Gypsy Brothers: The Complete Series (49 page)

SEVEN

Crammed between Jason Ross and Elliot McRae. In other circumstances, what a delicious sandwich that would be, but with our reality, it’s just fucking
weird
. Elliot tried to kill Jase. And Jase loathes Elliot. Yet here we are, the three Musketeers and me, with Luis’s older version driving us god only knows where. After about an hour, we make it out of the remote jungle and onto a sealed road.

We don’t stay on the road for long, five minutes if we’re lucky, and then we’re pulling into another dirt stretch that leads up a hill and to a small stucco house. It looks like a dirty brown box, sitting there in the midst of tall trees and dense vegetation, but to me it is positively luxurious. If it’s got running water, that’s a plus.

Inside is just as drab, chipped laminate furniture and beds that sag in the middle. I couldn’t care less if I tried. I am out of the dungeon, finally.

As we get into the house, Luis directs me to a bedroom at the far end of the hall. I fix the most pleading look I can muster onto my face, and he grins, shaking his head.

“Five minutes, bebé.”

Before I can protest, he disappears, back in the direction of the car, and the boys.

I enter the bedroom, my nose immediately twitching at the dust. This house looks like it was once lived in, but it hasn’t been inhabited for some time. Thick dust coats the windowsills, a small dresser shoved up against one wall. Even the floral bedspread that covers the double bed looks like it used to be a brighter color, until the dust grayed it out. I feel like that right now. Dull. Grayed out.

It’s hot here, a humid kind of air that sticks to my skin. We mustn’t be that far from the ocean, because I still smell salt in the air that hangs around me, heavy and oppressive.

I don’t have any possessions with me. Nothing to weigh me down, nothing I am attached to. I float above the dark carpet like a ghost, my feet only barely touching the ground beneath me, my movements not making a single noise. It is unnerving, this silence. In the three months I was in the basement—the dungeon, whatever you want to call that hellhole—I’d grown accustomed to the noises. The dripping of pipes that must have intersected above my roof, letting me know whenever water flowed through the mansion Emilio had called home before Luis blew his brains out. The scraping sound, several times a day, that marked a key in the door - somebody bringing me food…or something worse. Bringing me pain, if it was Dornan visiting.

Dornan.

Where is he now? I try to picture him, wonder if he tried to save his father when he finally made it over to him. Did he crawl through blood and skull? Did he try to press his hands against Emilio’s wounds, try to help him even though it was futile?

Did he hold the man who had created him?

Dornan murdered my father, and now his own father is dead. The irony is not lost on me. I imagine him now, one son left, just Dornan and Donny against the world, a smaller band of increasingly suspicious and on edge Gypsy Brothers bikers behind their rage. I still can’t believe they even got me out of there, and killing Mickey and Emilio in the process?

That is the icing on the motherfucking cake.

Yeah, I know. I’m a strange girl. Horrific death and pain surrounds me, and I still celebrate silently when one of those bastards is taken down. I can’t help it. It’s who I am.

I am a damaged girl.

I perch myself on the bed, shades drawn, reveling in the solitude that engulfs me. The silence might be scary but the being alone part is nice, being alone and knowing Dornan isn’t here, ready to burst the door in and torture me to within an inch of my life.

I have no worldly possessions. Nowhere to be and nowhere to go. I am just here, and so I sit with my hands in my lap, and I wait.

After a few minutes, Luis returns. When I snap my gaze up to see it’s him walking through the bedroom door and not Jase or Elliot, I am so surprised at the relief that takes hold of me, it’s like I’ve been sucker-punched in the gut. I mean, I don’t even
know
him.

But I believe he means me no harm, and so the rest doesn’t matter right now. I make a mental note to speak to him more, to see what his story is, but somewhere inside I already know. I feel safe with him because he is a survivor, just like me. Not only a survivor, but a warrior, on his own journey of vengeance and redemption. Yes. That’s why I feel safe with him. Because, even more than Jase, Luis is
just
like me.

He closes the door and stands in front of me. From his jeans pocket he withdraws a plastic medicine bottle full of cloudy fluid. My first reaction is to frown and tilt my head. That’s not what I want, I want to say to him. That’s not what I need. But I clamp my lips shut, because I cannot jeopardize this fledgling relationship with this man, whatever it is. This man with the bright blue eyes who wants to rescue me from myself, for no other reason, it would seem, that just because he sees what I see, as well. Because Dornan Ross took both of our parents from us. What a sorry connection we have—united by Dornan. United by death.

Luis must see the displeasure clouding my eyes, because he smirks. “Hey, mamacita, you don’t look so happy. Let’s fix that.”

He takes something else from his pocket and when I catch sight of it, I get excited. A syringe. So he is going to give me something.

But then my heart drops, thud, back into my stomach, because what he’s actually holding is one of those medicine dropper syringes, the ones they use to give babies medicine. I bite the end of my tongue to stop myself from screaming.

I watch tensely as Luis uncaps the bottle and draws light brown liquid, the color of cola mixed with water, up into the dropper.

“Open your mouth,” he says, and I do. He squirts the stuff into my throat, and it burns on the way down.

I close my mouth, willing the strong, cherry medicine flavor to fade. It’s disgusting, and it makes me want to throw up. But I don’t. I will not waste whatever he just gave me. I look up at Luis, who is watching me silently.

“I don’t feel anything,” I say. Underneath my blank, cool exterior, I’m fuming, bubbling with a desperate rage that threatens to consume me. In my head I imagine springing to my feet, wrapping my fingers around his throat, and squeezing until he agrees to get me some actual heroin.

But of course, I don’t. I snap back to reality, take the water he’s offering me and gulp it down, swishing some around my mouth at the end to dilute the shitty cherry taste coating my tongue. “Tastes like Nyquil,” I say. “What was that?”

“Dolophine,” he says, putting the bottle back in his pocket.

I take a deep breath. I know what that is. Fucking methadone.

Not only am I a fucking addict, but I’ve just swallowed the drug my mother was given countless times to curb her own dependence, a drug she loathed because it didn’t give her that same instantaneous bliss the smack guaranteed.

I burst into tears.

“Hey,
mamacita
,” Luis says softly, coming to sit beside me. He pats my back, maybe in an attempt to snap me out of my own wallowing.

I catch sight of myself in the full-length mirror at the end of the bed, and what I see disgusts me. Where is the strong girl, the girl who dealt with her enemies in poison and fire? Where is the girl who thrived on pain, the girl who got off on the suffering of her foes, who tasted the salty tears of Dornan Ross and declared herself the winner? Where am I under the layers of trauma and scarring?

Who am I anymore?

I look away from the mirror. I can’t bear to see any more. The weak, thin girl with the swollen belly, the girl who carries the weight of her lies inside her like a toxic virus. I’m tired. I’m desperate.

“Please,” I beg Luis. “Please, I can’t. I need the real thing.”

His blue eyes darken, and he shakes his head emphatically. “Think of your
mama
,” he says.

“I don’t want to think about that bitch,” I snap. “It was better when I thought she was dead.”

I press a hand to my mouth as I hear my own words.

“I didn’t mean that,” I whisper, taking my hand away just long enough to let those four words out before clamping it back down. I didn’t mean that, I didn’t mean that. What is happening to me? My desperation, my utter despair at needing what I cannot have, just one little hit, curls around me like poison ivy, dragging me down to the earth. Suddenly, I am so heavy I could sleep.

“A few weeks,
bebé
,” he says, reaching underneath his shirt and taking out a chain, black rosary beads and gold with a black and gold cross hanging from one end. He drapes the long chain over my head, letting it fall onto my chest.

“Are you going to tell them?” I whisper, fingering the delicate cross. I feel bad, taking this from him. I don’t believe in God, not anymore.

“Nah,” Luis says. “We can do this, Giulietta. You’ll be all right in a couple weeks.”

I feel guilty. Taking his rosary beads. “I can’t take these,” I say, hiking the beads back off myself and holding them out to him, tangled up in my fist. “I’m not even remotely religious. It wouldn’t be right to take your beads like this.”

He shakes his head, his eyes soft, and pushes my fist back toward me.

“It’s a loan,” he clarifies, giving me a wink. “You need something to fidget with when you’re thinking of the smack,
bebe
. You get past that, you give them back to me then.”

He’s got a point. I remember my mother digging at her own skin until it bled on the few occasions she either tried to quit cold turkey or had run out of her beloved heroin. “Thank you,” I whisper, untangling the beads and putting them back around my neck.

“Hey, Julz?” Elliot calls from the kitchen. “Where you at?”

I look toward Luis, who shrugs.

Time to face the music.

EIGHT

Luis excuses himself to pick up more supplies, tearing off in his jeep with the guy who looks just like him. He’s said his father is dead, murdered by Emilio, so I have to assume that he is another relative. Mariana’s relative? The obsession with figuring out how it had all gone down all those years ago is killing me. I want to know.

The three of us sit around a scuffed laminate table that rocks on the floor. I’m not sure what’s at fault - the table or the uneven floor itself. I rest my elbows on the table, a dull warmth forming in my stomach, and survey Jase and Elliot as they sit across from me.

Elliot looks relieved, Jase worried. They wear matching poker faces, but I’ve known these boys a long time, and even in their blank looks I find the truth.

I can tell what they’re thinking. Elliot thinks now I’ve been rescued, the horror is over. Happily ever after. He rescued the girl, he made the deal, and he made it out alive. I know Elliot McRae, and I know he thinks this is finished.

I glance to the left, to where Jase is grinding his jaw noiselessly, and I know what he’s thinking: It’s only just begun.

I reach my hands across the table, wiggling my fingers at them. “Hands,” I say softly, and they each slowly break out of their own worlds. Jase darts his hand over to mine, crushing it with his.

Elliot watches as Jase’s hand hits mine and hesitates.

“El,” I urge, reaching across the table. “We’re all friends. Fucked-up friends, but friends. Come on.”

He rests his palm atop mine, but doesn’t do the whole almost break my fingers thing Jase did. He is more reserved, and I see the way he holds back. The way his body language and the distance in his eyes says
this isn’t my girl anymore.

I take a deep breath as I study the two people in this world who are my absolution.

“Thank you,” I say, squeezing each of their hands, tears welling in my eyes.

“Thank you for getting me out of there. For risking your lives. And…”

Even now, I find it so hard to admit fault. I am so stubborn. Just like my dad was.

“I am sorry,” I whisper, with every ounce of emotion that lives inside me. The overwhelming gratitude. The crushing sorrow. I bundle it up into those three words,
I am sorry
, and hope they believe me.

“You don’t have to be sorry,” Jase murmurs, staring at my hand, the one he’s holding. Elliot swallows thickly, his eyes glassy. These men have done everything in their quest to save me, and I can never repay them for that.

“I do,” I murmur, tilting my head back and blinking so the tears don’t fall. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about this. I was selfish, and I used you both, and
I’m sorry
.”

They don’t speak. Elliot fixes me with his sorrowful stare, waiting for me to continue.

“I don’t like the person I’ve become,” I press on, the truth stinging me. “The things I’ve done. If I met me right now, I would hate me.”

Jase shakes his head, running his free hand through his short hair. “Nobody hates you, Julz.”

Except Dornan.

“My father would be so disgusted by me,” I whisper, tears dripping down my face, my voice remaining strong by some miracle. “He would hate me.”

Elliot looks frozen, like he can’t form words. Jase drops my hand and sits back in his chair, lacing both hands behind his head. He looks like he’s aged five years in three months.

My fault. My fucking fault.

Elliot uses this time to drop my hand, too. He gives it a gentle pat, before standing and walking over to the window. He parts the curtain slightly, looking outside, close enough to still be a part of this discussion.

“Your father would be proud of you,” Jase says finally. “Horrified, but proud. He raised you to be a fighter, Juliette. He’d be fucking
proud
.”

A flash of the past bites at the back of my mind, of the first time I walked into Dornan’s office after six years dead and let him put his hands on me, welcomed it, and even got off on it in some perverse way. I shudder, wondering how I ever thought it would end up anywhere other than here.

Dornan was always going to find out. I think I knew that, deep down, but I pushed it aside, assigned that horror to future Juliette, because present Juliette just wanted to drown her pain and her grief in a dirty little cycle of fucking and killing.

“I could’ve just bombed that fucking clubhouse and let them all burn to death inside,” I say, my words thick with grief and realization. This is the first time I’ve ever acknowledged this out loud. And it hurts. I
am
a bad person.

“I could’ve paid a dude with a sniper rifle to take each one of them out, end it all in a day. I could’ve figured out a way to frame them for something, get them arrested and thrown in jail.”

Elliot’s expression says devastated, Jase’s says numb.

“But I didn’t,” I finish, the truth like a stab to my gut. “Because that would be too kind. That would be too unsatisfying. You understand? I had to do it like this because I needed to watch them die. I needed to know that they knew who I was, and feel the same fear I felt when they thought I was dying at their hands.”

I am a bad, bad person, as bad as they come. Because this is my truth.

“It doesn’t matter,” Jase says suddenly, but I press on. I have to finish.

“I’m so sorry I risked both of your lives for my fucked-up vendetta.” I am
so
fucking sorry. “Elliot, I’m so sorry you gave everything up for me. Your life, your career, and now your safety. I’m sorry you had to hide your family away because of my selfish crusade. I’m sorry you had to build a new life after you gave your old one up for me, and I’m sorry you lost that one, too.”

He doesn’t respond. His face is drawn, his cheeks pink, as if, for the first time, he’s realizing how much that decision to save the dying girl six years ago has actually cost him. But he doesn’t look angry. He just looks really, really tired.

“Jase, I’m sorry I lied to you. I’m so sorry I felt like I couldn’t tell you who I was. Because I should have known you weren’t like them, but after six years, I couldn’t understand how you were still there with them. I should have looked harder.”

I think of all the people who died at Dornan’s hands. Jase’s mom. Mariana. My father.

“I should have known you’d never give up on avenging all that death.”

His stubbled jaw tightens; he rubs his red eyes with his palms.

“I’m sorry for what I did with Dornan,” I whisper.

He shakes his head, covers his eyes. “Don’t,” he says. “I can’t talk about that, not now.”

I swallow, nodding sadly. Elliot steps away from the window as a buzz emanates from his pocket. He drags his phone out and looks at the display. “Sorry, I gotta take this,” he says, busting the front door open and closing it loudly behind him. I imagine him on the stairs, talking to his ex, or maybe to his grandma.

I turn my attention back to Jase. “My darling boy,” I whisper, my two palms outstretched. A sad smile ghosts across his face, his thick eyelashes glistening. He isn’t crying—he’s far too stubborn to cry in front of me—but he’s right on the edge.

“I thought he’d killed you,” Jase says, distraught. “I walked into that room and there was blood
everywhere
, and I thought you were dead.”

The lump in my throat is like a piece of razor blade, wedged in my neck; I try to swallow and talk around it, but it doesn’t budge.

“You must hate me for the way I left things,” I say softly. “For the way I stormed out of your house, for the things I said. I don’t know what I was saying. I was stupid.”

He shakes his head, “I don’t hate you, baby. I couldn’t hate you if I tried.”

My smile is watery but full; the contraction of facial muscles squeezes more tears from the corners of my eyes. “Sometimes,” I whisper, “I wish we were different people. That we’d been born into another life. That we didn’t have to fight so hard just to have each other.”

He simply nods, bringing one of my hands up to his mouth and kissing the back of it so slowly, so tenderly, I feel like I might break in two.

“It’s worth it, though,” I add, my skin burning pleasantly where his lips have touched.

He smiles. “I know,” he murmurs.

He stands, taking my hand, leading me down the hallway back to the bedroom where Luis gave me the methadone.

“You should rest,” he murmurs. “I’ll fix you a sandwich.”

I don’t resist. I’m too tired, and so hungry I could eat a horse. I arrange several pillows against the headrest and sit against them on the bed.

I am safe. I am free.

It’s still so utterly foreign, and it makes me realize how crazy I must have been acting on the boat last night. When I refused to let Jase near me. Fuck, what a bitch I must seem. A damaged, crazy, bitch.

It’s only afterward, while I’m chewing on the sandwich Jase has made me that I remember.

I still have that craving at the back of my mind, that annoying, on-edge, cloying sensation that screams for another hit.

But the itch that covered my body, it’s gone. The nausea is much less intense. And the pounding in my head is better, too.

Maybe I can do this, after all. And Jase will never need to know how close I came to becoming my mother.