the price I pay for trying to right his sins.

  I can’t believe how stupid I am, that after everything we went thought six years ago, I have let this happen again.

  “Jesus Christ,” he says, as I turn and vomit again.

  After I’ve finished throwing up, I flush everything away and rinse my mouth under the tap again. I turn to look at Elliot, standing in the doorway, but it’s not Elliot anymore.

  It’s Jase.

  My knees go weak as I take him in. He’s covered in blood and dirt. I feel my mouth fall open, unable to form words, as my broken heart pounds painfully.

  “Julz,” he says, his face worried, his eyes almost black. Just like Dornan’s.

  Finally, I find my voice. “You’re just like him,” I say, shrinking back. “I loved you. I thought you were different.”

  “It’s not what you think,” he says, his voice cracking. He steps closer, trying to grab at me, trying to embrace me.

  “Don’t you fucking touch me,” I spit, grabbing the door and trying to push it closed. “Elliot!” I don’t remember when I started crying, but there are tears on my cheeks, tears that burn my skin. “Get out. Get out!”

  Elliot appears next to Jase, who is still wedged between the door and the doorframe to stop me from closing him out.

  “Give her some space, man,” he says sharply. “Don’t you think you’ve done enough?”

  I glance at him, thankful, letting the door slam shut as soon as Jase steps back. As I flick the lock, I see a shadow at the base of the door, and it doesn’t move for a long time. I hold my breath and let it go, again and again, an old habit I used to do when I was stressed out. Three held breaths and the shadow is still there.

  “I’m not talking to you,” I call, to the person behind the door. “Go away.”

  But he doesn’t.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he says, “I’m never leaving you again.”

  As I slide to the floor, sobbing, thinking of the horrid fucking mess that I’m in, the baby nudges the inside of my belly, the boat lurches to the side, and I hang on to the floor for dear life.

  As the boat rocks on the rough sea, my own words come back to haunt me.

  Four sons dead before you even fucking noticed me.

  Well, Dornan’s noticed me now. And he thinks I’m pregnant with his baby. He’s going to tear the world down until he finds me and makes me pay.

  The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

  PROLOGUE

  Two Roads. Two choices. To let go? To give up?

  No. I would never — will never — give up.

  I take the road less traveled. I write my own fate.

  I deliver my own justice.

  I wreak my own special brand of revenge.

  And I won’t stop, until they’re all dead, until it’s all done, until I wipe Dornan Ross from the face of this earth.

  ONE

  He killed my father. I’m having his baby.

  He killed my father. I’m having his baby.

  Those two sentences are on repeat in my head, the agony of the rolling waves almost too much for me to bear.

  And the agony of my nausea slams into me again with the violent rock of the waves that carry us to safer shores. I think. I hope.

  But really, how safe am I? I’m suddenly questioning everything, stuck in a vortex of swirling paranoia and doubt. Is Jase on Dornan’s side? He killed my father. He didn’t even try to deny it.

  I can’t believe it, I can’t accept it, and I just wish I could think straight for five fucking minutes. I wish I didn’t feel like this. I’ve left one prison, the one Dornan constructed for me, only to be trapped in one of my own making. The one in my mind that goes over and over and over again.

  I’m curled as tight as I can get into a ball on a bed in the main cabin of the boat. We must be going pretty fast, or be in some crazy swell, because I swear if the boat tilted a little more, it’d capsize.

  The door is closed. I made Elliot promise he wouldn’t let Jase come in here. I’m going to have to face him eventually, but I just can’t face him now. I don’t want to hear his excuses, if he even has any. He killed my father.

  I’ve never been afraid of drowning before, but right now, I’m terrified. Drowning in this ship. Drowning in lies and in blood. Drowning in my own treacherous deceit. For so long, I’ve had only one goal - to destroy Dornan. I was too busy focusing on his suffering to notice or care about my own, and now, I feel so damned broken. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to feel normal again.

  In fact, come to think of it, I don’t even know what normal is.

  I jump as a warm hand touches my shoulder.

  “Hey,” a low voice murmurs beside me.

  I turn over to see Elliot lying beside me, his pose mirroring mine. I can see water lashing against the small round window that looks out to the cruel sea we travel within.

  “You’re shaking,” Elliot
says, frowning as he reaches out a hand to me. Without thinking, I shrink back, an automatic response after three months of Dornan’s psychotic hands being the only ones to reach for me. Elliot’s face crumples into something resembling sadness—despair—as he reaches out to me again, slower this time, and pushes my lank hair back from my face.

  Am I even here? I’m not sure. This could all be a dream. An elaborate, drug-induced hallucination. The thought makes me reel. Am I out? Or am I still in the basement? Is Elliot in front of me, or is it Dornan?

  Dornan.

  I scramble away from Elliot, clambering off the bed and backing up to the far end of the tiny room. Behind me, waves pound violently into the thick glass porthole, the only thing separating us from the deadly currents beyond. The movement of the waves catches my attention and I turn, mesmerized, as I press a trembling palm up to the freezing cold glass.

  Am I here? Am I alive?

  A nudge in my stomach, nothing more than a flutter really, propels me back to sanity.

  Yes. I am here. I am here, while Elliot hovers behind me, and Jase and Luis are somewhere beyond the door that keeps me safe in this room.

  And I am carrying a baby inside me. A baby that should never have existed.

  And I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a terrible thing.

  I start to cry. Funny. I thought I was out of tears. I’ve cried enough to last me lifetimes, but the tears don’t know that. They spill onto my cheeks and my arms as I continue to watch the seawater swirl and smash less than a foot from where I stand.

  “Julz.”

  I turn slowly, wiping my cheeks with uncertain hands. Fresh nausea roils in my gut, but this isn’t just morning sickness. No. This is different.

  This is worse.

  My head is pounding, and my mouth is dry. Without thinking, I bring a hand up to the crook of my elbow, fingering the delicate flesh there that Dornan tracked repeatedly when he injected me every single day with enough heroin to turn me into a babbling idiot. The image of him swims in my vision, above me on his bed, his arms caging me in as he pushes the plunger down and floods my dark soul with artificial light. With sweet happiness that makes me light up inside. My mouth waters just thinking about it.

  “Juliette!”

  Hands are shaking me. I snap out of my little—I don’t even know what the fuck that was I slipped into—and find his eyes with so much more effort than I should need to use. I’m heavy, and I’m weak, and I just want everything to go away.

  “What?” I reply, but my words hold no substance. They’re like feathers, soft and light, and they float away from me on the wind that howls outside.

  Elliot’s jaw is tight, his dark blue eyes flashing with emotion. “What is going on in there?” he asks, pointing at my head. “I’ve been calling out to you for ages.”

  My eyes lose focus again, wandering around the room, taking in every insignificant thing. It’s all new stuff, stuff I haven’t seen in three whole months, and it frightens me. The bed is too soft. The pillows are too firm. The ocean beyond too stark, too bright even in the moonlight.

  The fact that Jase is just outside of the door is too much for me to bear.

  “You won’t let him in here, will you?” I ask, finding Elliot again in the dim light. His shoulders sag, the muscles in his arms tense. I can feel the waves of frustration pouring off him and it scares me.

  “What happened to you?” Elliot asks, and that makes me angry. How dare he ask me that question? I choke on a horrified sob as I push him away from me.

  “Don’t you know?” I ask shrilly. “Can’t you see?” But then I remember he hasn’t seen what Dornan did to my stomach. Hasn’t seen the mess of barely healing flesh, the top layers violently stripped from me with a knife and cruel smile, as I screamed and begged for Dornan to stop. He hasn’t seen the scars inside my elbow, the secret map that marks out my descent from control to absolute chaos and dependency. He hasn’t felt the being inside me, making itself known with ill-timed prods and nudges that make me feel ill. I’m still wearing the stupid white sundress Dornan put me in, the one that has stretchy elastic at the sides. I lift it up, the exact same movement I made all those months ago when I asked Elliot to ink over the scars Dornan and his sons left on me. Those seven horizontal etches in my skin, the ones Elliot covered with his beautiful tattoo, are gone. It’s all gone, now, in its place something so grotesque I’m not even sure how to describe it.

  “It’s gone,” I say numbly. “He cut it all away.”

  There’s a strangled noise in the back of a throat, and it takes me a moment to realize the sound comes from Elliot, not me. His face falls; he swats my hands away from where they hold my dress up, causing the material to waft back down and settle above my knees. He pulls me close to him, smothering me in his embrace. I fight for a moment, until I remember I don’t want to fight; I don’t want him to go away. I don’t want to be alone. My entire body is shaking, poised on tenterhooks at what comes next. Stuck in limbo, stuck on this motherfucking boat that seems to be circumnavigating hell itself.

  “We’re going to fix you,” Elliot says, drawing back and cupping my face in his hands. “Do you understand? We’re going to fix you, and then we’re going to kill that motherfucker. Do you hear me, Julz?”

  My eyes well with fresh tears and I can’t see him until I blink them away. I nod vacantly; I hear him.

  I hear him, but I’m not sure if I believe him.

  Dornan Ross is not a man who will die easily.

  TWO

  Elliot leaves me eventually. Leaves me to be alone to stare at the choppy water outside. It’s settled a little, but it is still raining, and my window half submerged in the sea.

  There’s a soft knock at the door. My heart leaps into my throat and I spin around, backing myself against the wall. I’m expecting Jase to have snuck in here, but it’s The Prospect. Luis, as Elliot referred to him.

  I swallow thickly as I watch him enter the room, closing the door softly behind him. His movements are slow and cautious, his face friendly, and I get the feeling he’s moving around on eggshells while he figures out what kind of state I’m in. I must have that crazy bitch look on my face, I guess. Who knows?

  He’s got clothes in his hands, folded, on top of them one of those TV dinners wrapped in silver foil. The smell makes me want to eat and be sick at the same time, and I’m confused as to whether I’m starving or nauseous. I guess I’m both.

  He holds the clothes and food out to me before putting them on the foot of the bed.

  “You should eat something.” He fishes something out of the pocket of his jacket and tosses it on the bed. A fork.

  “Thank you,” I whisper, looking between his bright blue eyes and the food.

  “The clothes are probably too big,” he says. He talks more softly here than he did back at Emilio’s compound.

  “You killed Emilio,” I say suddenly.

  He grins, nodding. “Yeah, mamacita. Yeah, I did.” He runs his tongue over his top teeth and watches me. He’s hovering, I suddenly realize. He wants to ask me something, or tell me something; I’m not sure which. My stomach roils at the thought Jase might be the subject he’s here for.

  “Did Jason send you in here?” I ask harshly.

  He quirks his eyebrows. “Nah, Giulietta. Your Romeo wouldn’t dare come near you in the state you’re in.”

  I roll my eyes, huffing. “He’s not my Romeo,” I say bitterly.

  I don’t even know what he is to me right now.

  “You should listen to what he has to say sometime,” Luis says. “You might be surprised.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut, the pounding in my head back. It feels like someone is stabbing me behind my eyeballs. I’m so hot, there’s a fine film of sweat on my forehead and chest, and everything hurts.

  “I think I’m getting the flu,” I say. “Is there any aspirin on this boat from hell?”

  Luis cocks his head to the side. “You can’t take aspirin,” he says, pointing to
my stomach. “And you don’t got the flu, bebe. You’ve got the bends.”

  “What?” I snap, before I follow his eyes to the spot on my arm where countless needles full of heroin have slid underneath my skin.

  I’m still letting his words sink in when he takes something from his pocket and shakes it.

  A bag of beige-colored powder.

  “Don’t be stupid,” I say, scratching at my arm.

  “You got the itching, too, right?” he asks, gesturing to the way I’m raking my fingernails up and down my arms to try and drive the crazy crawling feeling from my skin. It feels like millions of fire ants are teeming across me, the image as unsettling as the feeling itself. I shake my head to try and get it out of my mind, focusing on Luis.

  I feel my face fall because I know he’s right.

  “Fuck,” I say softly.

  He takes a few steps toward me, then seems to think better of it and sits on the end of the bed instead, shifting the food and clothes behind him.

  “Will it get worse?” I ask. Even though I already know the answer better than most. My mom was shooting this stuff my entire childhood. I’m well acquainted with what a junkie who is going through withdrawal experiences. And I’d say it hasn’t even started for me. This is nothing. It is going to get so much worse for me, if he’s right. And I’m almost entirely sure he is right.

  He pats the bed next to him, and I stop scratching myself long enough to sit beside him, as far away as I physically can while still being on the bed. We aren’t close enough to touch, unless he leans over.

  I stare at my bare knees, still marked with Emilio’s blood. It doesn’t even bother me anymore. Blood and death are all I have right now, the only things that tell me this is real and not some awful hallucination, a sign I’m here and not still stuck on that bed with that stupid music playing full blast in my ears.

  “Hey,” Luis says. I’m like a kid with ADD; I can’t focus on anything. My mind is like mud. Or soup. Or something equally murky.