Gypsy Brothers: The Complete Series (67 page)

NINETEEN

Elliot opens his eyes and groans.

“Don’t try to move,” I say, placing a hand on his chest. “You were shot.”

He winces. “Am I dead? Is this heaven?”

I laugh, despite the seriousness of the situation. I’m running on no sleep and I’m starting to go slightly mad, I think.

“If you were dead, and I was here, you’d call that hell,” I reply.

He jolts suddenly. “Kayla!” he says, trying to sit up. Which is really stupid when you’ve got a big ol’ bullet hole in the middle of your stomach.

“They’re fine, Kayla and Amy are both perfectly fine,” I reply, pressing him back down. He reluctantly drops his head back into his pillow. “Where are they?” he asks.

“Kayla fell asleep on Amy’s lap, so she decided to try and get some sleep as well. The nurses let them take one of the beds in the staff lounge. They’re fine, El. Kayla’s upset about her daddy being sick, but she’s fine. Amy’s a little beaten up, a couple bruises, but she’s okay.”

The relief on Elliot’s face makes me relieved. He’s awake. He’s alive. One up, one to go. Now I just need Jase to get through the surgery and wake up and never,
ever
leave my sight again.

“Jase?”

He must see my face fall.

“Julz,” he says, reaching a hand out.

“He’s in surgery,” I say thickly. “He got shot. Bullet nicked his heart.”

“Fuck,” Elliot says. “Dornan shot him, too?”

I nod. And then, much to my horror, I burst into tears.

“Oh, Julz,” Elliot says, pulling my face under his chin and stroking my hair. “He’s gonna make it. He is. And you’re finally going to have your life together.”

His remark stabs deep;
we’re finally going to have our life together
.

“El—” I say.

“I love you, Julz,” Elliot says, and I have to wonder if it’s him talking or the morphine they’re pumping into him for the pain. “I always have. But you two belong together. All those years, I hated him, but he’s the best thing for you. He just looks at you like you’re the most precious thing in the entire world, and you deserve that.”

I smile through my tears. “Thanks, El,” I say.

His smile fades. “And Dornan?” he asks somberly.

I nod. “Dead.”

“Like
dead
dead?”

“Like, extremely fucking dead, bullet in the head and the rest of the clip in his chest, dead,” I reply.

He smiles dreamily. “Thank you.”

“How’d you know it was me?” I ask.

Elliot raises his eyebrows. “Oh, come on,” he says. “You gotta have some serious hate for someone to shoot a whole clip into them.”

I smile sadly, turning when I hear my name.

It’s Luis.

“He’s in recovery,” Luis says, his expression unreadable.

I rush to Jase, running through a maze of hallways. My side hurts, but I don’t care. I have to see him. He’s been taken to a different floor to Elliot, in the ICU.

When I reach him, I gasp. He’s unrecognizable, tubes and wires all over his bare chest. They’re at complete odds with the tattoos adorning his skin. I reach out a hand tentatively, resting it on his arm. His chest is covered in bandages that are already turning red, his blood seeping up from his skin and soaking the gauze.

I sit in the chair beside him, leaning over the bed and resting my head on his shoulder. The only noise in here is the steady hiss of the machine breathing for him, and the constant, slow beep of his heart on the monitor. His skin is cold, and I wish I could cover him with a blanket and wrap my arms around him.

I cling to him, crying into his shoulder, one thought going over and over in my mind.

Wake up. Wake up. Please,
wake up.

It takes two days, but eventually, Jase hears my prayers.

He wakes up.

He
lives.

And finally, I start to feel something again.

ONE MONTH LATER

“You gonna watch it?” Tommy asks.

I shake my head. “Nope.”

I take the tape Tommy found in Dornan’s safe and drop it on top of his grave, crushing it beneath my boot. It cracks in several places, exposing the fragile ribbon of black tape that is imprinted with things so horrific, I cannot bear to look in case I see a captured fragment of that afternoon.

The afternoon that Dornan Ross and his sons thought they destroyed me.

But they didn’t destroy me. I’m here, standing on top of the place where Dornan is buried, and they’re all dead, and I can finally get on with my life.

I crouch down and wriggle my finger into the cracked casing, getting a hold on the ribbon of tape inside and pulling. Reams fall out in haphazard loops, and my stomach lurches nervously.

This is it. My final moment, my act of retribution coming to an end.

And I’m so,
so
ready.

I reach my hand out as Jase hands me a box of matches. I watch, transfixed, as he douses his father’s grave in petrol before tossing the jerry can beside it.

I strike a match; it glows bright in the darkness of night, a tiny flame that I toss onto the petrol-soaked tape. It catches instantly, roaring to life as the flames devour everything beneath it.

SIX MONTHS LATER

I brush the snow from my daughter’s gravestone, marveling at the weather as I thread a fresh bunch of flowers into the vase attached to her headstone. It’s been weeks of sub-freezing temperatures, and my body isn’t used to the bitter Colorado cold.

I can feel eyes watching me. They’ve been here for a while, observing me, but I’m not alarmed. I carry a gun with me wherever I go. If anyone were to try something, I’m fully prepared to do what I have to.

Beside our daughter’s grave, Jase’s mother’s grave needs new flowers as well. I take the old ones out, replacing them with fresh-cut flowers from the market. This week I’ve gone with yellow tulips. They were expensive, but I don’t care.

I turn and see my secret admirer duck behind a tree. Emboldened, I stand, making my way right over to the person who thinks I’m too ignorant to notice they’ve been following me all morning.

I round the corner, shocking my follower.

“Agent Dunn,” I say, smiling warmly. “How are you?”

She looks around. “I — uh …”

“You’ve been following me all morning,” I say. “Was there something you were looking for? If you’re here to kill me, you should probably be more discreet about being here in the first place.”

“I’m not here to kill you,” she replies, shocked.

“Good,” I say. “That must mean you’re here for answers. Answers, I can give you.”

At home — our home, the place Jase’s mother raised him — I make a pot of tea for Agent Dunn, leaving her to add her sugar and milk as I excuse myself for a moment. I go to the bedroom and open the safe, pulling from it a box of horrors so tragic, I can hardly bear to keep them instead of burn them.

But I was waiting for this exact moment with her, and so I have held onto them, stark remnants of my past.

I take my box of horrors to the kitchen and place it down between us, noticing she hasn’t touched her tea. I take the tea from her and sip it myself. “It’s not poisoned,” I say to her. “Happy?”

She nods dubiously. “I’m not really thirsty.”

I take each photograph out gently and place it in front of her. One, two, three. A fifteen-year-old girl with a face so swollen, she’s unrecognizable. Her blood loss so severe, her skin is practically translucent. The whites of her eyes solid red, her arm dislocated and hanging from its socket. Fresh bruises swelling and bursting in a sick oil painting of horror and death. One eye swollen shut. And when I get further down the pile, to the close-up photos they took for the rape kit, I watch as Agent Dunn’s hands begin to shake.

“Seven men,” I say softly, arranging the photos neatly, just as she would. Just as she did. “Seven men against one little girl. Seven grown men who nearly killed that girl as payback because her father loved the wrong woman. Because he wanted a better life for his daughter. Seven men who took turns holding her down until she was pretty much dead.”

She coughs awkwardly, pushing the photos away and holding a hand to her mouth.

“Now, do you understand?” I ask her quietly, calmly.

She nods, her eyes glossy and wet.

“I don’t need your tears,” I say blankly, “or your pity.”

She nods.

“What do you need?” she asks, her voice trembling.

I smile sadly. “I need you to get in your car, drive away, and forget any of this ever happened.”

Agent Dunn doesn’t answer, but her eyes are filled with tears.

“The Cartel are after you,” she says softly. “I don’t know if Tommy already told you, but they’re closing in, Juliette. Killing the Gypsy Brothers started something. I don’t know how much longer I can keep them off the scent.”

“You’re working with Tommy?” I ask. “A double agent? No, wait, you’re with the Cartel as well. A triple agent.” I raise my eyebrows. “You’re a busy lady.”

She nods. “I took a deal with the DEA after what went down in Furnace Creek. I had to send my daughter away in case the Cartel finds out I’m double-crossing them.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I reply.

She shakes her head. “I don’t need your pity, either.”

I look at her for a long moment. Her eyes are tired, her hair lank. She looks awful. The lies of her existence must be weighing heavily on her.

“You took a risk coming here to let me know,” I say finally. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” she replies. “Just watch your back. They’re going to find you sooner, not later.”

Afterwards, she gets into her car, and she drives away. I watch from the large bay window in the living room to make sure she actually goes. I watch the car fade into the road beyond, until it’s like watching a matchbox car being pushed around on rough carpet, and then she’s gone. I imagine her driving faster than the limit, gripped by a horror that I have only just begun to shed since Dornan died. I imagine her going back to her daughter, back to her job.

I know the photographs I just showed her will haunt her for the rest of her life.

More importantly: I know I will never see her again.

After I am sure she’s gone, I take the pile of photographs outside, stopping in the garage for lighter fluid. I find an old, empty paint tin and shove the photos in, making sure they’re far down enough to be sheltered from the freezing wind that’s sweeping across Colorado.

I place the tin on the portable barbecue on the deck, fishing a box of matches out of my pocket. I squirt the lighter fluid on the photos, making sure they’re coated, and then I strike a match.

I watch silently as the lit match drops into the tin, immediately catching fire. It doesn’t take long before the photographs are completely consumed by fire.

Once the photographs are reduced to ash, I find Jase outside, on the lake. At this time of year, it’s frozen solid, but that doesn’t stop Jase from sitting out on the small wooden pier and watching the water
not
move. I know he used to spend a lot of time out here with his mom, and being here brings him great peace and comfort. It’s stunning, this place. It feels ... like a
home.

It’s so cold here, especially at this time of year. Colorado is like a bitch with bipolar, throwing out random days of snow, punctured with days on either side of sunshine and flip-flop weather.

“Elliot called,” he says, looking adorable in his button-down coat and knitted hat as he opens his arms. He suits the winter. He definitely doesn’t look like a biker anymore. His tattoos are the only things that would hint at the life he’s come from, and luckily, here, he can cover up the worst ones.

“What’d he say?”

Jase shrugs. “Asked me if I’d help him fix his piece of shit car.”

“It’s not a piece of shit,” I protest. “It’s an American classic.”

He looks at me, amused. “It doesn’t have seatbelts, babe. He has a kid. How’s he supposed to drive her to school?”

I shrug. “I guess Amy’s got a regular car.”

He snorts. “How did Agent Dunn go?” he asks.

“She says the Cartel’s looking for us. That they’re going to find us,” I say calmly, looking out across the frozen water. I’m not afraid. After what we’ve been through, we can face anything. I know this now.

Jase nods. “We knew that would happen eventually. What else did she do?”

“She got what she needed, and she went,” I say, shrugging as I step into his embrace, pressing the side of my face to his chest in search of more warmth. My cheeks are so cold I can barely feel them.

“I’m surprised you didn’t shoot her on sight,” Jase says, smiling when he sees me pulling a face.

“I am not that bad,” I protest, pulling back to give him a stern look. “Besides, I’ve been expecting her to turn up here since we arrived.”

“You still sleep with a gun under your pillow,” Jase teases, his arms wrapped around me.  “You
are
that bad.”

I smile, melting back into his chest. I love this man. I love him more than anything else in the entire universe.

“Yeah,” I answer. “But these days I keep the safety on.”

I feel him laugh softly into my neck.

It feels positively sublime.

While he’s pressing his lips to my neck, I wonder what’s going to happen to us next. We’ll probably have to leave. Get new names. Shift our funds. It’s funny, I thought this fight was over when I killed Dornan Ross.

But I was wrong. This fight?
It’s only just begun
.

But right now, I don’t care.

Everything I have done, every life I have taken, every drop of blood I have spilled.

It was all for this moment right here.

We are broken, the two of us.

He builds me back up, piece by piece.

I will never be whole again.

But I am okay.

I am happy.

I am
loved
.