Was this child’s death some kind of message?
Were he and Mariana deluding themselves that they could run from these people?
‘It’s almost twelve,’ Guillermo said, pointing at the small digital clock on the microwave. ‘We’re gonna be late for church if we don’t hustle.’
Just like that, his words seemed to close the conversation. Church, just another word for the weekly meet at the Gypsy Brothers clubhouse, was something none of them could miss, unless they were dead. John stared at Mariana pointedly as he slipped the empty gun back into her handbag and held it out in front of her. She took it, looking a little calmer than she had when he’d arrived.
‘I gotta change this fuckin’ shirt,’ Guillermo said. ‘I smell like barbecue.’
Mariana flinched, and John glared at Guillermo’s back as he disappeared into the second bedroom he’d claimed as his own. Even alone, he daren’t put his hands on Mariana. She looked like she might scream if anyone touched her.
‘I should change, too,’ Mariana said quietly. She disappeared, returning a few moments later in a plain black dress and heels. She looked ready for a funeral.
‘We going?’ she asked.
John could feel grit on his skin, like fine beach sand, and though it was likely psychological and not from the box of some kid’s ashes he’d just inadvertently manhandled, he still wanted to wash his hands with some boiling water. ‘Let me just use the bathroom,’ he said, heading for Mariana’s bedroom at the front of the apartment, and the ensuite that was attached. As he went to pass her, she grabbed onto his forearm. ‘Can I have my ammunition, please?’
John stopped, raising his eyebrows as he stared down at the woman he loved more than he loved almost anything. Something in her eyes unsettled him deeply. ‘Can I trust you to keep your finger off the goddamn trigger?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Yes, John. I’m angry. I’m not an idiot.’
‘You sure about that?’ John asked. ‘Because you look like you’re about to murder somebody.’
‘I’m fine,’ Mariana said, waving her hand dismissively. ‘Just change the code back so we can go to the clubhouse together.’ Guillermo re-entered the kitchen, looking exactly the same as he had before he went to change his clothes. ‘It’s zero-six-six-six,’ he interjected.
Mariana stilled briefly, car keys in her hand as she stood by the front door. ‘The devil’s number. How appropriate.’
‘Wait. I need to talk to you,’ John said, taking Ana’s elbow and leading her into her bedroom. She followed him without a fight, and closed the door behind her.
‘I’ll just wait here then, shall I?’ Guillermo hollered, rummaging around in the kitchen.
John rolled his eyes. He still didn’t trust the guy. Had never had the greatest feeling about him. Maybe because of the way Guillermo had dealt with his own wife and the guy she’d been fucking in secret, blowing their house to smithereens and reducing two humans to pieces of charred flesh that had to be scraped off what remained of the walls. Technically John was a cheater, and he wondered what Guillermo would do to him.
‘Ana. Look at me.’
After a few seconds, she made eye contact. Her dark blue eyes were clouded, and she looked like she might cry again. He hated it when she cried. Made him feel fucking powerless.
‘We’re leaving,’ John said resolutely.
‘What?’ Mariana said. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘You wanna bring the kid, we’ll bring him. The four of us. Me, you, Juliette, Jason. I’ll organise new papers for all of us. Passports. Birth certificates. We are not hanging around here until we find ourselves in the firing line.’
‘John–’ Mariana started.
‘Don’t John me,’ he cut her off. ‘I know why you’re packing that gun. You’re going to try and kill Emilio? You know that’s exactly what he’s expecting of you today, right? Jesus Christ, it’s like he’s chumming the waters with blood and you’re swimming up, thinking you’re about to get your teeth into something.’
Mariana looked at the ceiling pointedly.
‘Promise me you won’t do anything stupid.’
She narrowed her gaze on him. ‘I won’t do anything stupid.’
She went to pass him, heading for the door. Without thinking, John’s hand shot out, pulling her back to him. He took her shoulders and turned her so that she was up against the door, squeezing her chin so hard he was probably hurting her.
‘We’re getting out of here,’ he murmured against her lips. ‘I promise you.’
‘I don’t need a man to save me,’ she whispered, her eyes wet.
John kissed her, long and hard, pressing his body against hers until he was practically grinding her into the bedroom door.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Because I need you to save me.’
And he did need her to save him from this.
There was a rap of knuckles on the door.
‘We rolling?’ Guillermo hollered.
With great reluctance, John peeled himself from Mariana’s slight form, swiping a thumb across her face to erase the smear of red lipstick he’d just kissed halfway across her cheek.
‘Gimme five,’ John yelled back, finally letting Mariana go. ‘I’ll meet you out there.’
She nodded, straightening her clothes before she opened the door and stepped out into the hallway.
John felt strangely out of place as he wandered through Mariana’s bedroom – a place where he’d fucked her countless times behind the security a locked door afforded – and into her bathroom. He had an eerie feeling of deja vu that he couldn’t quite place. That sinking feeling again. That inescapable reality.
He went into the bathroom, and by the time he heard Guillermo yelling and bashing his fists against the front door not thirty seconds later, Mariana was long gone.
John burst out of the bathroom, almost bowling Guillermo over. The Mexican’s face was red, his fists white as he clenched them tight, raining down blows on the locked front door.
‘She changed the fucking code again!’ Guillermo said.
John looked up at the ceiling, taking a deep breath, hoping Guillermo was just clumsy-fingered. ‘Here, let me try,’ he said, shoving him aside and entering the code. Zero-six-six-six-hash.
Nope. Nothing.
More alarmingly, he knew that if they entered the wrong code more than five times, an alarm would be triggered remotely and the security company would call Dornan. Not a great idea to have him turn up with armed guards to find his girlfriend missing and John and Guillermo standing sheepishly in her foyer.
‘I’ll try her birthday,’ Guillermo said, reaching his hand out to hit the keypad next to the door. John caught his hand midair. ‘Don’t do that.’
Guillermo looked surprised. ‘Huh?’
‘If you do that enough times, the alarm gets triggered. Dornan gets a call. How the hell are we supposed to explain us being stuck in here?’
Guillermo sagged against the door. ‘Well, how the fuck are we supposed to get out? We don’t turn up to church, Boss is gonna notice that, too, send out a fucking search party to cut our nuts off.’
John was already dialling Mariana’s cell. She answered on the second ring, and he heard the noise of the highway in the background.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ John asked, trying to keep his voice as steady as possible. He didn’t need her hanging up on him.
‘I’m meeting with Emilio,’ she said, her voice sounding far away. He imagined the way she’d balance the cellphone on her knees while she drove, her hair blowing around her face as she cruised down the freeway. She always drove with the windows down, no matter what the weather was like outside. Said it made her feel alive.
Well, she wouldn’t be alive much longer if she was going to pull shit like this.
Guillermo leaned over towards John and yelled, ‘You’d better let us out of this fucking place, now!’
John narrowed his eyes at Guillermo, as if to say, what the fuc
k? He purposefully took three steps away from him, staring at the tiled floor as he pinched the bridge of his nose.
‘Just tell me what you’re doing,’ John said wearily. ‘Tell me why you’ve got a gun and six bullets and don’t want us to come with you to your meeting with Emilio.’
‘She took the box,’ Guillermo said. At first John was confused, until he looked to where Guillermo was pointing at the kitchen counter, where a box of human ashes had sat just minutes ago.
‘And a box of ashes,’ John added, a feeling of utter dread forming in the pit of his stomach and travelling like icy tentacles to every part of his body, until he was consumed by the feeling. His heart beat faster as he imagined the countless horrible fates that would befall the woman he loved, should she try anything so stupid as to murder Emilio Ross in his own building, surrounded by security and family and no doubt his own fucking son across the desk.
Mariana’s voice came through clearly. ‘Emilio needs to die. Then we can all be free.’
She ended the call. John looked at the screen in disbelief.
‘Call Dornan,’ John said to Guillermo, as he pocketed the phone and picked up a heavy brass vase that sat in the foyer.
‘And tell him that Mariana’s on her way to kill Emilio?’ Guillermo asked in disbelief.
John looked at the floor-to-ceiling window that butted up against the front door and prayed it wasn’t bulletproof. ‘No,’ he said, gripping the neck of the vase with two hands and rearing it back like a baseball bat. ‘Tell him you got clumsy again and broke the fucking window.’
Guillermo looked up from his phone. ‘Huh?’
John swung.
CHAPTER SEVEN
MARIANA
I’d put on my best calm voice on the phone, but as soon as I’d ended John’s call, a mile from the Gypsy Brothers clubhouse, I had started to shake. I drove down Abbot Kinney and turned onto Venice Boulevard, passing tourists and moms pushing strollers with one hand, Starbucks firmly gripped in the other. People liked to think of Venice as a hip, grungy place, but if they knew what happened inside the nondescript warehouse I was pulling up to, they’d drop their pumpkin spiced lattes onto the pavement and run.
I parked in front of the clubhouse and gripped my steering wheel, trying to catch a breath. Dark desires stirred within me, ones that had lain dormant for years, the spark of the girl I had been when I was first thrust into this life. The girl I had been forced to be when I killed first Murphy, then his partner, Allie.
Breathe in.
I was probably going to die in the next thirty minutes.
Breathe out.
I was going to die because my shock had worn off, and in its place, a violent rage had taken hold of me. I was its willing hostage, its dutiful foot soldier, its vengeful lover.
Breathe in.
It spread through my veins like poison, an elaborate network of arteries and organs that ached for reprisal. My pale shocked cheeks were now flushed with anger as I placed a palm on the office door and pushed, not bothering to knock.
***
Emilio Ross sat behind the great wooden desk in an office he occupied for two hours every week. He didn’t need anything so elaborate, but he insisted for the other 166 hours a week, that this room was off-limits. Normally, I knocked and waited for his gruff invitation to enter.
This time though I walked right in, shoulders squared, eyes steeled, every ounce of me screaming with silent rage.
I didn’t even glance at Dornan, who’d replaced Murphy in these financial meetings we had every Sunday. No, in that moment, he didn’t even exist. I went straight for Emilio, who didn’t look at all surprised that he’d finally hit a nerve in me that I couldn’t ignore.
‘Mariana,’ Emilio greeted me, amusement written all over his face. ‘You’re late.’
I smiled thinly, the box in my hands far heavier than its actual weight. ‘I am. I had a very busy morning.’
In my peripheral vision, I could see Dornan staring at me, and I knew he was probably dying inside that he wasn’t in on whatever Emilio and I were discussing.
‘I suppose I should be lenient, since it’s your birthday,’ Emilio said sweetly, his sugar-laden words failing to cover the poisonous barbs that lurked beneath. ‘I trust you got my gift, darling?’
Darling? He’d never called me darling in ten years. The word sounded like cursing coming from his mouth.
I dropped my smile, but didn’t turn my gaze away. To be able to out-stare a powerful man is a very rare gift, and I intended to use that gift. I stared at Emilio Ross until my eyes were burning, begging for me to blink, or look away, but I refused.
I’d assumed that I would place the box neatly in front of him and step away, but in that moment, the way his cold eyes surveyed me with an almost amused look, that shock I’d been experiencing subsided. In its wake, a tsunami of rage swelled through me, unbidden, uncontainable.
‘I got your gift,’ I replied, opening the cardboard box. ‘I’m returning it.’
I said a silent prayer, an apology for the child whose remains I was about to use to prove a point. He shouldn’t have had to bear the weight of my anger, but it was too late. I’d tried to save his little life once, had held his newborn flesh against mine and warmed his body as his mother lay dead in the car seat behind us. He’d survived being born in a tiny cell in the back of a truck, he’d survived the cold and the dark as his mother bled to death beside him, and he’d survived the precarious months since then. But he had not survived ultimately. He was dead, and Emilio had killed him. His death could not be in vain. An innocent child didn’t deserve this ending, not after he was already dead. He didn’t deserve to be disrespected. But in what I did next, I hoped that I would be standing up to his killer, to make sure his death didn’t mean nothing. I’m so sorry, I offered up to his poor tiny soul, as I did what I did next.
I tipped the box upside down over Emilio’s ridiculous fucking desk, sending pieces of ash and bone in a pile that gave off grey dust, enough to choke a person. Emilio closed his mouth as soon as he realised what it was I’d just deposited in front of him. Something about the look in his eyes tantalised me – he was surprised. Not angry. Just shocked.
‘I’m impressed,’ Emilio said, pursing his thin lips together as he looked down at the ashes in front of him. ‘I didn’t think you had this in you.’
‘Neither did I,’ I replied.
Beside me, I heard Dornan clear his throat. ‘Will somebody please tell me what the fuck is going on?’
Emilio’s eyes were on the ashes in front of him, and it was then I realised I’d won. I’d out-stared him. Out-manoeuvred him. Question was, how was he going to punish me for it?
I turned my cold gaze to Dornan. It was almost comical how much he looked like his father – the Italian features, the dark eyes, their identical cheekbone structure. I marvelled momentarily at how I could have fallen so hard, so fast, for a man who looked eerily like the person I hated most in this world.
‘Your father delivered a package to me this morning,’ I said, my voice monotone. ‘He even called me to make sure I personally unwrapped it.’
Dornan shifted uneasily in his seat, looking between me and his father. Emilio wore a smirk as he looked between the mess on his desk and me. It was almost as if he were pleased that I’d done this. Maybe he was.
‘And?’ Dornan pressed. ‘What was in the package? What is that?’
‘A dead baby,’ I said flatly.
Dornan raised his eyebrows. ‘What!’
‘The baby we took to the hospital the night you were shot. We tempted fate.’ I looked back at Emilio, who couldn’t wipe the smile off his smug fucking face. ‘Luckily, your dear father was here to restore the balance in the world. Make sure nobody got away unaccounted for.’ My words were dripping with sarcasm, and it was a wonder Emilio didn’t stand up and slap me from across the table. He was oddly removed, and I realised how much he was enjoying this – watching my reaction unfold.
I wo
uld give him nothing. Not a single outcry, not a single tear. I could be a blank slate, a monster, just like the two men I was currently sharing oxygen with inside this stuffy room.
I heard footsteps in the hallway come closer, rapidly, as if someone were running. I had two guesses as to who they belonged to. Sure enough, the door burst open to reveal Guillermo, his round face shiny with sweat as he held on to the door handle, panting heavily.
‘Get out,’ I said to him. ‘We’re not finished yet.’ Guillermo looked like I’d shot him, he was so surprised.
Glancing at Emilio, who tipped his chin in a gesture that said he agreed with my sentiments, Guillermo closed the door again.
I could feel Dornan’s presence beside me. He was bewildered. He was angry. Most of all, he was afraid. I didn’t even need to look at him to know that he was terrified for me. Because if his father could kill an innocent baby, what would he do to me?
‘Pop, tell me she’s wrong.’
I side-eyed Dornan, a little surprised that he’d found his voice. He was a man who could intimidate anybody except his own father.
Emilio leaned back in his chair. ‘She’s not wrong,’ Emilio countered. ‘You two left quite the mess for me to clean up. You should be thanking me for tying up your loose ends.’
I laughed mirthlessly. ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ I exclaimed. ‘Seriously. We should thank you.’
Emilio didn’t respond. His smile started to shrink a little. His amusement, it would seem, was turning to displeasure.
‘How did you do it?’ I asked, smacking my palms down on the desk as I stood over the man I’d once feared too much to even look in the eye. ‘Did you even do it yourself? Or did you make somebody else, you fucking coward!’ I picked up the closest thing to my right hand – ironically, a framed photograph of Emilio with several of his grandchildren, Dornan’s sons – and drew my arm back, aiming right for Emilio’s face. I was going to smash that framed photograph into his face so hard he’d see stars. He’d need stitches from where the glass shattered and cut his face. He’d probably kill me for my transgression.
I no longer had the capacity to care if I lived or died.
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