Page 32 of Seven Sons (Gypsy Brothers)

“Well, are you okay?” he asks me, his voice straining to sound normal under the weight of his despair. His blue eyes are oceans of worry and hurt, and I have to look away before I really do cry.

“I’m fine,” I say. “I got in there. They bought my story. That’s it.”

“That’s it?” Elliot stops fumbling with needles and packages and stares at me questioningly. “What do you mean, that’s it?”

I grit my teeth and take a deep breath, the events of the past three days a broken record of pain, blood, and lust playing on repeat in my addled mind. I can’t tell him about Michael. He would never speak to me again if he knew the depths of my treachery.

“Dornan liked me straightaway,” I say in a monotone voice. “He liked me a little too much.”

Elliot’s hands are empty and I can hear his nails digging into the hard plastic that covers the table I lay upon. “Julz…” he growls.

Hot tears fill my eyes and I look up at him angrily. “Don’t call me that,” I say viciously. “Don’t you ever call me that, do you understand? Do you want us to both get killed?”

He lets go of the table and shakes his head. “Did he hurt you?” he asks, his fists in tight balls.

“Yes,” I say honestly, blinking the tears away. “But I let him. It’s all part of the act.”

He goes to grab my shoulders and I look at the front door in alarm. “Jason is watching,” I say in a high-pitched voice, and I see Elliot use every single reserve of strength he has to back away from me and collect his tattoo gun from the counter. He preps the needles, each one holding dye that will soon be on my skin.

“How’d you convince him to stay out there, anyway?” Elliot is crazy angry, but attempting normal conversation at the same time. Super.

I stretch out on the soft plastic bed. “I told him I cried last time I got inked, and it would be way too embarrassing for me if he watched.”

Elliot smirks despite his earlier tirade, his needle poised at my hipbone.

“So,” he asks stonily, “you gonna cry?”

I clench my fists as he begins to drag sharp needles through the sensitive, scarred flesh that covers my hipbone. “Hell, no. It takes more than a little tattoo gun to make this girl cry.”

Sixteen

Three hours later, my tattoo is completely shaded in, blacks and dark reds a swirl of patterns and seeping blood across my midsection. I am sweating, and my skin is simultaneously numb and screaming alight, each nerve crying its own confused protest.

“I thought this wasn’t supposed to hurt,” I asked Elliot as he applied a new dressing. “I thought I was meant to get a huge rush or something?”

Elliot paused, staring at the fresh blue and purple bruises around my wrists, where Dornan pinned me to the bed after he shot Michael.

“Your body only has so much adrenalin,” he says, taking my wrist and studying the flesh with an unreadable look on his face. He brushes his warm fingertips lightly across the bruises, a deep frown settling into his forehead. “You’ve probably used it all up.”

The front door jangles, scaring the hell out of me, and I look up to see Jase at the front counter of the shop. He eyes us cautiously, obviously noticing the tenderness with which Elliot is touching my bruised wrists.

“You done?” he asks me. I nod eagerly, sliding off the bench and carefully pulling my t-shirt back over my head. I wince as the fabric touches my inked skin; even though the plastic forms a barrier, it doesn’t stop my skin f

rom protesting at the merest touch.

“Don’t forget to bathe it every day and keep it clean and dry,” Elliot says, as he’s no doubt said a thousand times before. He hands me an after-care kit which includes gauze pads, saline solution, barrier cream, and a business card with the landline of the studio printed across the front in large numbers. Smart.

“Got it!” I say, making my way towards the door, where Jase waits. I don’t look back at Elliot. If I look back, I’m screwed.

Remember why you’re here.

My mantra, a chant that keeps me sane in times of trepidation.

Fuck Dornan over. Kill his sons. Send the rest to jail. Find that tape.

Live happily ever after. Pfft.

We step outside to a day that has almost entirely disappeared; wisps of aubergine cloud hang low in the sky, waiting for the night sky to swallow them completely.

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