Page 73 of Empire (Cartel)

Dornan’s resolve shattered. It made perfect sense. Of course! He knew she’d been seeing somebody else, even when she tried to deny it. Of course it would be John – the man who was everything Dornan had never quite been able to emulate. The good one. The kind one. The one who didn’t beat you until you miscarried. Or, for that matter, the one who didn’t beat you at all, because he was just a fucking stand-up guy.

‘There’s more,’ Viper said.

Emilio was openly entertained now, apparently having forgotten the time and their impending meeting. Seemed this juicy news was reason enough to be late.

‘Please, by all means, go on,’ Emilio said, steepling his fingers and leaning his chin on them. ‘You’re really very good at setting the scene. Very thorough.’

Viper glanced at Dornan. ‘Once I figured out they’d been talking, I decided it was worth looking into something that’s been bothering me ever since you told me about it, Mr Ross. The ashes you mentioned to me. You asked me to track down where she had the kid cremated at such short notice and I found it – Budget Funerals. We’ve already talked about this, but after I told you I decided to do some more digging. I asked the guy if I could look at his security tapes from the week Agent Murphy went missing.’

Emilio drew a sharp breath. There was nothing playful about his attention now.

‘John took a body to be disposed of the same day Murphy disappeared,’ Viper said. ‘I asked the guy about it, convincedhim that John had sent me to make sure any personal effects had been destroyed along with the body.’

He dug into his pocket and pulled out an ID badge, with Murphy’s face staring out next to the letters DEA.

He slid it across the table for Emilio to see. ‘I rechecked the tapes. Mariana was waiting in the car while John loaded Murphy’s body for burning.’

Emilio stood, pounding his fist on the desk. ‘That fucking cunt!’ he roared, his eyes so big Dornan thought they might explode out of his head and roll along the floor. Dornan didn’t know what to do. His wife was a traitor. His wife wasn’t loyal to him. She was loyal to John. She was in love with John.

And they were both standing five feet away, separated only by the soundproof walls this office boasted; thank God for small miracles in a sea of shitty news.

‘I’ll kill them both,’ Dornan decided out loud, reaching for his gun.

‘Stop,’ Viper said. ‘There’s more. I checked the accounts after I found all of this. She’s been skimming your money. I didn’t have time to put it all together, but the amount so far is over seven figures.’

Emilio looked like he was about to cut Viper’s skull open and rip out his brain, just to see if he could get the answers faster than Viper was relaying them.

‘But seven figures is–’

‘Millions,’ Viper confirmed.

Dornan and Emilio both moved for the door at the same time.

But they never reached it. It exploded open, a stream of FBI agents yelling commands at the three of them, and thenDornan was on the floor, hands behind his back and his face pressed into the rough carpet as the bony knee of an FBI agent dug into the small of his back.

Emilio was cursing in Italian, the same sentence, over and over again. ‘I will cut her fucking head off. I will saw their fucking heads off!’

No, he wouldn’t. Dornan would beat him to it. And he wouldn’t need a blade. No. Dornan would rip his pretty wife’s head from her body simply with the force of his rage, and then he would do the same to his best friend, the man he’d trusted more than anyone else in his entire life.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

MARIANA

I’d like to say we escaped, that our plan was brilliant, but our plan was hasty and panicked. John went first, sliding down the fire escape to the back alley below, hidden from street view. This was even better, I surmised, as I felt John’s hand on my ankle, guiding me down so I didn’t fall and break my neck in these ridiculous high heels Dornan insisted I wear to meetings. We could make a clean break while the others languished in police cells. We’d be in Colombia before some of them even made bail.

But that’s where the illusion shattered. Because I looked down, and the man holding my ankle wasn’t John. It was Lindsay.

‘Mariana.’ He smiled, pulling me down to the ground and then pushing me up against the wall, cold handcuffs wrapping around my wrists and clicking shut. ‘How nice of you to join us.’

In my peripheral vision I saw John, handcuffed and gagged, as he was dragged away. He hadn’t even been able to yell out towarn me of the danger below. Lindsay wrenched me away from the wall and pushed me forward. I moved awkwardly in my heels as he propelled me around to the front of the clubhouse, following in John’s footsteps, where at least fifteen police cars sat waiting to be filled. I looked on in horror as I saw John being wrestled into one car, Dornan into another, and Emilio into a third. Cuffs firmly in place, Lindsay spun me around to face him. He smiled again, and Christ almighty if he didn’t look like some Hollywood movie star who’d been plucked off the street and handed a gun and a badge. His bright white teeth were dazzling, and he looked clean. Too clean. Even his navy blue suit jacket looked freshly pressed.

We, on the other hand, we were all dirty, even if we didn’t look it on the surface. Emilio’s dirt was the poison that ran through his veins, the beady look in his dark eyes, the bit of phlegm that always seemed to be trapped in his chest, that rumbled when he spoke and made me want to scream at him to clear his damn throat every time he opened his mouth.

Dornan and John were dirty anyway, with their beard scruff, the tattoos that covered their skin in various stages of bright and dull colouring, the leather vests they never, ever washed, their palms stained with engine oil and probably blood.

We were all dirty, dishevelled, less than.

Lindsay, though, was resplendent. He had us now, and he knew it.

---