Gypsy Brothers: The Complete Series (46 page)

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.

“You want a little bump to take the edge off?” he asks, offering me the white powder.

My first reaction is to push it away and tell him to fuck off. But my arm is heavy and the words die in my throat as I zone in on the very thing that could take this pain away.

Something brushes against the inside of my abdomen and I snap out of my daydream. I launch myself off the bed again and back to the round porthole again, pressing my shoulders against the curve of the wall.

“Okay, okay,” he says, putting his hands in front of him in a sign of peace. He drops the baggie back into his pocket and crosses his arms across his chest.

“You change your mind? You tell me.”

I nod thankfully, my throat painfully dry as I attempt to speak. “Why…why didn’t you tell me you were one of the good guys?”

He cuts me in half with the intensity of his stare. He’s amused, too, the ghost of a smirk twitching at his mouth.

“I didn’t know if I’d be able to get you out, Giulietta.” He pulls out a cigarette and puts it between his teeth, holding it there for a moment before he glances at my midsection. Sighing, he tucks the cigarette behind his ear and shoves the packet back into his jacket pocket.

“Why did you care if I got out?” I ask. “You don’t even know me.”

“Ah, but I do know you,” he says, nodding as if he’s privy to some great big secret I don’t know about. Which pisses me off.

“Oh yeah?” I say. “You another Ross brother I don’t know about? You don’t look like the rest of them.”

He shakes his head slowly. “Not me, bebé. I’m not related to that pig.”

“The pig you killed, or his son?” I ask, referring to Emilio and Dornan.

He snorts. “None of them.”

My chest constricts. “You
are
related to her somehow. I know it.”

His expression tightens; for a moment I think he’s angry with me, until he reaches down into his T-shirt and pulls out a locket attached to a thin gold chain. I frown, confused.

“You enjoy wearing women’s jewelry?”

He flips the locket open and holds it up for me to look at. I have to crane my neck closer to make out the faces on the faded photograph inside. Three teenagers who look like siblings with their matching noses and chins.

My heart skips a beat as I recognize one of them.

Mariana. Of course. I knew I’d been right.

I look at Luis, stunned, as he closes the locket again and tucks it back under his shirt.

“My
mama
,” he says, his voice thick with passion, his blue eyes ablaze with fury.

I nod slowly, my head whirling.

“She spoke about you,” I whisper. Memories of the past slam into me like a car knocking the wind from me and tossing me high into the air. I can’t get enough air into my lungs as I remember those final few days before hell descended upon us all, when we still truly believed we would escape the vicious hold of the Gypsy Brothers.

That admission surprises him. His eyebrows practically hit the roof. “She did?”

I nod. “She didn’t say your name. But she told me. She told me about her baby boy with the big blue eyes.”

He swipes a hand over his bald, bronze-colored skull, averting those big blue eyes away.

“I knew there was something about you,” I say, the first real thing I’ve said in hours. “I knew you wouldn’t hurt me.”

He smiles, giving me a sidelong glance that’s almost…shy. Which is funny, given that he’s seen me naked on more than one occasion and even worse than that. He’s seen the things Dornan did to me, the dark moments after he forced himself on me. Luis has seen me have a complete fucking meltdown while I screamed at my mother. He’s watched me be tortured and he’s fed me when I was about to pass out from hunger.

“Why you?” I ask suddenly.

His lips curl into a knowing smile. “You know how hard it is to break someone out of a prison? Like a real, legit prison?”

I shrug.

“It’s very fucking hard, bebé. And it’s a piece of cake compared to the things we had to do to get you out of that hellhole.”

I chew on my lip, mulling that over. My arms are itching like crazy, in fact, my entire body is screaming to be scratched, for me to rake my nails across crawling flesh until bright red blood springs forth in jagged lines. But I restrain myself for the moment. I don’t want to show Luis how much he’s right. How much my veins are screaming, sizzling on shot nerve endings, dying for something to soothe, for something to help me forget.

He sees right through me. He watches my fingers as they tremble, as I make tight fists with them and then loosen them again, and I know he sees the truth.

He takes the baggie of heroin out again and tosses it at me. Stepping over to the door, he flips the lock, then comes back to me, a syringe materializing in his hand.

“We’ll wean you off slowly,” he says, looking badass in his leather, his blood-spattered white T-shirt, and needle in his hand. He holds it like it’s a weapon, and in another place it would be.

For Dornan, it was, anyway.

***

The gear is
good
. Better than good. As soon as it enters my vein I feel a rush, a burst of stars that appear behind my eyelids and make them droop. I sag to the side and feel hands stop me from sliding to the floor.

Though, with the heroin kicking around inside me, I honestly wouldn’t give a fuck if I did fall down.

Something troubling gnaws at the edge of the bliss, and this is how I know he’s given me less than Dornan did. A troubling thought rears its head—if I died,
if my heart ceases to beat
, even momentarily, what did that do to the baby?

I make a mental note to think about that later. I can’t focus on anything right now, and I think I’m giggling, the sound muffled with my face pressed against Luis’s shoulder.

Strong arms loop around me and pick me up easily—much, much too easily. I am skin and bone. I sigh, letting the bed swallow me up as Luis deposits me under the covers and pulls them up to my chin.

“You’ll be okay, mamacita,” he says, but I’m already fading into the blissful void, and I’m frozen, unable to reply.