Page 191 of Corrupted Kingdom

I stepped forward again, unsteady fingers clasping the metal zipper. In slow motion, I pulled, undoing one short side, then the long edge, then the final side of the suitcase.

Taking a deep breath, I peeled back the lid of the suitcase. There was . . . a toy?

A child’s stuffed animal. It was a bunny rabbit. A soft blue, with a Quickstop tag still attached. Five dollars and ninety-nine cents, somebody had paid for this toy. It rested upon a thick knitted blanket that was made up of squares in every colour of the rainbow.

I’d seen this toy before.

Guillermo sauntered in, a fresh slice of pizza in his hand. ‘You get a package?’ he asked, around a mouthful of cheese and dough.

Something about the way the blanket was resting started to make me uneasy, but I pushed the feeling away.

‘Emilio delivered this,’ I said, pointing at the open case.

Guillermo stopped chewing, but didn’t appear alarmed. ‘He gave you a suitcase? What, you going somewhere for the boss?’

‘I hope not,’ I murmured, staring down at the stuffed toy. Maybe it had something sewn into it. Maybe he was sending me on a trip. A drug run? I’d done one of those for him before. Christ, I could still taste the thick olive oil that coated the plastic pellets of white powder he’d forced me to swallow, at the very beginning of my complicated relationship with the Il Sangue Cartel.

Guillermo stood beside me, picking up the toy and shaking it. He turned it over, inspecting the stitching. Nothing seemed amiss.

I looked back at the baby blanket. Emilio knew about my miscarriage – there had been no hiding it from him – and the thought that he was taunting me about it suddenly sprang to mind. I swallowed a lump in my throat as I remembered bleeding out on this very floor, at the hands of my lover.

Was that it? Was he reminding me of all I’d lost? Was he that cruel?

If only it had been that. A dig. A taunt. Anything would have been better than what was actually beneath the blanket.

‘What’s in there?’ Guillermo asked. I glanced at him, picking up the edge of the woollen blanket and peeling it back.

I screamed.

‘Fucking Christ!’ Guillermo yelled, dropping his pizza and backing away. I dry-heaved, sinking to my knees, the reality of my gift so horrific, I could barely believe what my eyes were telling me.

I was still screaming.

‘Where the fuck – stop screaming.’

I kept screaming, only the noise coming from me had turned into more of a low wail. My eyes were blurred from too many tears, hot as they ran down my cheeks and dripped onto the floor. I felt like I was losing my grip on reality, but it was the opposite, really: I’d been thrust violently back into reality. My reality. The one where I was nothing more than a pawn in Emilio’s quest for total control over his son.

‘Shut the fuck up!’ Guillermo hissed, hushing me. He dropped to his knees in front of me, pulling me into his chest, his eyes darting around the room as he clamped a hand over my mouth. I fought for a second, wild with horror and disbelief, clawing at his arms, but he was patient. He was strong. The man bench-pressed more than my weight every day at the gym, and he had no trouble keeping a hold around me.

‘Shhhhhh,’ he said, low and long. Shhhhhh. Like waves retracting out from the shore. Shhhhhh.

I sagged, eventually, and Guillermo raised his eyebrows in question. He was asking me if he could take his hand away. I nodded, and he pulled his palm away from my mouth, ever so slowly.

‘Where did it come from?’ he asked quietly, his tone deadly serious. I choked, deciding whether to throw up. Nope. I kept my lunch down for the moment as I racked my brain for an answer.

‘Emilio,’ I croaked, finally. ‘It came from Emilio.’

‘Why?’

I thought back to the night Dornan had been shot. How he’d almost bled to death in the car beside me, only hours after we’d taken an orphan baby boy to the hospital and dropped him off at the counter, wrapped in a bloody coat.

Emilio’s cold hand squeezed the back of my neck as he directed my gaze towards the smallest baby in the line-up.

‘I’m taking this boy home,’ he promised, his words turning vicious. ‘I’ll raise him as my own. And if you ever try and leave your post . . .’

I sobbed from the pain of his fingers inside my wound. ‘I’ve given you almost ten years,’ I whispered. ‘You told me you’d let me go once I repaid the debt.’

He chuckled. ‘That was before. This is now. Do you have any idea how fucking marvellous you are at what you do? I was going to shoot you that night, and you insisted on coming with me. You’ve only got yourself to blame, dear.’

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